Abstract
The paper makes a postcolonial feminist reading of Jean Rhys’s novel, Wide Sargasso Sea which is a subversion of Charlotte Bronte’s celebrated novel,Jane Eyre.It tries to show how in the novel, Rhys lends voice to Antoinette Cosway, the most silenced character in Jane Eyre and how she foregrounds the importance of creolized gendered subject within the hierarchy of European patriarchy. The paper unravels the way in which the sense of unbelongingness and gendered discrimination encountered by a creole, is delineated by the author thereby portraying the subjective dilemma, faced by women of third world countries.The novel writes back to the western literary canons and also to the patriarchal norms. Jane Eyre is read against the …show more content…
WideSargasso Sea therefore should not be read as a Creol writer’s attempt at retrieving andreinserting a marginal voice by appropriating a classical text, but also as anunderstanding in the possible deals, processes and outcomes of the process of culturalnegotiation of a creolized gendered subject.It is the sense of ‘in betweenness’ of belonging to neither culture, which is theprimary factor in driving Antoinette into madness. While she is at once able to movebetween black and white cultures, in Wide Sargasso Sea, she “must navigate her waythrough the treacherous landscapes of Creole and English identity” (Ciolkowski 3).Existingas a white Creole woman in post-emancipate West Indies society, Antoinette Cosway“lives a life of ‘inbetweenness’” (Adjarian 4). While she is at once able to move between black and white cultures,she is also scorned by those cultures. Antoinette is “neither English and rich, nor nativeand part of the community of selves freed by the Emancipation Act” ( Nixon276). In Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette remembers being harassed while walking to school:“I never looked at any strange negro. They hated us. They called us whitecockroach... One day a little girl followed me saying, go away white cockroach,go away, go away, ‘I walked fast, but she walked faster’, white cockroach, goaway. Nobody wants you. Go away”
The paper makes a postcolonial feminist reading of Jean Rhys’s novel, Wide Sargasso Sea which is a subversion of Charlotte Bronte’s celebrated novel,Jane Eyre.It tries to show how in the novel, Rhys lends voice to Antoinette Cosway, the most silenced character in Jane Eyre and how she foregrounds the importance of creolized gendered subject within the hierarchy of European patriarchy. The paper unravels the way in which the sense of unbelongingness and gendered discrimination encountered by a creole, is delineated by the author thereby portraying the subjective dilemma, faced by women of third world countries.The novel writes back to the western literary canons and also to the patriarchal norms. Jane Eyre is read against the …show more content…
WideSargasso Sea therefore should not be read as a Creol writer’s attempt at retrieving andreinserting a marginal voice by appropriating a classical text, but also as anunderstanding in the possible deals, processes and outcomes of the process of culturalnegotiation of a creolized gendered subject.It is the sense of ‘in betweenness’ of belonging to neither culture, which is theprimary factor in driving Antoinette into madness. While she is at once able to movebetween black and white cultures, in Wide Sargasso Sea, she “must navigate her waythrough the treacherous landscapes of Creole and English identity” (Ciolkowski 3).Existingas a white Creole woman in post-emancipate West Indies society, Antoinette Cosway“lives a life of ‘inbetweenness’” (Adjarian 4). While she is at once able to move between black and white cultures,she is also scorned by those cultures. Antoinette is “neither English and rich, nor nativeand part of the community of selves freed by the Emancipation Act” ( Nixon276). In Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette remembers being harassed while walking to school:“I never looked at any strange negro. They hated us. They called us whitecockroach... One day a little girl followed me saying, go away white cockroach,go away, go away, ‘I walked fast, but she walked faster’, white cockroach, goaway. Nobody wants you. Go away”