Literary Research Paper

Analysis on “Wide Sargasso Sea”

Maria Fernanda Frola

Ana Laura Salinas

May 2009

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Perhaps Love would have smiled then
Shown us the way
Across the sea. They say it’s strewn with wrecks
And weed-infested
Few dare it, fewer still escape.

(from Rhys’ Poem ‘Obeah Night’)

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 Introduction

The aim of this paper is to analyse Jean Rhys’ 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea. In order
to accomplish this objective we will subscribe to Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional
model for Discourse Analysis, comprising textual analysis, discursive practice and social
practice, as well as to other sources found for the purpose of the present study.

Firstly, we would like to highlight briefly certain elements, such as the author’s
biography, the general characteristics of the novel and finally its main characters, which
we consider important in order to contextualise the novel being studied.

Then, our analysis will develop from the most general dimension in Fairclough’s theory,
i.e. Social Practice, to the most specific one, i.e. Textual Analysis.

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The Author

Jean Rhys was born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams in

Roseau, Dominica, one of the Windward Islands and spent
her childhood there. Her father was a Welsh doctor and her
1
mother a Creole. At the age of sixteen she travelled to
England.
Throughout the 1920s, Rhys travelled in Europe as a
bohemian artist, periodically living in Paris, where she
became familiar with the innovative works of modern artists
and writers. This period of wandering placed Rhys on the
outskirts of conventional society. Therefore, she began to
question the codes and traditions of the male-dominated
environment.
Her parents' heritage situated Rhys between two
ideologies—one that sought to exoticize Caribbean life and
one that incorporated the racial pluralism of West Indian
values. Rhys was further influenced by the black servants who raised her and introduced
her to the language, customs, and religious beliefs of the native Caribbeans.
Rhys’ first four novels—Postures or Quartet (1928), After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie
(1930), Voyage in the Dark (1934), and Good Morning Midnight (1939)—mirror her own
life, with heroines who lead drifting, alienated lives as outsiders. While these early novels
met with some success, they never went far in establishing Rhys as a leading European
modernist.
Other works include The Left Bank and Other Stories (1927); Tigers Are Better-
Looking, with a Selection from the Left Bank (1968); My Day: Three Pieces (1975);
Sleep it Off, Lady (1976)
Rhys was made a CBE2 in 1978. She died on May 14, 1979, in Exeter, before
finishing the autobiography she was working on. The incomplete text appeared
posthumously under the title Smile Please (1979).

1
A white West Indian
2
C.B.E. Order of the British Empire, Commander.

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The Novel

Jean Rhys’ personal knowledge of the West Indies and Charlotte Brontë’s book
provided the inspiration for the work. For many years, Jean Rhys was haunted by the
character of Bertha, the mad wife in Jane Eyre. And it was Bertha her last heroine.
Antoinette Cosway is Bertha’s real name and Wide Sargasso Sea is her story.
Wide Sargasso Sea is one of literature's most famous prequels. The novel offers a
new perspective for Jane Eyre, making that novel’s antagonist, the crazy wife, its
protagonist.
It has also been considered an experiment in modernist techniques and a powerful
example of feminist rewriting; Wide Sargasso Sea gives voice to a marginalized
character and transforms her original tragic ending into a kind of triumphant heroism.
According to Francis Wyndham, Rhys seeks to discover an alternate truth, exposing
the limits of a literary canon that assumes a shared white heritage in its audience. She
writes the grand narrative back. She writes this conflict into the very dialogue of her
novel, creating, in the characterization of Mr. Mason, an unflattering picture of patriarchal
entitlement. She aims to restore this voice with her text. She intended Wide Sargasso
Sea to stand on its own, apart from Brontë's novel, as a challenge to the canon.
The novel is divided into three parts. The first is told by the heroine. In the second
the young Mr Rochester describes his arrival in the West Indies, his marriage and its
sequel. The last part is once more narrated by the heroine, but the setting is England
now and she is in the attic in Thornfield Hall.
The novel shifts in narrative voice and jumps through time and space, giving the
book a complex surface that differs from the linear progression found in its nineteenth-
century counterpart.
“In Wide Sargasso Sea she [Antoinette] returns to that spiritual country as to a
distant dream: and discovers it, for all its beauty to have been a nightmare”. 3
Rhys gained international acclaim in the 1960s with the publication of her most
admired novel, Wide Sargasso Sea which won the W.H. Smith Award and the

3
Wyndham, Francis. Introduction to the first edition of Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
p.130

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Heinemann Award. Rhys returned to the theme of dominance and dependence, ruling
and being ruled, through the relationship between a self-assured European man and a
powerless Creole woman.
First, we will exploit the novel as a postcolonial work; the novel accuses England's
colonial empire. However, Rhys' narrator, being a white Creole, remains a step removed
from racial oppression, and struggles primarily against the dictates of patriarchy. For this
reason, we will also analyse the heroine from a feminist point of view.
The text also invites psychoanalytic readings, through its experimentation with
narrative method and exploration of the unconscious. In its formal techniques and
thematic sources, Rhys' novel incorporates modern and postmodern devices of
fragmentation, while drawing, at times, on Romantic notions of passion, and the
supernatural.

The story begins when Antoinette is a young girl in early nineteenth century
Jamaica. She is the white daughter of ex-slave owners; she lives on a run-down
plantation called Coulibri Estate. Five years have passed since her father, Mr. Cosway,
died and his finances are left in ruins after the passage of the Emancipation Act of 1833,
which freed black slaves and led many white slave owners to bankruptcy. Throughout
Antoinette's childhood, hostility arises between the white aristocracy and the servants
they employ.
As a young girl, Antoinette lives at Coulibri Estate with her widowed mother, Annette,
her sickly younger brother, Pierre, and servants who seem particularly attuned to their
employers' misfortune. Antoinette spends her days in isolation. Her mother spends little
time with her.
One day, Antoinette is surprised to find a group of elegant visitors calling on her
mother from Spanish Town. Among them is an English man named Mr. Mason who asks
for Annette's hand in marriage.
Mr. Mason repairs and restores the estate buying new servants. Therefore,
discontent rises among the freed blacks, who protest one night outside the house.
Bearing torches, they set the house on fire, and Pierre is badly hurt. The family flees the
house.
The events of the night leave Antoinette dangerously ill for six weeks. She wakes to
find herself in Aunt Cora's care. Pierre has died. Annette's madness has been revealed
gradually over the years after the trauma of the fire. When Antoinette visits her mother,

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who has been placed in the care of a black couple, she hardly recognizes the ghostlike
figure she encounters.
Antoinette is enrolled in a convent school along with other young Creole girls. For
several years, she lives at the school and learns proper ladylike attitudes. Mr. Mason
travels for months away from Jamaica, visiting her only occasionally.
When Antoinette is seventeen, Mr. Mason announces on his visit that friends from
England will be coming the following winter. He means to present Antoinette into society
as a cultivated woman, prepared for marriage.
Antoinette's husband, an Englishman who remains nameless, narrates Part Two. He
knows little of her, having agreed to marry her days before, when Mr. Mason's son,
Richard Mason, offered him £30,000 if he proposed. Desperate for money, he agreed to
the marriage. After a wedding ceremony in Spanish Town, he and Antoinette go for their
honeymoon to one of the Windward Islands, at an estate that once belonged to
Antoinette's mother. He begins to have misgivings about the marriage as they approach
a town called Massacre.
When the couple arrives at Granbois, Antoinette's inherited estate, the man feels
increasingly uncomfortable around the servants and his strange young wife. Hostility
grows between her husband and Christophine, Antoinette's surrogate mother and a
servant.
Antoinette’s husband receives a letter from Daniel Cosway, one of old Cosway's
illegitimate children. The letter warns him saying that she comes from a ruined family
and has madness in her blood. After reading this letter, he begins to notice signs of
Antoinette's insanity.
Antoinette, seeing that her husband hates her, asks Christophine for a magic love
potion. That night, when the man confronts Antoinette about her past, they argue
passionately. He awakes the next morning believing he has been poisoned, and he later
sleeps with the servant girl, Amelie, who helps him recover. Sitting in the next room,
Antoinette hears everything. The next morning, Antoinette, to the eyes of his husband,
seems to be totally mad. She begs with the man to stop calling her "Bertha," a name he
has given her without explanation. Antoinette then bites her husband's arm, drawing
blood. After she collapses and falls in bed, Christophine confronts him for his cruelty.
That night, he decides to leave Jamaica with Antoinette.
Antoinette narrates Part Three from England, where she is locked away in a room in
her husband's house, under the watch of a servant, Grace Poole. Antoinette has no

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sense of time or place; she does not even believe she is in England when Grace tells
her so. Antoinette has a recurring dream about taking Grace's keys and exploring the
house's downstairs quarters. In this dream, she lights candles and sets the house on
fire. One night, she wakes from this dream and feels she must act on it. The novel ends
with Antoinette holding a candle and walking down from her upstairs prison.

The Characters

Antoinette is the principal character, based on the madwoman ‘Bertha’ from

Charlotte Brontë's gothic novel Jane Eyre. Antoinette is a young Creole girl who grows
up with neither her mother's love nor her peers' companionship. As a young woman, she
is sent to a convent school where she becomes introspective and isolated, showing the
early signs of her inherited emotional fragility. Her father arranges her marriage to a
controlling English gentleman who aggravates her condition and pushes her to fits of
violence. Eventually her husband brings her to England and locks her in his attic,
assigning a servant woman to watch over her. In the end, Antoinette awakes from a
vivid dream and sets out to burn down the house.

Rochester is Antoinette's English husband who is never named in the novel. He

narrates part two of the story. Rochester is the youngest son of a wealthy Englishman
and travels to the West Indies for financial independence since his older brother will
inherit his father's estate. When Rochester arrives in Spanish Town he is pressured into
marrying Antoinette, although he only just knows her and knows nothing of her family.
He soon realizes the mistake he has made when he and Antoinette go on their
honeymoon to one of the Windward Islands. Eventually, they abandon the Caribbean
lifestyle Rochester has come to detest. They move back to England, where he locks his
wife in an attic.

Another important character is Christophine. She is a servant who was given to

Annette as a wedding present by her first husband, Alexander Cosway. Christophine
comes from Martinique and is treated as an outsider by the Jamaican servant women.
Christophine is loyal to both Annette and her daughter, and she exercises an unspoken

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authority within the household. Christophine practices obeah, a Caribbean black magic,
with which she tries to help Antoinette regain first her husband's love and then her
sanity.

Antoinette’s mother is called Annette. She comes from Martinique just like
Christophine. Annette marries for the second time to Mr. Mason. The white Jamaican
women exclude her because of her beauty and outsider status. She shows signs of
madness and melancholy in Book One principally. After the fire, Mr. Mason leaves
Annette in the care of a black couple who reportedly humiliate her. Annette dies when
Antoinette is at the convent school.

Mr. Mason, Annette’s husband, is a wealthy Englishman who comes to the West
Indies to make money. He is confident in his authority to control the servants, believing
them harmless and lazy and dismissing his wife's fears of revolt. As we said before, Mr.
Mason effectively abandons Annette after the fire.

An important character who is very influential on Mr Rochester’s view on his wife is

Daniel Cosway. He is one of Alexander Cosway's bastard children. He writes a letter to
Rochester which informs him of the madness that runs in Antoinette's family.

Amelie is a young half-caste servant who accompanies Antoinette and her husband
to Granbois. When Antoinette slaps Amelie for an impudent comment, Amelie slaps
Antoinette back, calling her a "white cockroach" and smiling suggestively at her
husband. Later, Amelie feeds and comforts Mr Rochester and sleeps with him. When he
offers Amelie a gift of money the following morning, she refuses it and announces that
she is going to leave Massacre and go to Rio, where she will find rich, generous men.

Tia is Antoinette’s only childhood friend. At the water pool, Tia betrays Antoinette by
taking her pennies and stealing her clothes. She can be seen as the other aspect of
Antoinette’s personality. We will develop this idea later.

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Social Practice

We will base our analysis of social practices present in Wide Sargasso Sea on the
theories of Post Colonial Literature and Criticism, Marxist and Feminist Criticism, and
Norman Fairclough’s notions of Ideology and Hegemony.

Postcolonial Literature and Criticism

According to Professor John Lye4, Post-colonial theory deals with the reading and
writing of literature written in previously or currently colonized countries, or literature
written in colonizing countries which deals with colonization or colonized peoples. It
focuses, Professor Lye states, on the one hand, on the way in which literature by the
colonizing culture distorts the experience and realities, and inscribes the inferiority of the
colonized people; and on the other hand it focuses on literature by colonized peoples
which attempts to articulate their identity and reclaim their past in the face of that past's
inevitable otherness. Lye mentions that Postcolonial Theory can also deal with the way
in which literature in colonizing countries appropriates the language, images, scenes,
traditions and so forth of colonized countries.
Postcolonial theory is built in large part around the concept of otherness. It is a
complex concept. Otherness includes doubleness, both identity and difference. The
western concept of the oriental is based, as Abdul Jan Mohamed argues, on the
Machinean5 allegory: the west is ordered, rational, masculine, and good. Then, the orient
is chaotic, irrational, feminine, and evil. Colonised people are highly diverse in their
nature and traditions, while they may be ‘other’ from the colonisers, they are different
one from another and from their own pasts, and should not be totalised.
In the novel, we can see that most of the characters are ‘other’ from each other in their
own community. The islands in the West Indies differ because of their original
indigenous inhabitants, their lands and languages. For example, the servants at Coulibri
in Jamaica, are Protestants and disapprove of Annette’s foreign ways: she and
4
http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/postcol.html Last updated on July 22, 1998 by
Professor John Lye. Retrieved 1/4/2003
5
Seeing the world as divided into mutually excluding opposites

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Christophine are from Martinique, a French colony. Christian Catholicism and French
patois6 are alien to Godfrey and Myra, the other servants. Baptiste, one of the servants,
comes from St. Kitts, which was colonised by Britain. On the other hand, Mr Mason and
Rochester come from England. Therefore, we see how different are from each other: the
“Occident”, the “Empire and colonisers” represented by the Englishmen, and the “Orient”
or the “colonised” represented by the inhabitants of the island. In the case of Antoinette,
as a white Creole, she feels ‘alien’ or ‘other’ from both the English and the rest of the
inhabitants. Nevertheless, all characters seem to co-exist in an oppressive and tense
atmosphere.
Another important concept is resistance as subversion. It carries with it ideas about
human freedom, liberty, identity and individuality. When the colonised reject the
penetration of the coloniser, the search for identity begins.
The concepts of identity and nationality may be difficult to conceive in the cultural
traditions of colonised peoples. The opening sentence of the novel can be related to this
concept.
“They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we
were not in their ranks.” 7
Antoinette sees the situation as a quasi-military one. As Creole she and her mother
feel themselves to be excluded by the White European incomers and the most respectful
plantation owners. This idea is later reinforced when during the burning of the house,
Antoinette is left unconscious by a stone thrown by her childhood friend, Tia:
“Then, not so far off, I saw Tia and her mother and I ran to her, for she was all
that was left of my life as it had been. We had eaten the same food, slept side by
side, bathed in the same river. As I ran, I thought, I will live with Tia and I will be
like her. Not to leave Coulibri. Not to go. Not. When I was close I saw the jagged
stone in her hand but I did not see her throw it. I did not feel it either, only
something wet, running down my face. I looked at her and I saw her face crumple
up as she began to cry. We started at each other, blood on my face, tears on
hers. It was as if I saw myself. Like in a looking-glass”8

6
Patois: tongue, dialect
7
Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). Penguin Books.1997 Edition. (p 5)
8
Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). Penguin Books. 1997 Edition. (p 24)

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 Tia may have chosen to throw the stone in order to assert her own identity showing
that she belongs to the former slaves’ group, since Antoinette’s family were plantation
owners and they were frowned upon by the rest of the community.
The last sentence of this extract:
“We started at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers. It was as if I saw
myself. Like in a looking-glass”

shows Antoinette’s desire to be more like Tia. Antoinette looks at Tia as if she is looking
at herself in a mirror. The image of the looking-glass is alluded to throughout the novel.
Analyzing this from a psychoanalytic point of view , according to Jacques Lacan‘s article
“The Mirror Stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic
experience"9, the mirror is of utter importance in the construction of identity: when a
person recognises himself/herself in the mirror it is a sign that he/she has built his/her
identity (sees himself/herself separate from the mother.) In the recognition of the mirror-
image, the child is having its first anticipation of itself as a unified and separate
individual. Before this time, Lacan contends, the child is little more than a 'body in bits
and pieces', unable to clearly separate I and Other, and wholly dependent for its survival
upon its first nurturers. This can be exemplified in the following excerpt:

“It was then that I saw her – the ghost. The woman with streaming hair. She was
surrounded by a gilt frame but I knew her. I dropped the candle I was carrying and it
caught the end of a tablecloth and I saw flames shoot up. As I ran or perhaps
floated or flew I called help me Christophine help me and looking behind me I saw
that I had been helped. There was a wall of fire protecting me but it was too hot, it
scorched me and I went away from it.” 10

Antoinette cannot recognize herself in the mirror, so it can be claimed that she has lost
her identity; she has even been deprived of her memories, her home , and every little
symbol that would constitute her identity. On the other hand, Tia would be a perfect
example of a well-constituted identity.

9
Lacan, Jaques. The Mirror Stage as Formative of the the function of the I as revealed
in psychoanalytic experience"(Delivered at the 16th International Congress of
Psychoanalysis, Zürich, July 17, 1949)
10
Rhys, J. WIde Sargasso Sea(1966). Penguin Books.1997 Edition. (p 123)

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We also considered important to mention the final lines of her dream:

“It might bear me up, I thought, if I jumped to those hard stones. But when I looked
over the edge I saw a pool at Coulibri. Tia was there. She beckoned to me and
when I hesitated, she laughed. I heard her say, You frightened? And I heard the
man’s voice, Bertha! Bertha! All this I saw and heard in a fraction of a second. And
the sky so red. Someone screamed and I thought, Why did I scream? I called ‘Tia!’
and jumped and woke.” 11

When she commits suicide, in the dream, she jumps to meet with Tia. We can consider
Tia as the other face of her personality: Bertha would be her British personality and Tia,
her native one. Her suicide can be seen as an act of self-assertion rather than self-
destruction. She commits suicide but at the same time she is liberating herself from the
hands of her coloniser, going back to her childhood, to where she belongs by throwing
herself into the fire, which is also a purifying death. The destruction of the house is a
symbol of the destruction of the ‘Empire’ or coloniser, and also a destruction of
patriarchy.

There are complexities around the difficulty of conceiving how a colonised country
reclaims or searches its identity, which is a prevailing theme in postcolonial works.
According to Professor John Lye, at a cultural level, there are problems with the fact that
to produce a literature which helps to reconstitute the identity of the colonised one may
have to function in at the very least means of production of the colonisers – the writing,
publishing, production of books and, most importantly, the colonised have to use the
language of the coloniser to get their message across, a way of hybrid form uniting
western conceptions.

Hybridity is another concept closely linked to the search of identity. Hybridity refers to
the integration or mingling of cultural signs and practices from the colonising and
colonised cultures. The assimilation of cultural practices can be seen as positive,
enriching as well as oppressive.
The term hybridity has been most recently associated with Homi Bhabha . In his work
‘Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences', Bhaba stresses the interdependence of
coloniser and colonised. He argues that all cultural systems and statements are

11
Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). Penguin Books. 1997 Edition. (pp 123- 124)

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constructed in what he calls the ‘Third Space of Enunciation'. Seeing this argument, we
begin to understand why claims to the inherent purity and originality of cultures are
unsustainable. Bhaba urges us into this space in an effort to open up the notion of an
international culture “not based on exoticism or multi-culturalism of the diversity of
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cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture's hybridity.” In bringing this to
the next stage, Bhabha hopes that it is in this space “that we will find those words with
which we can speak of Ourselves and Others. And by exploring this ‘Third Space', we
13
may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as the others of ourselves”.
In the novel, many instances of hybridity can be found. First of all, in the language
Jean Rhys uses. The language, discourse and means of production from the coloniser
are instances of mingling of cultures. Also, the author uses a variety of dialects: pidgin,
Creole, and many instances of patois, an unwritten regional dialect. All languages are
inferior to the coloniser’s, while Standard English has connotations of Imperialism.
We can also find hybridity in the main character, Antoinette as being a White Creole.
Antoinette feels as estranged as her mother when others call her a "white cockroach"
and when Tia accuses her and her family of not being like "real white people." She is
accepted by neither white nor black society.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, to be a Creole or a ‘hybrid' was essentially negative. They
were reported in the book as lazy and the dangers of such hybrids inevitably reverting to
their ‘primitive' traditions is highlighted throughout the novel. This is, perhaps, a form of
criticism Jean Rhys makes against the colonisers. We found this in Mr Rochester’s
wordsas he reflects upon his anxieties about race, commenting on his wife:

“I watched her critically. She wore a tricome hat which became her. At least it
shadowed her eyes which are too large and can be disconcerting. She never blinks
at all it seems to me. Long, sad, dark alien eyes. Creole of pure English descent she
may be, but they are not English or European either.”14

Also, in Antoinette’s own words, being that to be a hybrid is unacceptable for the rest of the
community:

12
Ashcroft, B. The Post-Colonial Reader Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin Eds. London:
Routledge, 1995.
13
Idem 12
14
Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea(1966). Penguin Books, Edition 1997. (p 40)

14
 “…a white cockroach. That's me. That's what they call all of us who were here before
their own people in Africa sold them to the slave traders. And I've heard English
women call us white niggers. So between you I often wonder who I am and where is
my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.” 15

Antonette’s words in Book One echo the differences in the society as well:

“Plenty white people live in Jamaica. Real white people, they got gold money. They
didn’t look at us, nobody see them come near us. Old time white people nothing but
white nigger now, and black nigger better than white nigger.” 16

Hybridity can be found in the following example when Antoinette had already part of
Mr Mason’s family:

“We ate English food now, beef and mutton, pies and puddings.
I was glad to be like an English girl but I missed the taste of Christophine’s cooking.” 17

Another feature in postcolonial literature is mimicry: the way the colonised adopt the
beliefs and customs of the coloniser. This concept is closely connected with hybridity
since the colonised, in trying to imitate the coloniser, failing to belong to either of the two
cultures. Their position, therefore, is ambivalent.
It is important here to quote R. Brandon Kerschner, who states that many of the critics
writing in postcolonialism today have a background in deconstructive criticism, which
brands the Western philosophical tradition as “phallogocentric” – a way of yoking
together the rule of phallic authority and logocentrism. The tendency, says Kerschner, is
for deconstructionist critics to see imperialism as a large and dangerous example of this
philosophical error and to interpret both the discourse of colonialism and writings by the
colonised in this ultimate perspective.18
Many examples of mimicry are present in the novel. For example, Daniel Cosway
imitates the English in his way of talking and dressing and Antoinette is sent to a convent
school to learn good manners, in concordance to the British manners of polite society.
15
Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea(1966). Penguin Books.1997 Edition. (p 64 )
16
Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea(1966). Penguin Books. 1997 Edition. (p 10)
17
Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). Penguin Books. 1997 Edition (p17)
18
Kershner, R.B. The Twentieth Century Novel. An Introduction. Boston:Bedford Books,
1997 ( pp; 84-90)

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Marxist criticism and Feminist criticism

According to John Peck and Martin Coyle19, Marxist criticism has to be seen in
relation to the idea of class struggle: the connections between literature and the
economic structure of society in which it was written must be evident. It is concerned
with theoretical questions about the ideology of texts and the function of art in society. A
critic who has been most influential in developing theoretical Marxist thinking about
literature has been Louis Althusser. He sees texts as incomplete and contradictory as
their ideology, i.e. the ideas, values and political beliefs inherent in a text, runs into
difficulties. The issues raised in a text are too complex for the author to control and
contain. One of the obvious strengths of such criticism is that it gets away from the idea
that literary texts convey timeless and universal truths about life and human nature. This
criticism sees how a text belongs to a certain period, and expresses how people at that
time organised and made sense of the world. It is committed with the re-examination of
the text and its function in society.
Another important concept to define, then, is that of ‘ideology’. Norman Fairclough
understands ideologies as ‘significations or constructions of reality (the physical world,
social relations, social identities) which are built into various dimensions of the
forms/meanings of discursive practices and which contribute to the production,
reproduction or transformation of relations of domination’.
The ideologies inside discursive practices become most effective when they are
naturalised and achieve status of ‘common sense’. When people adopt an ideology they
do it for convenience or because they are afraid. As a result, the most absurd concepts
may become common sense and be accepted without questioning. But this property of
ideology (of achieving common sense) should not be overstated because the word
‘transformation’ above implies ideological struggle as a dimension of discursive practice,
a struggle to reshape discursive practices and the ideologies built into them in the
context of the restructuring or transformation of relations of domination.

19
Peck, J. & Coyle, M. Literary Terms and Criticism. New Edition. Macmillan. London: 1993

16
 There are three important claims that Fairclough considers the theoretical bases for
ideology:

1. Ideology has a material existence in the practices of institutions, which opens

up the way to investigating discursive practices as material forms of ideology.
2. Ideology constitutes subjects. We have been brought up in a certain ideology
and then this ideology constitutes us. We think in words. Thus, words make thoughts. A
person who has a limited vocabulary cannot express his thoughts properly and is easily
controlled.
3. ‘Ideological state apparatuses’ institutions are sites of and stakes in class
struggle, which points to struggle in and over discourse as a focus for an ideologically-
oriented discourse analysis.

Fairclough argues that ideologies are born out of relations of domination based on
class, gender, race, cultural group, religion, etc. and if human beings are capable of
transcending such relations of power, they are capable of transcending ideology.

In the case of the term ‘hegemony’, it is defined as the power exercised over
society by an economically-defined class in alliance with other social forces, but it is
achieved only partially and temporarily in what Fairclough calls an “unstable equilibrium”.
Hegemony is concerned with the construction of alliances and with the integration rather
than the domination of subordinate classes through concessions or through ideological
means. But hegemony implies a constant struggle between classes and blocs, i.e.
combination of persons or groups forming a unit with a common interest or purpose, and
as a result of that struggle alliances and relations of subordination/domination are either
constructed, sustained or fractured – a process which takes economic, political and
ideological forms. Hegemonic struggle affects to a greater or lesser degree all
institutions in society. Ideology is understood within this framework of hegemony.
Subjects are structured by diverse ideologies which give them a ‘composite’ character –
they have a ‘common sense’ view of the effects of past ideological struggles (which have
become naturalized or automatized) and they are immersed at the same time in the
restructuring of ongoing struggles. This is what Gramsci termed “an ideological
complex”.

17
 In order to analyze these major concepts we will take into consideration some
important themes in the novel, such as the oppression of slavery and entrapment and
the complexity of racial identity.

The theme of slavery and entrapment which pervades Wide Sargasso Sea helps to
describe the ideology and hegemonic order present in the novel. In Part One of the
novel, which is set in the West Indies in the early nineteenth century, the ex-slaves who
worked on the sugar plantations of wealthy Creoles are more prominently described.
Although the Emancipation Act has freed these slaves by the time of Antoinette's
childhood, compensation has not been granted to the island's black population, breeding
hostility and resentment between servants and their white employers.

Thus, enslavement shapes many of the relationships in Rhys' novel—not just those
between blacks and whites, but also those between white men and Creole women.
Annette feels helplessly imprisoned at Coulibri estate after the death of her husband,
repeating the word “marooned” over and over again. Despair leaves her as lifeless as a
marionette without a master. She loses her home, her son, her husband, and her will to
live. Likewise, Antoinette is doomed to a form of enslavement in her love for and
dependency upon her husband. Women's childlike dependence on fathers and
husbands represents a figurative slavery that is made literal in Antoinette's ultimate
physical captivity.

According to Joyce Hart, most of the blacks in this story are freed slaves. Even though
they have received their freedom, their lot has not improved much. For a brief moment,
they are able to express their will and demand to be taken seriously. Once they come
together, Hart states, they discover their power as a group. Unlike the white landowners
who use fear to direct them, the source of the blacks' power is anger. They are fed up
with Mr. Mason's arrogance, and eventually they cut him down. They throw a torch into
his house, burn his home to the ground, and destroy his family. 20

Then, subtleties of race and the intricacies of Jamaica's social hierarchy play an
important role in the development of the concepts previously defined. Whites born in
England are distinguished from the white Creoles, descendants of Europeans who have

20
Hart, Joyce. Critical Essay on Wide Sargasso Sea, in Novels for Students.Gale:2004.

18
lived in the West Indies for one or more generations. Further complicating the social
structure is the population of black ex-slaves who maintain their own kinds of
stratification and independence. Christophine, for instance, stands apart from the
Jamaican servants because she is originally from the French Caribbean island of
Martinique. Furthermore, there is a large mixed-race population, as white slave owners
throughout the Caribbean and the Americas were notorious for raping female slaves and
make them pregnant. Sandi and Daniel Cosway, two of Alexander Cosway's illegitimate
children, both occupy this middle ground between black and white societies. Although
they were hybrids, they have the advantage of being men.

Interaction between these racial groups is often antagonistic. Antoinette and her
mother, however, do not share the purely racist views of other whites on the island. Both
women recognize their dependence on the black servants who care for them, feeling a
respect that often borders on fear and resentment. And because of their dependence on
them, Anette and Antoinette feel inferior to their former slaves. Mr. Mason, on the other
hand, believes that because the black people had been at one time purchased, they
were his properties, even though they had recently been freed. As his properties, he
thinks he can do with them what he wants. In the end, he is proven wrong by the blacks
in the story who are able, for a brief moment, to express their will and demand to be
taken seriously. They not only discover their power as a group but also the source of that
power: anger. Fed up with Mr. Mason’s arrogance, they decide to do something about it
and so they burn his house down, destroying his family. It is true; however, that Annette
and Antoinette are the most affected by the fire since both lose their identity, their sense
of belonging to a place. It may also imply a lost past: t We consider that the destruction
of the house is an important motif in the novel: the destruction of the first house at
Coulibri symbolises destruction of Antoinette’s childhood., and the second house
destroyed at Thornfield, although it is only told as a dream) symbolises the destruction of
her prison and the destruction of the Empire, the coloniser and even patriarchy.

Furthermore, according to J. Peck and M. Coyle, Marxist criticism might be

considered as a re-reading of the past and has much in common with feminism. Both
raise political questions about the sense of order conveyed in a literary text and how
men and women stand in relation to society. Feminist criticism, they state, is an attempt
to describe and interpret (and re-interpret) women’s experience as depicted in various

19
kinds of literature – especially in the novel; and, to a lesser extent, poetry and drama. It
questions the long-standing, dominant, male, phallocentric ideologies (which add up to a
kind of male conspiracy), patriarchal attitudes and male interpretations in literature (and
critical evaluation of literature). It attacks male notions of value in literature – by offering
critiques of male authors and representations of men in literature and also by privileging
women writers. In addition, it challenges traditional and accepted male ideas about the
nature of women and about how women feel, act and think, or are supposed to feel, act
and think, and how in general they respond to life and living. Feminist criticism thus
questions numerous prejudices and assumptions about women made by male writers,
especially the tendency to cast women in stock-character roles. 21

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea can each be seen
as feminist texts when considering their social and historical context, but Wide Sargasso
Sea presents a post-modern form of feminism which takes into account the complexity of
male-female interaction to find that efforts to transcend deep-rooted gender norms are
nearly hopeless. In her novel Rhys considers the possibility that perhaps the gulf
between men and women cannot be breached. Wide Sargasso Sea maintains a steady
absence of faith in woman's ability to transcend the oppression of her gender, i.e. the
near impossibility of "success" for a woman in a patriarchal world. Perhaps the
differences are so great, or more importantly, so established and internalized that
Antoinette can never have a sense of security, happiness, or pride. Antoinette is virtually
defenseless. She rarely protects herself, like when she visits her mother (who she knows
is undependable and unloving) and goes to her mother with love, only to be rejected yet
again. She has a similar episode with Rochester. Fully aware that he does not, she asks
him if he loves her and invites misery when his answer is, "No, I do not".

Ideologically speaking, Post-Colonial Criticism and Feminist Criticism are closely

related. That is why it can be claimed that the three-part narrative in Wide Sargasso Sea
twists ideals of imperialism (and therefore patriarchy) by challenging concepts of
narrative authority, particularly of a white male authority, as Rochester is inserted in
between Antoinette's two accounts. The novel purposefully problematises its
conceptions of gender. "All women characters in Rhys' fictions are mercilessly exposed

21
Peck, J. & Coyle, M. Literary Terms and Criticism. New Edition. Macmillan. London: 1993

20
to the financial and gendered constraints of an imperial world" (Humm22, M., 1995). This
imperial world is created and controlled by a dominant group (white men) which
oppresses other groups (women, former slaves, servants, etc.) and to be female means
to negotiate the suffering caused by this domination. Antoinette's mother, for example,
negotiates this suffering poorly, or rather, not at all, and in Antoinette's case, the
unresolved relationship with her rejecting mother exposes her early to a deep sense of
instability and mistrust.

As an example of Antoinette's sense of helplessness and powerlessness as a young

woman in a patriarchal society, we may analyze a dream she has in which she is chased
in a forest by heavy footsteps and feels unable to scream or save herself:
“This was the second time I had my dream.
Again I have left the house at Coulibri. It is still night and I am walking towards the
forest. I am wearing a long dress and thin slippers, so I walk with difficulty, following the
man who is with me and holding up the skirt of my dress. It is white and beautiful and I
don’t wish to get it soiled. I follow him, sick with fear but I make no effort to save myself;
if anyone were to try to save me, I would refuse. This must happen. Now we have
reached the forest. We are under the tall dark trees and there is no wind. ‘Here?’ He
turns and looks at me, his face black with hatred, and when I see this I begin to cry. He
smiles slyly. ‘Not here, not yet,’ he says, and I follow him weeping. Now I do not try to
hold up my dress, it trails in the dirt, my beautiful dress. We are no longer in the forest
but in an enclosed garden surrounded by a stone wall and the trees are different trees. I
do not know them. There are steps leading upwards. It is too dark to see the wall or the
steps, but I know they are there and I think, ‘It will be when I go up these steps. At the
top.’ I stumble over my dress and cannot get up. I touch a tree and my arms hold on to
it. ‘Here, here.’ But I think I will not go any further. The tree sways and jerks as if it is
trying to throw me off. Still I cling and the seconds pass and each one is a thousand
years. ‘Here, in here,’ a strange voice said, and the tree stopped swaying and jerking.” 23

The feminine clothing she wears in the dream is representative of an ideal

femininity; the white dress is symbolic of virginity and also of her mother. The tree that
"jerks" violently is phallic. The dream also "reveals Antoinette's fears of what marriage

22
Humm, Maggie. "Third World Feminisms: Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea." Practicing
Feminist Criticism: an introduction. Great Britain: Prentice Hall, 1995.
23
Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea(1966). Penguin Books, 1997 Edition. (p 34 )

21
will be: she will be entrapped, violated, despoiled, and exploited like a colonized
possession" (Madden24, D., 1995). In her dream and in real life Antoinette is fearful of
men and sexuality, with good reason.

As regards sexuality, Rhys does not ignore its treatment. According to Daniel
Cosway’s version, Antoinette seems to have already experimented sex with Daniel
before her marriage. Yet she cannot distinguish between intense pleasure and intense
pain, for her an orgasm is like dying:

"Say die and I will die. You don't believe me? Then try, try, say die and watch me
die.'
"Die then! Die!" I watched her die many times. In my way, not in hers . . . Very soon
she was as eager for what's called loving as I was -- more lost and drowned afterwards."
25

Sex is Antoinette and Rochester's only form of communication and they are
communicating only their lust and desire for each other, not love. Sadly, Antoinette
hopes their desire for each other, which is so powerful, will develop over time into love.
But Rochester is not interested in loving Antoinette. From a feminist viewpoint, it is easy
to see Rochester as simply cold and cruel, but he too is sorry that there is a lack of
genuine communication in their relationship. As Barbara Ann Schapiro26 (1994) says
"both characters are furious at being unrealized by the other". Rochester is unable to
love what he sees as an object, a possession. He is also unwilling to make the effort to
get to know Antoinette, to understand her, to love her. He begins to call her "Bertha",
signaling the beginning of his separating himself from her (ironically he tells Antoinette
he likes to call her Bertha because it is a name dear to him). As readers we are
immediately made nervous by this new name, not only do we sense Rochester's
menace of erasing Antoinette, but we also associate the name Bertha with the
madwoman he will lock up in the attic of Thornfield Hall.

24
Madden, Diana. "Wild Child, Tropical Flower, Mad Wife: Female Identity in Jean Rhys's Wide
Sargasso Sea in "International Women's Writing: New Landscapes of Identity. Ed.
Anne E. Brown and Marjanne E. Gooze. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995.
25
Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea(1966). Penguin Books.1997 Edition. (p 110 )
26
Schapiro, Barbara Ann. "Boundaries and Betrayal in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea."
Literature and the Relational Self. Ed. Jeffrey Berman. New York: New York University
Press, 1994.

22
 Another striking feature of Rhys’ novel is the frequent repetition of ‘laugh’ and ‘smile’.
Most occurrences seem to fit into two basic types of laughter: a social and negative one,
and an individual and positive one. The former can be seen as the symbolic expression
of social and negative power, and the latter as the symbolic expression of individual and
positive power. Part I presents Antoinette as an outsider in the Jamaican world,
separated by barriers of race and class. These barriers are upheld in the negative
laughter of mockery and derision. Antoinette and her mother are repeatedly the target of
the natives’ laughter, as we can see in the following examples:

“My mother usually walked up and down the glacis, a paved roofed-in terrace which
ran the length of the house and sloped upwards to a clump of bamboos. Standing by the
bamboos she had a clear view to the sea, but anyone passing could stare at her. They
[the natives] stared, sometimes they laughed. Long after the sound was far away and
faint she kept her eyes shut and her hands clenched.” 27

Another variant of negative laughter is the laughter of deception and hypocrisy. Here
the mockery and derision is not shown openly, but hidden behind a false smile of
friendliness. This false smile can be exemplified with Rochester at his own wedding:

“[Rochester remembers how he got to know Antoinette] It was all very brightly
coloured, very strange, but it meant nothing to me. Nor did she, the girl I was to marry.
When at last I met her I bowed, smiled, kissed her hand, danced with her. I played the
part I was expected to play. She never had anything to do with me at all. Every
movement I made was an effort of will and sometimes I wondered that no one noticed
this. I would listen to my own voice and marvel at it, calm, correct but toneless, surely.
But I must have given a faultless performance.” 28

Antoinette herself, as well as her mother Annette, is associated with a different,

individual and positive type of laughter, the laughter of gaiety and happiness, of
naturalness and spontaneity. For example:

27
Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea(1966). Penguin Books, 1997 Edition. (p 6)

28
Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea(1966). Penguin Books, Edition 1997. (pp 46-47)

23
 “She [Annette] would ride off very early and not come back till late next day – tired
out because she had been to a dance or a moonlight picnic. She was gay and laughing
– younger than I had ever seen her and the house was sad when she had gone.” 29

“We [Antoinette and Rochester] came to a little river. ‘This is the boundary of
Granbois.’ She smiled at me. It was the first time I had seen her smile simply and
naturally. Or perhaps it was the first time I had felt simple and natural with her.” 30

However, the smile of naturalness and spontaneity can also easily turn into the
laughter of wildness and passion. As we can see in the following extract:

“She’ll [Antoinette] loosen her black hair, and laugh and coax and flatter (a mad girl.
She’ll not care who she’s loving). She’ll moan and cry and give herself as no sane
woman would – or could. Or could.” 31

As a result, Rochester determines to break Antoinette’s wildness and passion, to

destroy her laughter:

“She’ll not laugh in the sun again. She’ll not dress up and smile at herself in that
damnable looking-glass.” 32

He imprisons her in the attic of Thornfield Hall, where Antoinette’s laughter turns
from naturalness and passion into madness and despair, and she herself turns into the
madwoman of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre:
“I [Antoinette in Thornfield Hall] saw the sunlight coming through the window, the
tree outside and the shadows of the leaves on the floor, but I saw the wax candles too
and I hated them. So I knocked them all down. Most of them went out but one caught
the thin curtains that were behind the red ones. I laughed when I saw the lovely colour
spreading so fast, but I did not stay to watch it.”33

29
Ibid, p.23
30
Ibid., p 42
31
Ibid., p 106
32
Ibid., p 107
33
Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea(1966). Penguin Books, 1997 Edition. (p 123)

24
 The image of laughter destroyed is used poignantly to suggest the position of
woman as an oppressed alien in patriarchal society. Rochester is the exponent of
colonial and patriarchal power, who deceives Antoinette with his false smiles and finally
locks her up in the attic. Antoinette, on the other hand, is associated with an inner power
which allows her to shake the very foundations of the patriarchal order represented by
Rochester.

Although the events of Rhys' novel take place some time earlier than those in Jane
Eyre, the spirit of modern feminism is infused into the older feminism of the latter.
Whereas in Jane's world, women are literally restricted from participating in society as
men do, in Antoinette's world this repression has gone underground. It is ideology and
norms about femininity which are oppressive, and therefore so much more difficult for
Antoinette to rise against or even to confront. Rhys' work expresses the challenge of
dealing with this new, and perhaps more dangerous, repression, signaled in Wide
Sargasso Sea by new uses of style, voice, and narrative structure. As B. A. Schapiro34
(1994) states, "in its reworking of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Rhys' novel makes the
shift in literary sensibility from the nineteenth to the twentieth century particularly
discernible… the collapse of rational order, of stable and conventional structures on all
levels, distinguishes Rhys' vision and places it squarely within the modernist tradition".
Rhys' very modern portrayal of the woman's experience in patriarchy is "one of both
forced dependency and exclusion. Thus for a girl, betrayal is indeed interwoven with
dependency, troubling a girl's relational history from infancy through adulthood, and
affecting her relationship with her own infant should she herself become a mother"
(Schapiro35, 1994). Unfortunately, we never discover what kind of mother Antoinette
would become. She is so restricted (emotionally and later physically) by Rochester and
by the confines of her identity, which developed in an environment painfully lacking in
love or security, that she desires only to leap to her death.

Discursive Practice

34
Op. cit. p 21
35
Op. cit. p 21

25
In order to analyse this dimension which involves processes of text production,
consumption and distribution, i.e. how texts are produced, consumed and distributed, we
will focus our attention on examples of Intertextuality present in the novel.

Intertextuality

It is basically the property that texts have of being full of snatches of other texts,
which may be explicitly demarcated (e.g. by using inverted commas) or merged in, and
which the text may assimilate, contradict, ironically echo, and so forth.
The term “Intertextuality” was coined by Julia Kristeva in 1966, describing Bakhtin’s
work. Bakhtin never used the term himself but he characterized it as the way in which
texts and utterances are shaped by prior texts that they are “responding” to, and by
subsequent texts that they “anticipate”.
Thus, in Bakhtin’s words, “each utterance is a link in the chain of speech
communication.” This concept is related to Bakhtin’s description of the dialogic or
heteroglot (i.e. many-voiced) nature of language.
Fairclough makes a distinction between manifest intertextuality and interdiscursivity
or constitutive intertextuality. Interdiscursivity (or constitutive intertextuality) is a matter of
how a discourse type is constituted through a combination of elements of orders of
discourse. In manifest intertextuality a text may contain other texts which may be
manifestly marked by quotation marks or “incorporated” without being explicitly cued.
Such is the case in Wide Sargasso Sea, in which we find songs and letters as examples
of manifest intertextuality:

• Songs:
“ A Benny foot and a Benky leg
For Charlie over the water.
Charlie, Charlie.”36

“ Hail to the queen of the silent night,

Shine bright, shine bright Robin as you die.”37

36
Rhys, J. Wide Sargasso Sea(1966). Penguin Books, 1997 Edition. (p 95)
37
Ibid., p 95

26
 • Letters, such as Daniel Cosway’s to Mr. Rochester and Mr. Rochester’s
letters to his father :
“ I [Mr. Rochester] could imagine his expression if I sent that letter and he read it.
I wrote:
Dear Father,
We are leaving this island for Jamaica very shortly. Unforseen circumstances,
at least unforeseen by me, have forced me to make this decision. I am certain that
you know or can guess what has happened, and I am certain you will believe that
the less you talk to anyone about my affairs, especially my marriage, the better. This
is in your interest as well as mine. You will hear from me again. Soon I hope.” 38

According to Ana González Escudero, in Wide Sargasso Sea, intertextuality

becomes a game of perspective that implies a successful illusion of reality both for this
story and for Charlotte Brontë’s, with which it establishes such a curious structure in
terms of dialogue, and thus becomes the most important and visible example of
intertextuality. The author offers a new perspective for Jane Eyre, making that novel’s
antagonist, the crazy wife, its protagonist. The change of focus shakes us as readers
and we are forced to assess the earlier novel, which turns into something real as it is
seen from different points of view, and swings before our eyes. Intertextuality and
perspectivism are thus coincidental because of the author’s extraordinary ability in this
story, which has the potential to make an earlier literary work multi-faceted and
changing.

Each part of the novel utilizes different perspectives: the first one presents the voice
of a girl reaching her adolescence, the second one, the voice of the man who will
become her husband and in the third and last one we are presented with the voice of the
same woman who is now in a state of depression and madness. The voice in the first
part is the voice of a character marked by weakness, during her childhood first and her
adolescence later. In the second part, Antoinette is already a married young woman, and
her husband is in charge of the narration. Consequently, there is an important change in
perspective. A first person narration focalizes on certain aspects, circumstances, people,
places, etc., and above all it manifests qualities of the character, intelligence or

38
Ibid., p 105

27
sensitiveness of the person who is telling the story. It might be claimed, thus, that there
are two kinds of vision involved: one about specific spaces and characters and another
one about the judgments we might formulate as regards the actions of those narrating.
Therefore, the second part is nothing more than a continuation of the first one, regarding
the harassment and persecution of a character that was initially presented to us as a
fragile and sad girl, who is now in the hands of a selfish and insensitive man whose only
aim is using her as a source of income, neglecting her completely. Ana González
Escudero concludes that it is not odd, then, that we find natural the insanity we are
presented with in the third and last part of the novel. Antoinette is the narrator again,
only this time she is locked up in the attic of cold England with the sole company of her
guardian, Grace Poole.

Being a prequel, Wide Sargasso Sea depends on and challenges imperialist

assumptions in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Particular situations, such as the
imprisonment and certain happenings, such as the burning of the house, refer us
immediately to the previous novel. For example, in Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette’s
suicidal jump is considered a dream, for its ‘realization’ we have to go back to Brontë’s
Jane Eyre.

Regarding characterization, in Wide Sargasso Sea the secondary character

becomes the main character and narrates in the first person at three turning points of her
life: her childhood, youth and final madness. In doing so, the fragility of the character is
revealed and Antoinette becomes a victim – and a victim is always considered kindly.
Now, the mad woman is an innocent and persecuted character.

What is even more interesting is the portrayal of the male character. Far from being
considered from the romantic perspective of Charlotte Brontë’s version, Mr. Rochester
emerges as a selfish and brutal man who blames his wife with a complete lack of
understanding. The readers inevitably judge him as the guilty party, i.e. being
responsible for his wife’s madness mainly due to his cruel neglect. As a consequence,
there is a process of blaming one character that was previously seen favorably, and a
process of empathizing with the insane female character who was originally considered
a monster. Finally, Ana González Escudero claims that it is only Jean Rhys, who in her
rewriting of the narrative material from Bertha’s point of view, has effectively inverted the

28
foreground-background relations of the original text and has brought out into the open
the largely repressed subtext of racial prejudice, women’s oppression and their
interconnections.

29
Textual Analysis

In order to analyse text-structure we will concentrate on interactional control features,

such as turn-taking and exchange structure.

Turn-taking

Turn taking is a collaborative organizational achievement of participants, based upon

a simple set of rules:
1. The current speaker may select the next speaker, by addressing him/ her,
naming him/ her, etc.;
2. If that does not happen, any participant may select him/ herself as next speaker,
for example when all participants fall silent and one of them takes the floor;
3. If that does not happen, the current speaker may continue.
In these rules participants appear to have the same rights, but in fact this is not true.
Not all participants have the same rights and obligations in some turn-taking systems. In
those cases, rights and obligations are distributed between the powerful “P” and the non-
powerful “NP” participants in this way:
a) P may select NP, but not vice-versa;
b) P may self select to speak, but NP may not self select;
c) P’s turn may be extended across any number of points of possible completion to
“hold the floor”.
All these are instances of asymmetrical turn-taking, in which the control of overlaps
and gaps in the conversation is in P’s hands. For example, P may be able to interrupt
NP (but not vice-versa) and P (but not NP) may have the right to hold the floor, speaking
across any number of turns, or even without speaking, for keeping silent is sometimes a
way of reasserting one’s control or of suggesting implicit criticism.

Here is the dialogue between Christophine and Mr Rochester, after his quarrel with
Antoinette39:
“(…) ‘Everybody know that you marry her for her money and you take it all. And then
you want to break her up, because you jealous of her. She is more better than you, she
39
Ibid., pp 98-99-100

30
have better blood in her and she don’t care for money – it’s nothing for her. Oh I see that
first time I look at you. You young but already you hard. You fool the girl. You make her
think you can’t see the sun for looking at her.’
It was like that, I [Mr Rochester] thought. It was like that. But better to say nothing.
Then surely they’ll both go and it will be my turn to sleep – a long deep sleep, mine will
be, a very far away.
‘And then,’ she went on in her judge’s voice, ‘you make love to her till she drunk with
it, no rum could make her drunk like that, till she can’t do without it. It’s she can’t see the
sun any more. Only you she see. But all you want is to break her up.’
(Not the way you mean, I thought)
‘But she hold out eh? She hold out.’
(Yes, she held out. A pity)
‘So you pretend to believe all the lies that damn bastard tell you.’
(That damn bastard tell you)
Now every word she said was echoed, echoed loudly in my head.
‘So that you can leave her alone.’
(Leave her alone)
‘Not telling her why.’
(Why?)
‘No more love, eh?
(No more love)
‘And that,’ I said coldly, ‘ is where you took charge, isn’t it? You tried to poison me.’
‘Poison you? But look me trouble, the man crazy! She come to me and ask me for
something to make you love her again and I tell her no I don’t meddle in that for béké. I
tell her it’s foolishness.’
(Foolishness foolishness)
‘And even if it’s no foolishness, it’s too strong for béké.’
(Too strong for béké. Too strong)
‘But she cry and she beg me.’
(She cry and she beg me)
‘So I give her something for love.’
(For love)
‘But you don’t love. All you want is to break her up. And it help you break her up.’
(Break her up)

31
 ‘She tell me in the middle of all this you start calling her names. Marionette. Some
word so.’
‘Yes, I remember, I did.’
(Marionette, Antoinette, Marionetta, Antoinetta)
‘That word mean doll, eh? Because she don’t speak. You want to force her to cry
and to speak.’
(Force her to cry and to speak)
‘But she won’t. So you think up something else. You bring that worthless girl to play
with next door and you talk and laugh and love so that she hear everything. You meant
her to hear.’
Yes, that didn’t just happen. I meant it.
(I lay awake all night long after they were asleep, and as soon as it was light I got up
and dressed and saddled Preston. And I came to you. Oh Christophine. O Pheena,
Pheena, help me)
‘You haven’t yet told me exactly what you did with my – with Antoinette.’
‘Yes I tell you. I make her sleep.’
‘What? All the time?’
‘No, No. I wake her up to sit in the sun, bathe in the cool river. Even if she dropping
with sleep. I make good strong soup. I give her milk if I have it, fruit I pick from my own
trees. If she don’t want to eat I say, “Eat it up for my sake, doudou.” And she eat it up,
then she sleep again.’
‘And why did you do all this?’
There was a long silence. Then she said, ‘It’s better she sleep. She must sleep while
I work for her – to make her well again. But I don’t speak of all that to you.’
‘Unfortunately your cure was not successful. You didn’t make her well. You made
her worse.’
‘Yes I succeed,’ she said angrily. (…)”

In Rochester and Christophine’s dialogue we might say that Christophine would

represent the powerful speaker, mainly because she holds the floor during most of the
dialogue. However, this does not mean that Mr. Rochester would play the role of a non-
powerful speaker. Quite on the contrary, he is the one who allows Christophine to hold
the floor. His silence comes to represent both agreement and resistance. He decides not
to retort Christophine’s accusations out loud, instead, he chooses to remain silent and

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answer to Christophine’s comments inside his mind. We can observe this in the use of
brackets Jean Rhys does in order to present the contents of Edward’s mind.
The dialogue is a powerful example of the criticism towards Edward’s behaviour: not
only has he been unfaithful with another woman, but he has also destroyed everything
that made Antoinette happy. Nevertheless, Mr. Rochester is not repentant at all and, by
remaining silent, he suggests an implicit criticism towards Christophine’s actions.

Exchange Structure

Exchange structure shows the type of exchange patterning which is predominant in

a conversation.
“Adjacency pairs” involve two ordered categories of speech acts, where the
occurrence of the first act predicts the occurrence of the second and where particular
pairings are quite diverse:
 Question-Answer
 Greeting-Greeting
 Complaint-Apology
 Invitation-Acceptance/Rejection
 Etc.
However, there is not always a one to one relationship between the first and second
parts: the second parts especially may not always adjust to the pattern and can therefore
challenge predictability. For example: Question-Question.
Nevertheless, the “Question-Answer” adjacency pair is central to many exchange
types and Question-Answer sequences can constitute higher level structures.
In summary, the nature of the exchange system in a conversation is relevant not
only to turn-taking, but also to the ways people initiate an exchange and to the kinds of
responses they give or are expected to give in different situations.

In the previously mentioned example of Rochester and Christophine’s dialogue, we

can see that some adjacency pairs do not have a one to one relationship. For instance,
when Christophine asks a question, Rochester do not always respond with an answer,
but rather he chooses to be silent or to echo the woman’s words inside his mind.

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 ‘So you pretend to believe all the lies that damn bastard tell you.’
(That damn bastard tell you)
Now every word she said was echoed, echoed loudly in my head.
‘So that you can leave her alone.’
(Leave her alone)
‘Not telling her why.’
(Why?)
‘No more love, eh?
(No more love)40

While Christophine is constantly accusing Mr. Rochester of ill-treating Antoinette by

calling her names and not taking care of her, Mr. Rochester demands Christophine for
explanations of her trying to poison him and making Antoinette act strangely.
Christophine does provide Rochester with an explanation by telling him that it was
actually Antoinette who came begging for Christophine’s help to re-gain Edward’s love.

“She come to me and ask me for something to make you love her again and I tell her
no I don’t meddle in that for béké. I tell her it’s foolishness.”41

On the other hand, Mr. Rochester does not apologise for his actions and he actually
admits, in his thoughts, that he has called Antoinette names such as “Marionette,
Antoinette, Marionetta, Antoinetta”42 attributing her an almost puppet-like attitude. In
addition, he admits that he had meant Antoinette’s hearing him and Amélie having sex.

‘But she won’t. So you think up something else. You bring that worthless girl to play
with next door and you talk and laugh and love so that she hear everything. You meant
her to hear.’
Yes, that didn’t just happen. I meant it.43

40
Ibid., pp 98-99-100
41
Ibid., pp 98-99-100
42
Ibid., pp 98-99-100
43
Ibid., pp 98-99-100

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Conclusion

Through the analysis of Wide Sargasso Sea we were able to see how different
devices – textual analysis, discursive practice and social practice – are intertwined in
order to help create the three-dimensional characteristic of a discursive ‘event’.
We believe that Wide Sargasso Sea was a very successful choice since it has
countless examples of different elements within each of the previously mentioned
dimensions, such as ideology, hegemony, intertextuality, turn-taking, among many
others.
Moreover, we feel that it is a text that is worth analysing from many perspectives
and in doing so we could discover the different ‘layers’ the text has and at the same time
we could ‘unveil’ certain ideologies in the grand narrative Jane Eyre.
We also consider that Jean Rhys’s novel is not only extremely rich in its fluid and
heterogeneous form but also in its content: a message of protest to a still phallogocentric
world.

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Last updated on July 22, 1998. Retrieved 1/4/2003

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