Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys discusses White-Black relations during a crucial changing point in the West Indies. According to Maria Olaussen, the Wide Sargasso Sea showed that racism was still alive during the setting 's time, although the Emancipation Act, otherwise known as the Abolition of Slavery Act, had already been put in place (65). In my own opinion, I believe that Rhys showed racism with her characters throughout her work of the Wide Sargasso Sea. In Wide Sargasso Sea racism between…

coffin, and a period of mourning. The second form of death can occur anytime throughout a person's lifespan, usually stemming from a devastating event that causes one to lose who he or she is on the inside and making him or her zombie-like. Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel by Jean Rhys inspired from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, demonstrates this idea of two deaths. Rhys uses the motif of zombies, demonstrated through her characters of Annette, Rochester, and Antoinette, to illustrate that the death…

system that transcends nature, as that of divine, magical, or ghostly being,” as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary. William Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte and Jean Rhys utilize the supernatural in their works, Macbeth, Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea, respectively. No matter the gain or loss of power, the supernatural induces people to reach a brink of madness. The supernatural…

Throughout Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, it is evident that one of the central ideas is control. Control is shown both directly and indirectly, and as a mental or emotional idea. Although control is an important central idea, it is crucial to tie in the central idea of unsure love, to connect the two and trace their development. The idea with unsure love is when two “lovers” are together, but the two aren’t truly in love, and subtle signs can be picked up off their unsure love To start,…

Throughout Wide Sargasso Sea, components such as the loss of loved ones, and the cruelty of life and people, drive Antoinette to lunacy. Her madness is more than just a trait passed on genetically, it is brought about by her ill-fated life throughout the novel. The essential component that has driven Antoinette to madness has been none other than Rochester himself. Rochester has added wood to the already scorching fire which represents Antoinette’s madness. Rochester goes as far as telling…

First of all, Bronte depicts Antoinette as a character who loses her sanity and becomes a violent ‘beast’. In Jane Eyre, the first impression of Bertha emerges when Jane hears a “demoniac laugh – low, suppressed and deep” and some moaning from Bertha (Brontë 164). The moaning indicates that Bertha functions more like a wild animal than an ordinary human being. Brontë portrays her like a savage creature instead of a human. Jane also hears “a snarling and snatching sound, almost like a dog…

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is a prominent post-modern novel, and rather progressive at that. Taking Bronte’s crazy woman in the attic from Jane Eyre, Rhys proceeds to attack some ideas Bronte illustrated and highlight some ideas Bronte left out entirely. One of Rhys’ most tangible ideas that is rather representative of post-modern authors and that of this novel is the idea of truth and whether or not there are absolutes "truths". In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys demonstrates that there are no…

While the first two sections of Wide Sargasso Sea hold an impossible sense of tragedy, the last section, teeming with Antoinette's ravings and the mania of her dream, is still more beautiful than her life was sorrowful, and this manic beauty is redeeming for her. The scorned Mrs. Rochester spends her last days consumed with the beauty of vivid colors and visions of flames, and ultimately dies in a scene that, according to her prophetic dream, will equal in its unrepressed beauty the natural…

The interactions encountered by both others and yourself results in the psychological and moral development as you mature from your youth. The book Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is considered a coming of age novel as the protagonist, Antoinette Cosway, grows up only to find herself broken and abused as she faces oppression. The moment in the novel that catalyzes many more events that lead to the destruction of her childhood is when her house Coulibri, is set on fire by a mob, which kills her…

Like an ocean tide slowly but steadily eroding a sand castle, hypocrisy almost always undermines societal values. In the excerpt from Pride and Prejudice, Austen uses Mrs. Bennett to vividly illustrate hypocrisy’s slow and frustrating impact on those around her. Austen creates a satirical tone using foil characters and Lizzie’s perspective to further characterize Mrs. Bennet. By combining these literary devices, Austen successfully evokes a mood of exasperation in the reader by portraying the…