Racial Stereotypes In Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea

Since the whites started to colonize the world, other races were treated as “the other” because they were dominated by the whites. As a result, the Whites were seen as “the self” because they had more power by dominating more than half of the world. The dominated status made the whites think they were higher class than the races, so they used their privileged to judge other people. Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea shows that the identity of races and gender were treated as the other by the whites because the whites used to judge people by using racial stereotypes. Therefore, Rhys uses imagery to describe that other races and women were treated as the other because white men think their identities were not privileged as the white men have so it causes white …show more content…
According to the text, “’You don’t like, or even recognized, the good in them,’ she said, ‘and you won’t believe in the other side,’ ‘They’re too damn lazy to be dangerous,’ said Mr Mason. ‘I know that.’ ‘They are more alive than you are, lazy or not, and they can be dangerous and cruel for reasons you wouldn 't understand’" (Rhys 29). This shows an imagery of Mr. Mason and Antoinette have different racial stereotypes on the blacks. Antoinette thinks blacks are dangerous, and Mr. Mason believes them to be lazy and not smart enough to organize something that could be dangerous. Antoinette is trying to get Mr. Mason to see that blacks are actual human beings, psychologically complex and fully capable of acting on their own desires. The way of Mr. Mason and Antoinette imagine the black people could be the way to treat them as the other because the way how they think could reflect the way how they treated other people. In addition, Rhys also states another imagery how Mr. Mason was stereotype on a black guy, “’Shut your mouth,’ the man said. ‘You mash centipede, mash it, leave one little piece and it grow again… What you think police believe,