Jean Rhys Getting the “Feel” of the West Indies in Wide Sargasso Sea

2020 ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Sue Thomas
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Jean Rhys ◽  
Sargasso Sea ◽  
The West ◽  
Wide Sargasso Sea

scholarly journals A Symbolic Reading of Wide Sargasso Sea

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 1221
Author(s):  
Li Luo
Keyword(s):  
West Indies ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Jean Rhys ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
Sargasso Sea ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Wide Sargasso Sea ◽  
Racial Conflicts ◽  
The Times ◽  
Moral Themes

Wide Sargasso Sea is acclaimed as the masterpiece of the British female writer Jean Rhys. In the novel, Rhys reshapes the mad wife of Rochester, Bertha Mason, who is imprisoned in the attic in Jane Eyre. With her own life experience as a white Creole and her experience living in West Indies as a blueprint, setting the abolition of slavery in West Indies in the nineteenth century as the background of the times, Rhys restores Antoinette a real state of survival under colonialism and patriarchy, with a sense of identity loss and confusion. The use of symbolism is one of the most outstanding styles in description. Owing to the use of symbolism, the historical situation of Jamaica under colonialism and patriarchy has been successfully displayed and the abstract moral themes have been vividly conveyed. This paper seeks to set symbolism as a theoretical basis, classify and analyze the symbols in the novel in accordance with their roles in revealing the themes, illustrating a complete interpretation of the complicated racial conflicts and patriarchy oppression in West Indies.

scholarly journals Wide Sargasso Sea: Antoinette’s Living Spaces as a Case Study

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fann Oudah Aljohani
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Jean Rhys ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
Sargasso Sea ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Wide Sargasso Sea ◽  
Psychological Analysis

This study explores the identity formation and mobility of the role of Antoinette in the novel "Wide Sargasso Sea" from the perspective of the cultural and human geography. In general, it is a space and place study. The thesis suggests that, Antoinette has some conditions and circumstances that she developed in an autonomic manner with different experiences in order to navigate and recognize the dangerous and safe spaces around her. Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys, elaborates a self-sacrifice experience that the protagonist went through in her search for identity, which she lost due to the circumstances around her. In this research, a psychological analysis of Antoinette's personality will be taken, moreover; an attempt is made to find out the reasons for her schizophrenic behavior. The research focuses on Antoinette's shattered identity and the specters she faced in her life, which ultimately played a huge role in her madness. Also, the visible opposite aspects of black/white, rationality/unconsciousness, male/female, and sanity/madness are conceived by her conscious mind, and it causes the frantic thoughts of insanity, womanhood, and blackness. Also, it sheds light on Antoinette's journey in life to figure out where she belongs and her struggle in this search. Antoinette's personality and identity crisis as a Creole girl will be discussed in depth. There are different areas that are explored in this paper; such as the interpretation of how the surrounding spaces affect Antoinette and the reasons behind the absence of a loving mother in Wide Sargasso Sea. Furthermore, Rochester's character is also examined to find out how the masculine space differs from feminine space, and to what extent Mr. Rochester's cruelty harms Antoinette. Another important thing that is discussed in the paper is the effect of family relationships on a person's identity, and how it becomes a reason of mental disorder.

scholarly journals Género y antiimperialismo en Ancho Mar de los Sargazos de Jean Rhys

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (58) ◽  
pp. 173
Author(s):  
Aida Chacón-Castellanos
Keyword(s):  
Jean Rhys ◽  
Sargasso Sea ◽  
Wide Sargasso Sea

Concuerdo con Maricruz Castro (2009), quien señala que género es un concepto mediante el cual quedan manifiestas las construcciones culturales alrededor de la mujer y de lo femenino, así como también del hombre y lo masculino. Considero que la autora Jean Rhys puede brindar una visión de primera mano sobre el tema no solamente de lo femenino sino también del prejuicio racial y el discurso imperialista a partir del cual se construye la identidad del otro. Fundo mi acercamiento en <em>Wide Sargasso Sea</em>,  <em>Ancho mar de los Sargazos</em>, de Rhys. La construcción de la figura femenina, ligada a la locura y el prejuicio racial, desde el punto de vista imperialista, son elementos que la autora trata de desvincular desde su muy particular narrativa.

“(The Knocking) Has Never Stopped”

2018 ◽  
pp. 163-180
Author(s):  
Andrzej Gąsiorek
Keyword(s):  
Special Interest ◽  
Jean Rhys ◽  
Sargasso Sea ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
Wide Sargasso Sea ◽  
The Caribbean

Arguing against critics who situate Jean Rhys in either the modernist or postcolonial camps, this chapter suggests that these movements complement and reinforce one another. In “Again the Antilles” (1927), Voyage in the Dark (1934), and Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Rhys consistently employs ellipsis, narrative fragmentation, and multiple narrators to unmask the ideological underpinnings of plantocratic ideology. Of special interest to Rhys are modernity’s discontinuities, which extend to the rigid binaries of the Caribbean: white and black, master and slave, colonizer and colonized. Unable to fit easily into any of these categories, Rhys’s heroines become “marooned in ruinous subject positions.” Although her work is sometimes read as a form of revisionism that exculpates the colonial class, Rhys not only enables the colonized to speak—most memorably through the character of Christophine in Wide Sargasso Sea—but also exposes the ways in which official discourse ratifies the logic and legacy of colonialism.

Rhys, Jean (1890-1979)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliette Taylor-Batty
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Jean Rhys ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
Sargasso Sea ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
Wide Sargasso Sea ◽  
Story Writer ◽  
Modernist Fiction

Jean Rhys was a Dominican novelist and short-story writer. Her career can be divided into two main periods: her modernist fiction of the 1920s and 1930s, which depicts the bohemian demi-monde in Europe of the time as experienced by vulnerable female protagonists on the margins of respectability, and her later work, which came after a long hiatus with the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). Wide Sargasso Sea, her best known novel, is a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and an important text within postcolonial studies.

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