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Abstract
The issues related to the identity of women, especially women of color, have been one of significant subjects of discussion in literary societies among postcolonial and feminist scholars since the last decades of the twentieth century. The reflection of this condition is palpable in literary works of African American female writers as the major theme of their fictional works. Toni Morrison (1931- ), like her literary counterparts, portrays the prevalent condition of the lives of women in her novel A Mercy (2008). She wants to show that how the male-dominated power deprives women of their identity by subjugating and objectifying them, and how these women encounter an ambivalent and unhomely situation in dealing with both their culture and the colonial and dominant culture. In the light of postcolonial concepts of subaltern as defined by major figure of postcolonial studies, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1942- ), this study tries to show that how Toni Morrison challenges and deconstructs the supremacy of colonial and patriarchal power in the Western societies. Moreover, this thesis sheds more light on how Morrison puts into question the stability and invincibility of the Western master narratives by using a fragmented and split style of novel writing in her novel A Mercy.