Paper No - 203 : Assignment

Paper No - 203 : Assignment

Caribbean Culture representation in "Wide Sargasso Sea"

Name - Hina Parmar

Batch - M.A. Sem 3 (2022-2024)

Enrollment no - 4069206420220021

Roll no - 10

Subject code - 22408

Paper no - 203

Paper - The Postcolonial Studies

Email address - hinaparmar612@gmail.com

Submitted to - Smt.S.B. Gardi Department of English M.K.B.U.

Date of submission - 27 November 2023

This blog is written as an assignment on paper no - 203 The postcolonial Studies. This assignment is assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir H.O.D of English Department M.K.B.U. In this particular blog I am going to illustrate and deal with the topic "Caribbean culture representation in 'Wide Sargasso Sea' ".

Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys was a British novelist and short-story writer. She was born in Dominica to a Welsh doctor and his Creole wife. She was educated at a convent school until she was sixteen. She then went to England to study acting and lived the kind of bohemian life that features in her short stories. The love affair that forms the starting point for After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1931) draws on her own experience at this time.

In 1919 she married her first husband, Jean Lenglet, and moved to Paris with him. She showed some of her short stories to Ford Madox Ford, who encouraged her to publish, and The Left Bank and Other Stories appeared in 1927. Her novels Voyage in the Dark (1934) and Good Morning, Midnight (1939) made a considerable impact, as did some of her journalism in Paris, on account of the freedom with which she handled controversial feminist topics. In 1932 she and Lenglet were divorced, and she subsequently married again, first Leslie Tidden Smith, who died in 1945, and then Max Hamar.

At the beginning of World War II Jean Rhys stopped writing and it was not until the 1950s that she began working on another novel. This was her Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which won immense critical acclaim. Drawing on her childhood memories of the West Indies, it tells the story of Antoinette Cosway, Mr Rochester's mad wife in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. She later published two further collections of stories and left an unfinished autobiography, Smile Please, published posthumously in 1979.

'Wide Sargasso Sea'

'Wide Sargasso Sea' is a famous novel, by Jean Rhys, which justifies the life events of Antoinette who is given a voice to tell her side of the story, a voice she was denied as Bertha in the novel Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. It is a novel both touching and tragic with characters in conflict, from conflicting backgrounds, who are destined to meet and go through many hardships caused by family, society and each other. Laura Fish’s review of Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys includes the following:

Wide Sargasso Sea speaks of the history of cruelty and suffering that lies behind some of the West’s accumulated wealth. This is a book that gives voice to neglected, silenced and unacknowledged stories, exploring different inflections of marginality – gender, class, race and madness.

Wide Sargasso Sea, like most of Jean Rhys’s novels, is about a main female character who is ill-treated by her domineering husband. Rhys is known for her themes of oppression and victimization of the female gender. 

Erika Smilowitz notes that, in each of her novels, Rhys’s work involves a repetitive pattern of women being oppressed not only by men but also by society, since ‘the men are the society’. 

Smilowitz also quotes from The Fiction of Sex by Rosalind Miles who notes that Rhys’s women characters are always opposed to “institutionalized masculine hostility in the shape of the law, the professions, the police, the bureaucrats”. It can be said that Jean Rhys’s works are prejudicial to men and somewhat one-sided, as she mainly writes about women’s plight. 

Moreover, Laura Fish also makes an appraisal in her article entitled ‘Book of a Lifetime: Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys’, where she comments: Wide Sargasso Sea is an inspiration … Jean Rhys was a post-colonial writer whose work reminds us that “there is always another side, always”.

Caribbean Culture representation in "Wide Sargasso Sea"

In "Wide Sargasso Sea," Jean Rhys delves into the theme of identity via two central figures: Antoinette and her spouse, Rochester. The book contrasts English and Caribbean identities while delving into the impact of conflicting identities among these characters. Rhys probes the notion that identity is a blend of inherited traits and acquired elements.

It's significant to grasp the significance behind the novel's title. The Sargasso Sea symbolizes the inner turmoil Antoinette grapples with concerning her conflicting Caribbean and English identities. This body of water, seemingly serene, is ensnared by some of the most powerful and perilous currents globally. The Sargasso Sea's tranquil surface contrasts starkly with its formidable surrounding forces, which render any debris or seaweed deposited within it highly improbable to escape, as noted in the Encyclopedia Britannica. This parallels Antoinette's experience—she's entrapped amid two cultures and becomes a repository for divergent cultural traits. For instance, when Rochester endeavors to shape her into his vision of an English lady, and when Antoinette assimilates facets of black Caribbean culture into her own identity.

Antoinette's struggle with her identity happens because she doesn't feel accepted in any specific culture. She's part of both the European white culture from her family and the Caribbean culture where she grew up. Antoinette is both fascinated by and afraid of Caribbean culture and admires the strong identity the black servants have. She looks up to Christophine like a mother figure and wishes to be more like Tia. But when she tries to adopt a Caribbean identity, the black servants and other Caribbeans don't accept her and see her as a threat. Antoinette tells Rochester that she feels like a "white cockroach," a term used for those who were in the Caribbean before African people were sold into slavery. She's confused about who she is, where she belongs, and why she even exists. Antoinette is rejected by other white Europeans because her family isn't wealthy, and they're Creole, which causes further difficulties for her.

As a Creole, Antoinette feels like she doesn't belong to either of the cultures she's a part of, which makes it hard for her to figure out who she really is. Since she's rejected by both cultures, when her home burns down, she decides to try and change who she is. That's why she marries Rochester—to escape her Caribbean roots and become more English. This part of the story shows that Antoinette has two different identities: one she got from her background (a mix of English and Creole) and another she's trying to make for herself.

Antoinette explores her Caribbean roots through her complex relationship with Tia. She admires Tia's strength and confidence, qualities she feels she lacks. When Tia takes Antoinette's money and nice dress, Antoinette ends up wearing Tia's old, dirty dress. This switch symbolizes Antoinette's attempt to adopt a Caribbean identity while rejecting her English one. However, when Tia throws a rock at Antoinette, it represents the rejection of Antoinette by the Caribbeans and her loss of the Caribbean identity she grew up with. Rhys highlights the strong connection between Antoinette and Tia, with Antoinette feeling they shared experiences and wanting to live like Tia. Tia is seen as a reflection of the Caribbean part of Antoinette's identity. This event signifies Antoinette's struggle to leave behind her black/Caribbean identity and try to build a more white/Creole identity as she moves to Spanish Town.

Rochester, Antoinette's husband, narrates a significant part of the novel, starting from their marriage. His time in the West Indies prompts a bit of confusion about his own identity, leading him to severely alter Antoinette's sense of self. His relocation from England to the West Indies removes him from his usual position of authority and places him in a foreign and unwelcoming environment due to his English background. This shift triggers Rochester's growing disdain for Antoinette's connections to the Caribbean and her traits associated with that culture. He disapproves of her identification with the black Caribbean servants and attempts to reshape her into a typical English girl by distorting and manipulating her identity.

Rochester changes Antoinette's name to Bertha to distance her from her Creole background and perhaps to separate her from her mother's troubled history. This renaming further confuses Antoinette's already conflicted sense of self. Earlier, Antoinette recalled kissing her reflection in a mirror, where her two conflicting identities seemed to merge. However, as Rochester alters her name and confines her in the attic without access to a mirror, Antoinette loses touch with her name and physical identity. She feels completely lost, expressing a profound sense of confusion about who she is and why she's in this situation. Rochester's actions aggressively strip away even the smallest sense of identity Antoinette had, rendering her a "ghost" to herself and the world.

Rochester derogatorily labels Antoinette as "Marionette," ridiculing her lack of a distinct identity. He adamantly rejects any association with Caribbean identity in his wife, striving instead to impose his English identity on her and those around him in the Caribbean. As he becomes more critical, Rochester starts suspecting that Antoinette has inherited the madness from her family and even questions her racial background, doubting whether she is entirely white.

Despite Rochester's disdain for the Caribbean culture, he unknowingly engages in obeah, turning it against Antoinette when she asks Christophine for a love potion. This unintended involvement suggests that despite Rochester's efforts to distance himself from the Caribbean, his association with obeah leaves a mark of Caribbean identity on him, supporting the notion that identity can be acquired, even unintentionally. However, Christophine warns that obeah doesn't work the same way for white people as it does for black Caribbeans, indicating that Rochester's acquired Caribbean identity is a distorted version of the true identity. These instances reveal that identity is both inherited and acquired. 

Conclusion

In short, Antoinette adopts a Caribbean identity but feels isolated by her English peers and her English identity. Meanwhile, Rochester, strongly identifying as English, tries to erase all Caribbean traces in Antoinette but inadvertently engages in Caribbean culture himself. Antoinette's attempts to create identities and Rochester's subsequent manipulation leave her without an identity, eventually leading to her descent into madness.

Resources

"Caribbean Identity In Wide Sargasso Sea English Literature Essay." ukessays.com. 11 2018. UKEssays. 11 2023 <https://www.ukessays.com/essays/english-literature/caribbean-identity-in-wide-sargasso-sea-english-literature-essay.php?vref=1>.

Che Jamal , Inna Malissa bte Che Jamal. “A Study of Displacement in Jean Rhys’ Novel Wide Sargasso Sea.” Advances in Language and Literary Studies, vol. 5, no. 5, 2014, doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.5n.5p.111.

"Jean Rhys." Oxford Reference. . . Date of access 25 Nov. 2023, <https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100419131>

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