Speaking for the Silenced: Narrative Mediation and Subalternity in Allende’s Island BeneathThe Sea

Abstract

This study investigates how silence, embodiment, and memory operate as mediated forms of speech when direct articulation is denied in Isabel Allende’s Island Beneath The Sea (2010). The researchers will examine the portrayal of freedom, haunted by fear and history embodies Spivak’s paradox: the subaltern can speak, but remains unheard in the selected novel through Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s (1988) work “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Island Beneath The Sea (2010) is historical novel written by the Chilean author Isabel Allende. It depicts how Allende has portrayed the story of an enslaved girl’s journey from a girl to a mother and reveals how motherhood becomes both a refuge and a prison for her. Through Zarité’s voice, Allende crafts a narrative that is both a personal odyssey and a collective reckoning, making it a compelling text for analysis through postcolonial and feminist lenses. The researchers have employed the method of textual analysis for this study. The findings reveal that Zarité’s speech is continuously reframed by colonial law and racial hierarchy, yet her body and memory articulate resistance beyond verbal language.