Yesha Bhatt Department of English

1. Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys
Yesha Bhatt
Department of English
M K Bhavnagar University

2. Jean Rhys (1890 – 1979)
• Jean Rhys was a British novelist
who was born and grew up in the
Caribbean island.
• Novelist – Short-story writer –
essayist
• She was writing under the genre of
Modernism and postmodernism
• Famous for – Good Morning,
Midnight and Wide Sargasso Sea
• Stream of consciousness
• Smile Please – An unfinished
Autobiography

3. Wide Sargasso Sea
• 1966 Novel with Post-colonial point of view
• Feminist prequel to Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane
Eyre (1847)
• Antoinette Cosway is Rhys's version of Brontë's devilish
"madwoman in the attic“
• Antoinette is caught in a patriarchal society in which
she fully belongs neither to Europe nor to Jamaica
• Explores power of relationships between men and
women and discusses
• Explores Caribbean history and assimilation.
• Setting – Jamaica – 1830s – Emancipation act –
1833 – Slavery abolition act

4. Jane Eyre - 1847
Jane Eyre
Mr. Edward
Rochester
Bessie Lee
(Maid)
Mrs. Reed
• Jane's childhood at Gateshead Hall, where she is
emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins;
• Her education at Lowood School, where she gains friends
and role models but suffers privations and oppression; - Mr.
Brocklehurst
• Her time as governess at Thornfield Hall, where she falls in
love with her mysterious employer, Edward Fairfax
Rochester; - Grace – Bertha Antoinetta Mason-
Richard Mason
• Her time in the Moor House, during which her earnest but
cold clergyman cousin, St. John Rivers, proposes to her; -
Cousins – Mr. Eyre 20 thousand pounds
• Ultimately her reunion with, and marriage to, her beloved
Rochester. - Son of Jane and Edward
Mr. Mason

6. Characters
• Annette (Mother of Antoinette)
• Tia (Black girl, cheated
Antoinette)
• Pierre (Insane brother)
• Daniel Cosway (Step brother of
Antoinette)
• Amelie (Maid)
• Bertha (Husband renamed
Antoinette)
• Grace Poole (Caretaker)
Antoinette Cosway
Christophine
(Nurse)
Mr. Richard Mason
(Step father of
Antoinette)
Mr.
Rochester
Wide Sargasso Sea

7. Plot Construction
Part one:
• Childhood at Jamaica
• Narrated by Antoinette as child
• They became poor and she lost her
father
• Annette was in shock but married Mr.
Mason (A wealthy man to get security
of life
• Slaves (After abolition act) got wilder
and burnt the house of Anette and
Pierre (Insane brother) died.
• Anette never recovered from this
second shock and Manson sent her to
the couple who tortured her a lot.
• She died
Part two:
• Point of view of Antoinette and her
husband
• Antoinette has accepted the proposal of
her step father to get married and she
started living with her husband
• Husband was interested in Antoinette’s
money and clashes began from the
honeymoon
• Daniel (Illegitimate half – brother) spoils
reputation of Antoinette – (Madness)
• Christophine dislikes Husband – He is
abusive and keeps affair to hurt
Antoinette and started calling her Bertha
• Obeah Potion from Christophine –
Potion fails – they went England

8. Part three:
• Narration by Antoinette
• As Bertha – “The attic” of Thornfield Hall
• Grace Poole – servant
• Husband hides her from the world – does not visit her
– relationships with other women – with young
governess
• Antoinette gone mad and forget the time she spent with
husband and in house
• In dream she saw flames around her and thought that
is the way of freedom for her… and she sets fire in the
house (Stream of Consciousness
Antoinetta Cosway
Husband

9. Themes
• Post colonialism
• Postcolonial response to Jane Eyre
• Rejection of Husband because of Creole
identity – connected it with madness by
husband
• Marriage – unequal distribution of
power between man and woman
• Condition of Women as rejected wife
• Implied madness
• Feminism + Colonialism
• Mix-raced population – white owners
were harassing Black female slaves by
raping and impregnating – Daniel and
Sandi Cosway (illegitimate sons of
Alexander Cosway
Slavery and Ethnicity
• Slavery abolition act – No compensation
to slaves – ignorance towards black
identity – slaves – Antoinette’s family
becomes poor
• “White nigger” – because of poverty
• Antoinette as Creole (lang. + identity)
• Female as slave to male (Perspective)
• Dependency complex in female
• Annette and Antoinette both are
depended upon males – Husband -
Father
• Ethnicity - A perceived cultural
distinctiveness
• Group of slaves put fire in the house of
Annette

10. • Womanhood – slavery
• Annette and Antoinette
• Male dominance over both female
characters
• Desire to get loved and respected by
male
• Objectifying female characters – Annette
and Antoinette – Money
• Slave – Female – Desire to get freedom
• Women have no rights – Patriarchal
society
• Suppression of slaves and women
characters
Racial impacts – Land
• Postcolonial aspect by giving
Caribbean land and master-slave
relations
• Jamaica represents rawness of
nature – Antoinette – modified by
husband – unable to do that –
destroys it.
• White nigger – English of Jamaica
and Antoinette’s English
• Creole identity – language as tool
• Place in society – slaves – Women
- male

11. • Versions of Reality
• Narrators are having their point of
views
• Different aspects of reality –
perspectives
• All characters are involved
• Multiple versions of truth
• Incidents are with manipulation
• Madness is implied more than having
a genetic roots
• Grace’s observation towards madness
and Husband’s reaction towards
madness
Feminism
• Jane Eyre vs Antoinette
• Angel in house to madwoman in
attic
• Freedom leads to rebellion –
rebellion to captivity – Captivity
leads to madness
• Desires of Annette and Antoinette
• Tendency of overpower female
identity by male identity
• Female as helpless
• Angel to evil
• To Construct - to destroy

12. The Madwomen in the Attic
• The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-
Century Literary Imagination is a 1979 book by Sandra Gilbert and Susan
Gubar, in which they examine Victorian literature from a feminist perspective.
• Attic = cage Women were being caged by the patriarchal society. Dominated
behavior of male towards female
• Marriage Need for financial support – social status – money – inheritance –
Luxurious life (Victorian era) – post colonial point of view
• Madness – Annette – traumatic past – ignorance – deaths – tortured – died
• Madness - Antoinette - Implied – harassed – ignorance of husband – no love –
being cheated – snatched identity (Bertha) – locked persona – dreaming –
illusion – hallucination – traumatic tendencies of loneliness
• Victorian women were “Angel in House” – “Madwomen in Attic”
• Feminist literary criticism

13. Stream of Consciousness
• Jean Rhys has applied stream of consciousness in the novel by presenting
shifting point of views
• First part is containing the point of view of Antoinette and how she is dealing
with all traumatic experiences of her life.
• Second part is with the point of view of Husband and what he feels about
Antoinette and why he hates her. Later Antoinette again takes the point of view
on her part.
• In the third part Grace tells about the condition of Antoinette and how she is
falling in madness and forgets everything.
• The last section of third part there is a dream sequence of Antoinette, which she
applies later on in real life.
• This reveals the mindsets of characters and what they think in particular
situation about particular character.

14. Pastoral identity – Post colonialism
• Novel starts in Caribbean region and end at same point
• It has depicted the rustic life and survival issues of the slaves and other character
who face difficulties
• Postcolonial ecocriticism – Nature – rawness – animals – environment
• Identity – displacement – refugee – return
• Pastoral – antipastoral sides in novel
• English as language – creole
• Coulibri – Jamaica – Dominica
• Antoinette – Nature – rawness
• Husband – antipastoral – unnatural

15. Thank You