Postcolonial Discourse in
Wide Sargasso Sea
In the novel ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ Jean
Rhys tries to deconstruct and confront the possibility of another side to Jane
Eyre. Charlotte Bronte created a poignant and powerful depiction of a deranged
Creole outcast girl called “Antoinette” in her gothic novel ‘Jane Eyre’, Rhys
tries to create a prehistory for Antoinette by tracing her childhood. Wide
Sargasso Sea is not only a brilliant Deconstruction of Bronte’s legacy, but it
is also a damning history of colonialism in Caribbean islands.
The
novel ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ was written immediately after the emancipation of
slavery and there was lot of uneven events of racial discrimination happening
in the Caribbean. Antoinette, Rhys renames and has Rochester impose the name of
Bertha on Antoinette when their relationship dissolves. The name Bertha is
descended from the father who was a plantation owner. Bertha is nothing being a
white Creole; she is accepted neither by Negro community nor by the white
colonies. The taint of racial impurity coupled with the suspicion that she is
mentally imbalanced and brings about her inevitable downfall.
In Bronte’s text we
can see the suppression of alternative voices of Rochester and Antoinette, in
order to avoid this Rhys divides the speaking voices between them. Rochester,
who is never named in the novel is not portrayed has an evil tyrant, but as a
proud young man who is betrayed from his family into a loveless marriage. His
double standards with regards to the former slaves and Antoinette's family
involvement with them are exposed when he chooses to sleep with the maid,
Amelie, thus displaying the promiscuous behavior and attraction to the Negro community
which he accuses Antoinette of harboring. Rochester and Antoinette’s days of
happiness ends at Granbois by Rochester’s willingness to believe the worst of
Antoinette. His betrayal of her is set up before he receives the information
from Daniel Cosway.
Rhys negotiates with
Bronte’s novel as an already canonical text. Rhys merges Antoinette’s fate into
that of Bertha’s, which is inevitable. But Rhys lives the ending of the novel
open which allows us to interpret the fate of Antoinette differently.
The other
alternative power in the novel is Christophine. She forces Rochester to
recognize her as the holder of judicial authority and she reduces him to
mimicry of her words, as he admits this by stating that her words echoed in his
head. This is the reversal of the normal colonizer\colonized role. According to
Bhabha and Fanon, the colonized is a mere parrot who must come to terms with
the master, discourse of the metropolitan centre. The source of Christophine’s
power is a obeah and she is the centre to the narrative action, as Antoinette
calls out to her at the end of novel to release her from zombie- like state to
which Rochester has reduced her.
Rewriting the master
narratives of western discourse is a common colonial practice, telling of a
story from the perspective of another’s point of view can be seen as an
extension of the deconstructive project to explore the gaps and silences in a
text. Since writing is considered has a stronger form of cultural control, the
rewriting of central narratives of colonial superiority is a liberating act for
those from the former colonies. Rhys text is a great example of coming to terms
with European perception of the Caribbean Creole Community.
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