This Essay Will Discuss the Way in Which Wide Sargasso Sea Interacts With the Ideas of Post Colonial and Feminist Thinking

8/6/2019 This Essay Will Discuss the Way in Which Wide Sargasso Sea Interacts With the Ideas of Post Colonial and Feminist

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Student: Nastasia Raluca Georgeta

Course instructor: Dr. Aloisia Sorop,Senior lecturer

Specialization: English-German

Year:3rd year

WIDE SARGASSO SEA

-POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE-


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Postcolonial literature (or "Post-colonial literature", sometimes called "New English

literature(s)"), is a body of literary writings that reacts to the discourse of colonization. Post-

colonial literature often involves writings that deal with issues of de-colonization or the political

and cultural independence of people formerly subjugated to colonial rule. It is also a literary

critique to texts that carry racist or colonial undertones. Postcolonial literature, finally in its most

recent form, also attempts to critique the contemporary postcolonial discourse that has been

shaped over recent times. It attempts to re-read this very emergence of postcolonialism and its

literary expression itself.

When Wide Sargasso Sea was published in 1966 it helped to rescue its author, Jean Rhys,

from the obscurity into which she had fallen. Her previous novels and short stories, published

between the two world wars, were out of print. Rhys, who had succumbed to an alcohol

addiction, lived an isolated life in a remote village in England, a country she had always

despised. Wide Sargasso Sea caught the immediate attention of critics, won the prestigious W. H.

Smith Award and Heinemann Award, and earned Rhys a place in the literary canon.

The unique novel seeks to recreate the true story of Bertha Mason, the Jamaican mad

wife of Edward Rochester in Charlotte Bronte'sJane Eyre. In telling Bertha's story (known in

Wide Sargasso Sea as Antoinette Cosway), Rhys explores the complex relations between white

and black West Indians, and between the old slaveholding West Indian families and the new

English settlers in the post-emancipation Caribbean. Set mainly in Jamaica and Dominica, the

country of Rhys's birth, the novel describes how Antoinette became mad. In Bronte's novel,

Bertha/Antoinette is a monster, described as violent, insane, and promiscuous. Rhys creates

instead a sympathetic and vulnerable young woman who seeks, unsuccessfully, to belong. The

themes explored in the novel, especially the status of women and the race relations between

newly freed slaves and their former owners, have drawn the attention of critics. Other critics

debate the merits of the novel, saying that it relies too closely onJane Eyre and cannot stand

alone. Certainly, Rhys's novel forces readers to reexamine Bronte's novel and consider the

significance of race in the nineteenth-century English novel.


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This essay will discuss the way in which Wide Sargasso Sea interacts with the

ideas of postcolonial and feminist thinking.

First, in looking at post colonialism, there will be a discussion of how race is used

within the novel, as well as the way in which imperialism is represented. As well as this, I

shall look at the hybrid nature of the text in relation to existing criticism on post

colonialism and the novel.

Secondly, the essay will assess the way in which feminism works within the

novel, in particular the contrast in the treatment of the heroine in this book with that of

Jane Eyre, which spawned it. Again, there will also be some reference to existing

criticism, and how this interacts with the novel's sexual politics.

Finally, there will be an assessment of the extent to which both theories are

important in comprehending the novel's aims and meanings.

"Post colonial" initially seems an anomalous phrase to use about a novel that is set

well within the time frame of the British Empire, the 1830s to be precise. But of course it

was completed in 1966, long after the tide of European imperialism had begun to recede.

This breakdown of empire is observable in several themes throughout the novel, not least

in the way it deals with race. Rhys' sympathy with the Jamaican first wife of Mr

Rochester is an active attempt to deconstruct the often Anglo-centric nature of the

Nineteenth century novel tradition of which Bronte was a part. By giving a voice to this

previously marginalized character, Rhys is effectively protesting, at least in part, against

the oppressive natures of colonialism, and in that sense the novel is postcolonial in that it

rebels against the perceived superiority of the English.

As well as this, race in the more physical sense, i.e. colour prejudice, is an

important theme. Tia's assertion that "Old time white people nothing but white nigger

now, and black nigger better than white nigger," could be read as a savage indictment of

the social conditions in the colonies. The suggestion here is that white people, when

stripped of money and power, are the social inferiors of the indigenous population. By


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This Essay Will Discuss the Way in Which Wide Sargasso Sea Interacts With the Ideas of Post Colonial and Feminist Thinking