7. Searching for Swahili Jane

Abstract

While Jane Eyre has travelled widely, it remains absent from most languages of sub-Saharan Africa. This chapter explores a failure of transmission through translation by focusing on a specific literary sphere, that of Swahili. It traces a culture of translation that has not (yet) admitted Brontë, one in which the nineteenth-century British novel had a role in colonial enforcement of language norms. After suggesting that Swahili translations of Alice in Wonderland might point to a place for Brontë’s novel, the chapter explores preoccupations shared by Jane Eyre and Euphrase Kezilahabi’s novel Rosa Mistika (1971) and Mwana Kupona binti Msham’s nineteenth-century poem Utendi wa Mwana Kupona (Mwana Kupona’s Poem); it highlights bird imagery in the novels and themes of power, education, and femininity across all three texts.