Wide Sargasso Sea

‘Jamaican mad women’ rather than just a mad woman. She uses the three factors to give the story meaning. By having more than one narrator as well as racial, gender, and cultural identity, it sets an impact on the story to give it more originality. “ In Wide Sargasso Sea, the young blacks call Antoinette “ white cockroach” and “white nigger,” epithets for Euro-Creole woman…

Antoinette Cosway, the protagonist of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, is depicted as a lunatic in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. However, in contrast to Charlotte Brontë’s interpretation of Antoinette, Jean Rhys goes out of her way to prove that Antoinette's physical surroundings are what make her act the way she does, thus allowing others to perceive her as a madwoman. It is clear that isolation from society, a loveless marriage, and being forced to leave Jamaica in favor of living in a foreign…

In Wide Sargasso Sea, the main protagonist, Antoinette, is portrayed as weak and dependent on men, causing her to lose all financial stability and independence eventually leading to her downfall. Throughout the course of the novel, Antoinette is unable to overcome the oppression of her gender and marriage with Rochester, leaving her powerless. Upon looking through a feminist lens, author Jean Rhys condemns the text by emphasizing the difficulties women faced when attempting to attain success in…

The combination of the novels Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, and Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys, highlight the significance that perspective has on the development of a narration. Jane Eyre depicts Bertha Rochester as a lunatic without explaining how she becomes crazy; however, Wide Sargasso Sea justifies her by exposing the reader to the torture Mr. Rochester puts her through that leads to her insanity. Analyzing the differences between the two novels, specifically the change of Bertha’s…

Liberty and confinement in the hauntological Central to the realm of the hauntological within Wide Sargasso Sea is its ability to embrace many truths. As Antoinette asserts to Rochester, “there is always the other side, always” (Rhys 2000, 82). The realm of the hauntological within Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea is both constraining as well as liberating. The hauntological realm allows for the removal of Antoinette from the repressive structures Rochester exercises on her to, in order to discover her…

Two major themes of Wide Sargasso Sea are identity and image. Throughout Jean Rhys’s book, the identity of Antoinette, her mother, Annette, and every other character introduced are questioned either by themselves or another person. The book also narrates the growth of Antoinette and the finding, shaping, and losing of her identity. Many characters in Wide Sargasso Sea are concerned with how other people view them, and continually mock, make up, and misunderstand other people's images, while…

This prequel was able to twist and distort the point of view of “Jane Eyre” by giving life to Bertha Mason who is known as Antoinette Cosway in “Wide Sargasso Sea”. She was depicted as a crazy Creole woman whom was married to a man named Rochester. She was locked up in an attic by Rochester, but she eventually escapes to her own death. In “Wide Sargasso Sea” we learn about the life of Antoinette Cosway, from her youth all the way to her assumed end. Rhys was able to tell Antoinette’s side of the…

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…

Aline Cunia July 25, 2016 In Wide Sargasso Sea, the tone is a bit darker than in Jane Eyre. While Jane Eyre is a story of romance and true love with a few dark twists, Wide Sargasso Sea tells the story of a young womans fall into madness. We get a glimpse into the psyche of Antoinette as her illness grips her. In contrast, Jane Eyre follows Jane as she enters the world and finds love. Relating to this darker tone in Wide Sargasso Sea, forests are a motif. They symbolize Antoinette as…

"About a white cockroach. That's me. That's what they call all of us who were here before their own people in Africa sold them to the slave traders. And I've heard English women call us white niggers. So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all" Antionette moves constantly between identities and the novel's dominant pattern enlists Antionette into identifications with a range of black others, whether they be Tia,…