Institutional Repository | Satya Wacana Christian University: The Complicated Relationships of the Characters in Only a Girl: A Post-colonialism Criticism

Rahmawati 1

The Complicated Relationships of the Characters in Only a Girl:
A Post-colonialism Criticism

Nanda Putri Rahmawati
“….POSTCOLONIALISM, invites you through a slightly larger door into the next
stage of history, after which you emerge, fully erect, into the brightly lit and noisy
HYBRID STATE.”
(Frantz Fanon)

Abstract
This paper analyzes Only a Girl, written by Lian Gouw, and draws on Postcolonial theory through the lens of one of the most important Post-colonial
thinkers, Homi K. Bhabha. Post-colonial criticism examines the relationship
between the subject and the marginalized. Using Homi K. Bhabha’s works about
mimicry and ambivalence, this paper is going to explore how the Chinese
characters survive in Indonesia at that time. Homi K. Bhabha, in his theory of
mimicry, examines how the marginalized mimic the subject. In Only a Girl, the
Chinese family, as the inferior, tries to adopt the Dutch tongue and culture, which
the marginalized consider as the superior ones. But on the other side, there is also
ambivalence, or a love-hate feeling that the Chinese characters experience.

Applying the theory to the novel will make readers think not only about mimicry
and ambivalence as it exists in the novel, but also how and why those actions
happened in the past and perhaps continue to happen.
Keywords: ‘Mimicry’, ‘Ambivalence’, ‘Colonized’, ‘Colonizer’, ‘Only a Girl’.