ABSTRACT
The postcolonial home stands in relation to its colonial forebear and interrogates its values. At the centre of the postcolonial literary treatment of domesticity, is a reversal of representation, in which the home is no longer presented in denial of its political status to construct a colonial ideal, but is instead explicitly political. Colonial home is prominent because of ideological investment in both fiction and nonfiction at the height of colonialism that saw it given a central place in political and literary discourse. To some extent postcolonial novels do retain the home as metaphor for the colony, undoubtedly making connections between domestic oppressions and colonial regimes. In removing the codes and patterns signifying conventional domestic space, favoring instead the turmoil and tensions that the colonial ideal obscures, the postcolonial home functions differently to its colonial predecessor. At the same time, politicization creates the home as a site of resistance for all its postcolonial inhabitants, regardless of gender.
