Being always the object rather than the subject of narration, the subaltern is never given a chance to recount his-story, always seen as the inferior other whose history should be told by more powerful entities. Written in the Victorian period which was one of imperial expansion, the subaltern, in these three novels, is rather dehumanized, associated with madness, darkness, and savagery and is denied a voice to express his true feelings or defend his actions. This paper traces the representations or rather the un-representations of the subaltern in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four. In the context of colonialism, the subaltern cannot speak and is thence, unrepresented. Spivak declares the impossibility of representing the subaltern groups or giving them voices in narratives written by powerful parties as the typical representation of the subaltern groups often obscures their voice. This theory has been foregrounded by the writings of Antonio Gramsci, Ranajit Guha, and Gayatri Spivak. In its general usage, the term 'subaltern' denotes alterity, difference, inferiority, and subordination.
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