The uncanny in Helen Oyeyemi's Icarus Girl and White is for Witching

Freud in his prominent 1919 essay "The Uncanny" thoroughly explores the uncanny phenomenon and it's manifestations in real life events as well as in works of fiction. This eerie experience is created by the commingling of the familiar and the unfamiliar and it can present itself in a variety of ways ranging from haunted houses, ghosts and dismembered limbs to in-betweenness and otherness. As a result of the occurence of an uncanny incident, the onlooker undergoes feelings of unease, fear and terror. This thesis aims to explore the uncanny events depicted in Helen Oyeyemi's the Icarus Girl and White is for Witching, as they contain many components which are associated with the uncanny. The novels will be examined extensively through the lens of Freud and his predecessor Jentsch's theories as well as Kristeva and Homi Bhabha's postcolonial and cultural perspective. The thesis will focus on the otherworldly elements portrayed in the novel such as inanimate sentient characters, ghosts and doubles. Subsequently, the traces of post-colonialism and Oyeyemi's critique of Birtish nationalism will be commented on in light of the uncanny theory. This large-scale research will inspect all examples of the uncanny in these two novels, without merely focusing on one aspect of the phenomenon along with linking real life events with the events of the novels.