BAKHTINIAN DIALOGISM AND THE SUBVERSIVE POTENTIAL OF MINOR CHARACTERS IN THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL AND THE NIGHT AND DAY

Аннотация

This essay uses Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of dialogism to analyse the subversive potential of minor characters in Anne Brontë's Victorian novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) and Cholpon's Soviet Uzbek novel The Night and Day. By comparing seemingly "flat" characters—Victorian gossip and Soviet officials—it argues that their narrative exclusion hides their polyphonic capacity to subvert monologic control. By close readings and theoretical synthesis, the study reveals how these figures generate heteroglossia that resists patriarchal and authoritarian ideologies. Findings indicate minor characters, despite narrative concision in space, play crucial roles in subverting commanding discourses and offering a cross-cultural model through which marginality in literature might be understood.