ThAct: Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea

 Hello! This blog is in response to a blog task assigned by Prakruti Bhatt based on the novel Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. In this blog I am applying postcolonial theory to Jean Rhys’ novel Wide Sargasso Sea.

A Postcolonial Reading of

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

About the Author:

Jean Rhys, her birth name was Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams (1890- 1979). She was a British novelist or is also known as Dominican-British author, she was born and brought up in Caribbean island of Dominica. From the age of 16, she shifted to England and took her education there. Rhys's father, William Rees Williams, was a Welsh doctor and her mother, Minna Williams, née Lockhart, a third-generation Dominican Creole of Scots ancestry.

About the Novel:

Jean Rhys is best known for her Novel Wide Sargasso Sea, Prequel of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. The novel serves Postcolonial and feminist perspective to Jane Eyre novel. Wide Sargasso Sea as a flawless postcolonial parody of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. The novel tells a story of Antoinette Cosway, a Creole, Bronte’s devilish ‘madwoman in the attic'. The plot is initially set in Colibri, Jamaica which moves to Dominica and England. It opens while after the abolishment of slavery Act 1833. The Novel presents the complete life of Antoinette who was caught in patriarchal society in which she couldn't fully belong to Europe or to Jamaica.

This novel is divided into three parts and each has a different narrator, it is narrated in a first person point-of-view. It is patch work of various narrators, told directly by Antoinette (part 1), Christophine and his unnamed husband (Mr. Rochester in reference to Bronte’s Jane Eyre) (part 2) and Grace Poole (part 3).

Characters-

• Alexander Cosway (husband)
• Anette Cosway (wife)
• Antoinette Cosway (daughter)
• Pierre Cosway (insane son)
• Sandi Cosway (Illegitimate son of Alexander)
• Daniel Cosway (Illegitimate son of Alexander)

• Mr. Mason (Anette’s 2nd Husband)
• Richard mason (son)
• Aunt Cora (Antoinette’s guardian)
• Edward Rochester (Antoinette’s husband- unnamed in wide Sargasso sea, named based on Wide Sargasso Sea)
• Christophine (Annette's servant and Antoinette's nurse)

Introduction to Postcolonial Studies/ Postcolonialism

As per the glossary of literary terms by M.H. Abrams,

The critical analysis of the history, culture, literature, and modes of discourse that are specific to the former colonies of England, Spain, France, and other European imperial powers. These studies have focused especially on the Third World countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean islands, and South America.

Postcolonial studies sometimes encompass aspects of British literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, viewed through a perspective that reveals the extent to which the social and economic life represented in the literature was tacitly underwritten by colonial exploitation. Post- colonialism also relates to some issues as orientalism, atheism, national identity, the subaltern and hybridity. It includes the writing of those who try to defy the colonial writers, it is called writing back also in a form of resistance to the colonial texts.

Being a student when we read phrase post- colonial studies we generalize the literature after being decolonized which is not 100% incorrect but it is to be remembered that postcolonial literature/ studies is a way of reading, it can also be literature of before independence. It is not date/ period based. It is a critical analysis.

The aim or goal of post- colonial criticism is to deconstruct imperialist perspective, to contrast ideology, to question the system of values that support imperialism which is dominant in the West. It claims to rewrite history and give subjectivity to minor voices. It is also important to note that the West has not Colonized countries by armies but culturally, mentally so it's very difficult to decolonize the colonized countries.

Wide Sargasso Sea as a Post- colonial novel

The postcolonial writers in literature started to write for a specific purpose, using the language of the mainstream power and aiming at the same target. Wide Sargasso sea also serves the same purpose of constituting a cultural self for the formerly suppressed voice of the Creole people. Jean Rhys in the Wide Sargasso sea tries to bring out the voice of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre’s marginalized characters, the voice of creole people. Rhys uses the theme, characters and the plotline of Jane Eyre but deliberately gives the voice to silenced characters which are ‘othered’ in the Jane Eyre.

Bronte's madwoman in the Attic- Bertha mason. From the Creole Origin, Mr. Rochester’s first wife who has been silenced in Jane Eyre, introduced to the reader as a horrific dark image has become a subject as Antoinette Cosway in Rhys wide Sargasso sea. Wide Sargasso sea is a pathetic love story of Créole woman who goes crazy due to unrequited love in her marriage to an Englishman.

The madness of Bertha (Antoinette) is totally related to the triple oppression that she suffers as a woman from the patriarchy and as a Creole woman in the West Indies, the burden that places her just in-between white English society and newly emancipated slaves. She has been always tortures for not being of a complete white English society and was subjugated by the newly freed slaves. In Jane Eyre the readers get an empathetic relation with Mr. Rochester instead everyone favors the pitiful and misfortune fate of Creole, Antoinette.

Rhys has tried to leave the space for the views of the silenced characters and instead of first person narration she put forth the multiple narrations from the different characters for telling the stories from the various point of view so the readers can understand the previously marginalized characters in a newly centralized character. But according to the essay by Gayathri Spivak “The Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism”, she states that Rhys in the novel subconsciously downgraded the native inhabitants and have portrayed them to sexual abuse, unreliable, performing obeah and abusing the main characters. In the novel it is dark and just demonstrated as a dark, abusive and minor character.

The West always creates a binary opposition with those who are non- westerners in order to identify their own identity as pure good and ideal. That's also the reason most of the West literature depict the qualities like cruelty, savageness, inferiority, laziness in non- westerners while all the ideal qualities like goodness, reason, hard work are demonstrated in western society. This is all that is mentioned in ‘Orientalism’ by Edward Said. This is pretty apparent in Wide Sargasso sea also through the character of Mr. Rochester, an Englishman who has been discarded from his heritage and for financial stability he married Antoinette. He was initially fascinated by Antoinette till Amelia and his brother-in-law made him aware about Antoinette from bad blood. And after then his orientalist attitude was directed not only towards Antoinette but also to the native Caribbean people.

“I like the drink, but I hate the language”

This statement stated that he surely likes the land, its richness, the plantations, the natural beauty, and the exoticism of nature, which cannot be attained in his homeland, England. The the west Indian culture is the issue disturbing him, culture refers to the native language, their customs and traditions, their native obeah conventions and all the other related issues, which do not smell like the Europeans, or suit a set of Eurocentric universal values. The another imperialistic attitude of Mr. Rochester is calling Antoinette a Bertha because it sounds more English than Antoinette. Throughout the story he keeps on commenting on Antoinette’s own way of dressing and styling and keeps on proposing western alternatives.

As Frantz Fanon puts forward in The Wretched of the Earth, throughout history, the colonizing power of Europe, devalued the histories of the colonized nations, alleging those histories as ‘pre- civilized voids’ and from then on the history and culture of the related nation was marked by the arrival of the European colonizers through their imposed educational systems.

In the book, Culture’s in Between, Bhabha recounts hybrid cultures, which is the social status of the Creole which is the highly central matter for the novel. Creole was the in-between identity which suffered more because of the inferior black community and superior white community. This aspect of Antoinette’s hybrid culture pushes her to suffer from all the traumas of in-betweenness. Antoinette having an unhealthy marriage with Mr. Rochester and pursuit of relief from Cristophine and her hateful relation with Amelia. Even her mother Annette and Antoinette both are fated in search of a white husband. Also the patriarchal Subjugation induces double othering.

The third oppression is her own search of self- identity which leads her to nothing else than madness. In relation to this one can consider Spivak’s famous essay Can the Subaltern Speak? And She believes that as long as the West denies judging the subaltern or the postcolonial subjects on their own authentic values, and instead, favors a system of judgment, which is Eurocentric universal, the subaltern cannot speak.

But there is sure a way out for Subaltern to come out of all this world power structure that is dream and madness. As Antoinette revolts against all those subjugating factors in her recurring dreams in which she sets fire to her British prison-house. May be one day all women will act out their dreams in search of self identity just as Antoinette in Wide Sargasso sea.

The concept of the "hysterical female" or the "madwoman in the attic" trope is central to Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Rhys’ novel shifts focus to the character of Bertha Mason, reimagined as Antoinette Cosway, delving into her past in the Caribbean to reveal the forces that contribute to her descent into madness. Rhys gives voice and history to Brontë’s "madwoman," portraying insanity as a consequence of trauma, colonial displacement, racial tensions, and patriarchal control, rather than a mere condition of inherent instability.

In Wide Sargasso Sea, madness is portrayed as an outcome of cultural and personal dislocation. Antoinette is caught between conflicting identities, a Creole woman not fully accepted by either the colonizers or the Black Caribbean population. This instability, coupled with her abusive and controlling marriage to Rochester, who strips her of her name and autonomy, catalyzes her mental deterioration. Rhys presents madness as a reaction to the erasure of identity and the oppressive forces surrounding her, providing a sympathetic look at Bertha's circumstances largely absent in Jane Eyre.

 Comparative Analysis of Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea

Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea both explore female sensibility, but from very different perspectives. In Jane Eyre, Brontë depicts Jane as an intelligent, independent woman who seeks self-fulfillment within a repressive social structure. Jane’s resilience and autonomy are celebrated, yet her story ultimately conforms to Victorian ideals, as she finds stability and love with Rochester.

In contrast, Wide Sargasso Sea provides a subversive perspective on female autonomy by portraying Antoinette’s descent as a tragic consequence of imperialistic and patriarchal oppression. Rhys illuminates how colonial heritage, racial ambiguity, and gender roles deny Antoinette the chance for self-actualization. Where Brontë’s Jane asserts her identity, Rhys’ Antoinette is denied hers, underscoring how socio-cultural factors shape each character’s experience of autonomy.

 Postcolonial Aspects of Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea is imbued with postcolonial elements, using Antoinette’s character to explore the fractured identity imposed by colonial history. The novel highlights the racial and cultural estrangement experienced by the Creole population in Jamaica, capturing how the imposition of English cultural standards renders characters like Antoinette marginalized in both British and Jamaican society.

Some key postcolonial themes include:

1. Displacement and Cultural Identity: Antoinette embodies the Creole experience of being caught between worlds, not fully belonging to the European or Caribbean communities. Her mixed heritage results in a lack of acceptance, contributing to her psychological unraveling.

   

2. Colonial Oppression: Rochester’s treatment of Antoinette symbolizes the colonial domination over the “othered” populations. By renaming her "Bertha," he seeks to erase her Caribbean identity, reinforcing the imperialist trope of renaming and redefining as a means of control.

3. Resistance to Colonial Narratives: By reclaiming Antoinette's story, Rhys challenges the Western-centric viewpoint of Jane Eyre, giving a voice to a character previously seen as only a symbol of madness. This recontextualization questions the colonial narrative that casts those outside of the European norm as "savage" or inherently inferior.

Rhys’ novel thus serves as a counter-narrative to Brontë’s, providing insight into the complexities of colonialism and the plight of women silenced by both patriarchy and imperialism. Wide Sargasso Sea is significant not only as a feminist exploration but also as a powerful critique of colonial legacy and its impact on individual identity.

Thank you