Wide Sargasso Sea

by Jean Rhys
 Key questions: T1

What is postcolonialism?
?In what ways can postcolonialism be
classified as a social and literary
movement?
o What is the relevance and significance
of this movement to South Africans
today?
o In what ways is this movement globally
significant? Why?
What are the primary themes and
concerns of postcolonialism? Why?
o In what ways does postcolonialism attempt
to address these concerns?
o To what extent do you think postcolonialism
is successful in its attempt to address
these concerns? Why?
 Author's background
Wide Sargasso Sea was written in 1966 by a
Dominica born author Jean Rhys.

She was born in 1894 and moved to England

when she was 16 years old.

Rhys never adjusted to the move from the

West Indies to England.

She always felt cold and removed and

imagined that the character Bertha Mason
from the novel Jane Eyre must have felt the

same.
 Rhys had financial difficulties, she was married
three times and she was also a heavy drinker.

She had always a feeling of displacement

that we find in her characters.

She struggles against racial oppression, and

primarily against the dictates of patriarchy.

In her novels she offers psychoanalytic

readings, through its exploration of the
unconscious.

She died in England in 1979.

 About the Novel
Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea as a response
to stereotypes given by Brontes 19th century
English culture.

Rhyss many difficulties led her to empathize

with Bertha's suffering.

She takes the reader deep through her psyche

as a way to better understand Bertha/Antoinette
and the cause of her madness.

Setting : Forty years of 1800, some years later

the emancipation of slaves (decadence and
decline of colonies, chaos, lawlessness, arrival
of new settlers in search of gifts and property).
 The plot
Antoinette was a creole, daughter of ex-slave owners. She lived on a
plantation called Coulibri Estate with her mother and her sickly
brother.
The family's finances went into ruin after the passage of the
Emancipation Act of 1833.
Throughout Antoinette's childhood there is hostility between white
aristocracy and the impoverished black servants.
When Antoinette was 17, her stepfather arranged her marriage to Mr
Rochester.
He begins to have misgivings about the marriage: he knows little of
his new wife and he agreed to the marriage because he was
desperate for money.
Rochester receives a menacing letter that warns of the madness
that's deep-rooted in Antoinette's family. After reading this, the
relationship between them deteriorates.
Antoinette tries to regain her husband's love but she fails.That makes
Antoniette mad and violent.
They moved to England where he locked her in a garret room in his
house, under the watch of a servant.
Antoinette has no sense of time or place. She become mad
because she was left alone and abandoned.
She has a recurring dream about going out from her prison to
explore the house and set it ablaze.The novel ends with
Antoinette walking down from her prison to act on her dream.
 Main topics
Oppression of
Slavery and Complexity of
Entrapment Racial Identity

Womanhood,
Disease
Enslavement,
and Madness and Decline

Fire
Nature

Magic and
Incantation
Main characters
Antoinette
The character of Antoinette derives from Charlotte
Bront's depiction of a deranged Creole
outcast in Jane Eyre. Rhys creates a story for
Bertha, tracing the development of her
mental and emotional decline.
Antoinette is the opposite of the female heroines of
19th century novels, who are more rational and
self-restrained (as Jane Eyre). She has a wild
imagination and an acute sensitivity.
Her restlessness and instability stem from her
inability to belong to any particular
community.
Rhys humanizes "Bertha's" tragic condition,
exploring Antoinette's terror and anguish.
Rochester

He is pressured into marrying Antoinette, although

he knows nothing of her. He doesnt understand
his new wife, so he begins to hate her.
Rochester remains nameless in the novel and that
highlights his implied authority that allows him
to confer identity on others.
He progressively refashions Antoinette into a
raving madwoman.
Having totally rejected his Creole wife and her
native customs, he exaggerates his being cold,
logical, and authoritarian.

Both characters are essentially orphans,

abandoned by their family members to fend for
themselves. Both Rochester and Antoinette
struggle for some sense of place and identity.