Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Ministry of Higher Education

Umm Al-Qura University

College of Arts and Administrative Sciences

Department of English

The Untold Text : Jean Rhys's Wide

Sargasso Sea as a Writerly Reading of

Jane Eyre

A thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfilment of the

requirements for the degree of M.A. in English literature.

Submitted by

Nada M Al-Amri

Assistant Teacher, Umm Al-Qura University.

Supervised by

Prof. Abu-talib Mahmud Ahmad

Professor of English Literature., King Khalid University

Second Semester

(1431-2010)

1

Introduction

Rewriting, as Terry Threadgold(1948-), a Professor of

Communication and Cultural Studies, describes is a transformative way to

make "new discursive spaces" where "the unthought" and "the unspoken"

are made "visible and audible"(56). Jean Rhys(1890-1979)a famous

Caribbean writer, establishes Wide Sargasso Sea(1966) as a revision in

which the madwoman silenced in Jane Eyre(1847) speaks and tells her

own side of the story. In Rhys's re-reading and re-inscription of such a

nineteenth-century classical novel as Jane Eyre provides the other, or the

colonial subject , as side of the cultural representation of England and its

"mission".

Gayatri Spivak(1942-), an Indian literary critic, charges that it should

be impossible to read nineteenth-century British literature without

recognizing that imperialism, understood as social mission, was a crucial

part of the culture representation of their own country to the English (243).

literature has, since the mid-nineteenth century, been a tool not only for

imparting culture literacy, but also for exhorting cultural power. Nowhere

has this been more important than in the imperial context .Writers attempt

through literary works to transpose history to suit their own interests. Our

understanding of history in literature depends ultimately on the side that

renders it. The history that this study traces through the relationships

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between English and non-English texts, as well as between male and

female subjects, emphasizes the notion that the powerful side is the one

whose voice is heard at the cost of the marginalized "Other" powerless

side. The "Other" is introduced into the European World in terms of sex,

class and race origins, and is often given a different status: marked some

times as savagery, sometimes as madness, and at others by a transgressive

sexuality.

The Caribbean feminist writers, Carole Boyce Davies and Elaine

Savory Fido, write, "The concept of voicelessness necessarily informs any

discussion of Caribbean women and literature. It is a crucial consideration

because it is out of this voicelessness and consequent absence that an

understanding of our creativity in written expression emerges" (1). This

voicelessness is the historically muted female Caribbean subject, erased

under patriarchy and colonialism. Yet, many Caribbean women authors

continue to battle this marginalization, and through their revisions of

colonialism, strive to end their enforced (literary) silence. By

demonstrating particularly the complexities of women's positions as

subalterns under colonial hegemony, they navigate to the margins of

history where women's stories have been exiled and move them to the

center of literary discussions. Claiming their female characters' selves and

recording their undocumented histories allow Caribbean women authors to

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illustrate the intricate connections between genre, gender, and race. It

creates new narrative possibilities for the emerging female Caribbean post-

colonial protagonist.

Therefore, the researcher explores how the Caribbean writer Rhys in

her novel Wide Sargasso Sea "represents a paradoxical mix of dependence

on a pretext and aesthetic originality and independence"(Rubik 64), and at

the same time fills the gaps within Jane Eyre by employing intertextual

strategies that point us to a particular process of reading . In Culture and

Imperialism, Edward Said(1935 –2003) a famous Palestinian-American

literary theorist and critic, states that “In reading a text, one must open it

out both to what went into it and what its author excluded. Each cultural

work is a vision of a moment, and we must juxtapose that vision with the

various revisions it later provoked…"(67). By pairing Wide Sargasso Sea

with a classical English text , Jane Eyre, the researcher hopes to provide

even more insight into the idea of rewriting a classical Western text.

The most important piece of contextual information about Wide

Sargasso Sea is that the novel was inspired by Charlotte Bronte's (1816-

1855) famous nineteenth-century novel Jane Eyre. It is "a brilliant

deconstruction of Bronte's legacy"(Maurle 141). It acts as a prequel to the

events described in Bronte's tale. It is the story of the first Mrs. Rochester

(Bertha/ Antoinette) Mason. Rhys offers a much more nuanced and

sympathetic portrait of a Creole madwoman caught in an oppressive

4

colonial and patriarchal society in which she belongs neither to the white

European nor the black Jamaican. In her novel, Rhys imagines the past of

Bronte's deranged maniac, whom she depicts with sympathetic

understanding. She is no longer a cliche or "foreigner," but a real woman

with her own hopes, fears, and desires. By fleshing out Bronte's one-

dimensional madwoman and tracing her development from a young solitary

girl in Jamaica to a love-depraved lunatic locked in the cold attic of her

English husband , Rhys enables readers to sympathize with the mental and

emotional decline of a human being. She humanizes Bertha's tragic

condition, inviting the readers to explore Antoinette's terror and anguish.

The researcher's concentration is limited to Charlotte Bronte´s Jane

Eyre and Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea. To explore how Rhys creates a new

text from the story of Jane Eyre, taking the minor figure of the madwoman

out of the margins and placing her into the forefront, this study focuses on

themes of colonialism and racial conflicts in order to understand the

cultural differences between the two texts consequently understand the

characters of the two novels fully. The cultural differences between the

main characters as, Antoinette and her English husband Rochester, create a

wide gap between them, a gap they will never bridge. Rhys’s novel thus not

only discusses patriarchy, it also foregrounds different perspectives on

colonialism.

5

Jamaica was still a British colony in the late 1830’s, around the time

when the novel was set. The white English colonized the black people out

off a belief that they were superior, more powerful, and civilized than the

inferior, primitive and less developed black societies. Therefore, this study

deals with the effects of the patriarchal and colonial oppression on both the

internal and external relationships in the worlds of Jane Eyre as a colonial

text and Wide Sargasso Sea as a postcolonial text. The unequal

relationships between men and women as well as between colonizers and

colonized stem from the unequal distribution of power in both England and

Jamaica. In her novel, Bronte concentrates on the negative effects of

patriarchy on internal relationships within England. Rhys's novel, on the

other hand, broaches the issue of colonialism and its inevitably devastating

effects on the international colonized world.

Wide Sargasso Sea is the untold story of Jane Eyre’s madwoman in

the attic, and though it is a novel that could stand alone, the influence of

Bronte’s work is undeniable. This relationship between the two novels is

analogous to the history of colonization in the Caribbean, European

influence is present despite the colonized subject’s ambivalence towards

this influence. Rhys uses Englishness to her advantage to create a text that

questions Western authority by portraying English control (in the form of

English men and husbands) as harmful and malignant. Moreover, she

succeeds in creating a madwoman as a sympathetic figure who emerges as

6

triumphant and liberated from English rule as the researcher explains

through the interpretation of Wide Sargasso Sea.

Bronte's novel reflects history from a colonial perspective, whereas

Rhys's novel reframes that history from a postcolonial perspective. While

the colonial text endeavors to suppress those belonging to a different class

and race by excluding and marginalizing them, the postcolonial text

emerges from the voices of those who were originally deprived and

silenced. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys gives voice to the Creole woman and

provides the perspective of the other by telling Jane’s story in a different

racial context by translating the Victorian woman’s feminist struggle to a

West Indian context. Thus, this study discusses Wide Sargasso Sea’s

intertextual relationship to Jane Eyre as a revision/rewriting and examines

the postcolonial/racial foundation, which prompts the rewriting of Jane

Eyre.

In the critical context of Edward Said’s Cullture and Imperialism,

Roland Barthes, and Julia Kristeva's theories of "intertextuality" , the

researcher depicts how themes in Wide Sargasso Sea bring to the surface

subtle mirroring ideas in Jane Eyre. Intertextuality occurs at two levels in

these texts. First, between the two novels which shows that Rhys’s

narrative line reveals striking instances of parallels between Antoinette and

Jane. furthermore, the ways in which Jane reflects Antoinette’s life – such

7

as their childhood ,visionary dreams, feminine struggle and marriages to

Rochester who represents a typical patriarchal and colonial oppressive

master. His relationship with both women is based on a clear-cut and

absolute hierarchical distinction between the ruler and ruled. Through this

unequal relationship, the researcher attempts to prove that Antoinette's

resistance to ideologies sustaining colonial domination is more complex

and difficult than Jane's resistance to ideologies governing male and class

domination. The second level of intertextuality, however, occurs between

the main characters of each novel .

In her book A theory of Parody, Linda Hutcheon (1947-), a literary

critic, refers to postmodern parodial rewriting as "repetition with critical

difference" (6).Therefore, this study aims to investigate these critical

differences to show that Rhys is what one may call, in Roland Barthes's

terms, reader-turned-writer. Moreover, her parodial rewriting of Jane Eyre

as Wide Sargasso Sea re-presents Bronte's one-sided narrative by telling

the unspoken, untold text by the now-present, open –mouthed Antoinette,

and the process it transforms in Said's words "giving voice to what was

silent or marginally present"(66)

In her letters, Rhys wrote about her concern that Wide Sargasso Sea

would be viewed as "just another adaptation of Jane Eyre". Today critics

view the novel not as an "adaptation" but rather as a critical revision of the

8

nineteenth-century classic. By reconstructing Bronte's colonial text from a

postcolonial perspective, Rhys unveils issues related to colonialism that

Bronte overlooks and ignores. She gives voice to the colonized people

through Antoinette, who is totally silenced, dehumanized in the earlier

colonial text. To investigate this, the researcher analyzes Wide Sargasso

Sea in relation to Jane Eyre to answer the following questions: What are

the attitudes and values that were turned upside down from such nexus

between the two novels? and how does Wide Sargasso Sea alter the way

one reads and understands Jane Eyre?. What are the fruits of such

distinguished use of intertextuality ? Why would Rhys choose to rewrite

Bertha's story and add to a hundred-year-old novel instead of writing a

new story ?

Through the chapters of this study, the researcher attempts to

investigate Why Wide Sargasso Sea gives voice to a marginalized character

and transforms her original tragic demise into a kind of victorious heroism.

Moreover, the intertextual nexus between the two novels raises critical

issues of racial and gender conflicts through comparing and contrasting the

narrative techniques, and the main characters of the two novels. It is not

the death of the originating author and text that will be discussed in this

study. What is foregrounded "relationality" and "interconnectedness"

between the two texts. Hence, it is hoped that such analysis will be helpful

9

to gain a comprehensive awareness of Post-colonial issues and writings,

in general, and Rhys's style and reasons behind her choice to write her

parodial novel in that distinguished skillful manner, in particular .

Chapter one displays the framework of the study mainly to

foreground the historical and cultural background that stands behind Rhys's

choice to rewrite Bertha's story and add to a hundred-year-old colonial

novel instead of writing a new story completely independent of Jane Eyre

.This chapter concentrates exclusively on the technique of “rewriting” a

canonical text. It examines the act of rewriting in order to show how

revising another one's work is a "task that simultaneously looks back into

the past and forward into the future" (McClinton 7). For any resisting

nation struggling under the domination of another, revising the texts of that

dominant society is a method of resistance that Rachel Blau DuPlessis calls

a "decolonization of the narrative" (112). It is an active form of resistance

that for postcolonial authors is especially attractive, given the importance

of literary education in the colonial school system. Postcolonial authors

may often feel as though they have only been described, and this is their

opportunity to turn the tables of description. Postcolonial rewrites can also

honor the first work by acknowledging its influence and significance in the

colonial canon and at the same time reject the ideology of the first text,

10

whether that ideology has to do with race, gender, or imperialism, in order

to illuminate the problems inherent in that ideology.

Moreover, the researcher cites Roland Barthes´s theory of "readerly"

and "writerly" as terms Barthes employed to delineate one type of

literature from another and to implicitly interrogate ways of reading. Like

positive or negative habits that the modern reader brings into one's

experience with the text itself which criticizes the traditional texts that are

seen as artifacts that must be approached by readers in a passive way.

Postcolonial rewriting challenges that traditional approach, asking much of

readers and empowering them in the process. In addition, this chapter also

includes a general definition of the Colonial and Victorian norms and

values, in order to explain how they interact with Jane Eyre and Wide

Sargasso Sea.

In Chapter two the researcher analyzes Jane Eyre as a colonial

classical text . It depicts Bronte's novel as reflection of history from a

colonial perspective, whereas Rhys's novel is an attempt to reframe that

history from a postcolonial perspective. Bronte's major concern is to voice

her strong resentment against gender and class inequality within the

domains of England. Knowing that capitalism influenced the internal as

well as the external situation, Bronte does not provide both sides of the

equation. Instead, she concentrates on domestic affairs at the expense of

11

global issues that deal with racial difference and colonialism. She

empowers her English heroine by granting her full control over her own

voice while reducing the "other" racially different Jamaican woman to a

marginalized, voiceless character.

"To read a text through its gaps and silences means to expose its

hidden messages and its repressed characters"(Spivak 11) . For this

purpose, the researcher reads Jane Eyre through the absent voice of the

Jamaican Bertha Mason, to highlight her situation in the colonial text and

to prove that the forces that oppress Jane are less complicated because they

are quite clear and have a tangible structure, while the obstacles Antoinette

faces are more complicated and difficult to deal with. Thus, Bertha's and

other Third World colonized people struggle is much more intense and

violent as the English colonialist attempts to eliminate the cultural and

historical background of the natives to impose their own culture. In this

chapter , it is argued that Jane shows a Victorian feminist transformation

because she conforms to the Colonial/Victorian ideology .She is a feminist

protagonist only in the sense that she fitted the requirements of western

modernity at the expense of the "other" colonized, voiceless, mad woman.

In Chapter Three, the researcher examines how the issue of race and

gender affects rewriting by analyzing Wide Sargasso Sea as a postcolonial

text concerned with race and gender inequality to show that our ideas about

race, even about our own race, are socially constructed. The researcher

12

analysis of Wide Sargasso Sea focuses on Antoinette/ Berth's Creole

identity as colonized and how her difficulty in establishing a place either in

the black island culture or the English culture led to her madness, both in

Wide Sargasso Sea itself and in the first book Jane Eyre. Through an

examination of race relations and history in the Caribbean and Rhys's own

feelings on the subjects of race, gender and identity, the researcher argues

that Rhys's reconstruction of Bertha into the Creole Antoinette who is

neither black nor white, neither British nor Caribbean is to change the way

we read Jane Eyre by forcing us to look at the ways Bronte constructs race

and Othering in her novel and questions the received notion of history and

culture delivered by Jane Eyre as a classical colonial text .

In addition, this chapter discusses how Wide Sargasso Sea focuses

especially on the colonial experience in the way in which personal

relationships repeat the power dynamics of the colonialism as a conquest

culture by showing that Rochester considers Antoinette to be mad because

she does not act according to his English Victorian norms of morality and

behavior. Moreover, it explains how Antoinette is colonized by her British

husband who tries to alienate her from herself and from her own culture,

and that the rejection by her unloving husband makes her miserable and

makes it easier for him to break her down. Consequently, to prove that

Rochester’s oppression of Antoinette is not only a consequence of his

13

patriarchal upbringing, but also derives from his role as a colonizer and that

her madness is a consequence of an unhealthy patriarchal society.

The life of Antoinette changes dramatically during the course of the

novel, from her childhood as a girl on a beautiful Caribbean island, to a

woman locked up in the cold attic of her English husband . However,

before being locked she tries to win her husband's heart by acting as

English as she can, but fails because he only sees the Creole in her. From

Rochester's point of view, no matter what Antoinette does, she can never be

good enough for him, it is a game she cannot win, since she cannot change

her own background. In his eyes he will always be superior simply because

he is a white, English man and she just a Creole woman from the West

Indies. Thus, because Wide Sargasso Sea is bound to the story of Jane

Eyre, there is no way for Antoinette to escape her narrative destiny that is

waiting for her in the English text. The novel provides an interesting point

of view for the possible background of the madwoman in the attic and

sheds light on the life of a Creole hybrid during the 19th century.

To make Rhys's intention of rewriting the Creole in Jane Eyre clear,

and to discuss the meanings of Rhys's point of view as a modern twentieth

century Creole, this chapter also discusses the intertextual connection

between wide Sargasso sea and Jane Eyre, connections which reveal

Rhys's novel to be subversive critique of the colonial discourse as an act of

resistance by which the colonial subject is reclaimed .

14

Generally, this study explores a postcolonial text that rewrites an

earlier colonial text. The heroines in both Jean Eyre and Wide Sargasso

Sea are subjects of domination and humiliation by the system of patriarchal

and colonial oppression prevalent in England and Jamaica during that time.

However, Bronte and Rhys offer two different ideologies and therefore two

different representations of social reality that reflect each author's

consciousness and world view. Therefore, the principal objective is to

expose why and how Wide Sargasso Sea goes beyond Bronte's text to

reveal issues related to colonialism that Bronte overlooks and ignores like

racial and gender inequality in the British colonies by employing

intertextual strategies between the two novels that raise fundamental issues

about race and gender conflicts. In addition , this study discusses the

narrative strategies, main characterization and cultural shifts that surface in

the rewriting by comparing and contrasting the two texts to clarify how the

attitudes and values turned upside down due to such nexus between the two

novels. Consequently, it will clarify the position of Wide Sargasso Sea as a

masterpiece of its own .

To answer the questions of this study, the researcher adopts the post-

colonial approach which deals with literature produced in countries that

once were colonies of other countries and focuses on race relations ,mainly,

within the theories of Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Julia Kristeva, and

15

,Roland Barthes, to highlight concepts of postcolonializm, intertextuality,

and strategies of rewriting. In order to understand Rhys's attitude and style,

two methods are applied: First, the analytical method which is a way of

deepening one's understanding and appreciation of the literary works in

question, this method is adopted in order to analyze the narrative

techniques in relation to the post-colonial values and issues, on one hand,

and to the main characters , on the other hand. Second, the comparison and

contrast method will be used to show the differences and similarities in

narrative techniques and in the main characterizations in both novels. These

methods are applied on two levels: on the internal level (within Wide

Sargasso Sea), and on the external level (between the two novels)

However, after checking the catalogues of the UMI Dissertation

Expree and King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology, the

researcher has found that no study has tackled these two novels from the

same perspective, and within one dissertation. Nevertheless, there are many

studies that could have serve as a valuable sources of reference for this

study:

Heist, Meredith. A Ghost Ride: Bertha Mason's story MA. Truman

State U, 2008 .

This study acts as a retelling narrative of Bronte's Jane Eyre from the point

of view of Bertha Mason. Written in the first person stream of

16

consciousness, it attempts to offer a new perspective on the story, different

from Jean Rhys' re-interpretation of Wide Sargasso Sea. This study has

enable the researcher to comprehend more dimensions of Bertha's

character. However, it differs from the proposed study in its method and

way of application .

Reavis, Serena B. "Myself yet not quite myself": Jane Eyre ,Wide

Sargasso Sea, and a third space of enunciation, and, "Being herself

invisible, unseen, unknown": Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours, and the re-

inscribed lesbian woman. MA. U of North Carolina, 2005.

The importance of this study lies in its first part which investigates how

Jean Rhys "creolizes" Jane Eyre and creates a place that is at once both

Jane Eyre and not Jane Eyre to capture the struggle of Bertha and Jane's

identity and to reiterate the feminist struggle of Jane Eyre and Bertha

Rochester. This study differs from the proposed study in its application of

the feminine post-modern approach .Yet, it has been useful in providing a

model application by comparing the two novels from a feminist perspective

Akagi, Izumi, Creole identity from shifting points of view: The West

Indies from Shakespeare to Jean Rhys .M A. Oklahoma City U, 2004.

This study explores the historical and cultural context of those who are

called "Creole" as they were mentioned in various texts and described in

17

literary works from an imperial point of view. This thesis focuses on the

English Creole and the original meaning of the term "Creole", as well as,

the differences between the descriptions of the Creole in the historical texts

and literary works. The third chapter, particularly, has been useful to the

proposed study as it discusses and compares the Creoles as presented in

Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea and Rhys's intention in rewriting the

Creole in Jane Eyre. However, it differs in its concentration on the Creole

identity while the current study concentrates on the intertextual relationship

between the two novels from post-colonial perspectives.

McClinton, Jennifer Anne. Rewriting empire: Rewriting canonical

British texts from a postcolonial perspective .PhD. U of Oklahoma,

2001.

This dissertation examines several postcolonial texts that rewrite or revise

earlier English texts. McClinton's objective is to uncover the reasons why

this is such a popular method of writing for postcolonial authors and how

those reasons are revealed through their works. This study has been

beneficial to the current study as it shed lights on many post-colonial issues

and how postcolonial writers treat the European literary tradition in a

variety of ways. But it differs from the proposed study in the respect that it

tackles only Wide Sargasso Sea with many other different texts and poems.

18

Zaibaq, Lama Kuttab. Patriarchal And Colonial Oppression In Jane

Eyre And Wide Sargasso Sea. MA. University of Houston- Clear

Lake, 1997.

The importance of this study lies in its first part which concentrates on the

patriarchal and the Colonial issues in Jane Eyre And Wide Sargasso Sea.

However, it differs in its focus on the similarities between the two texts

rather than the differences to prove that Jane and Antoinette are similar

thus, have a sisterhood bond between them, while the current study depicts

the intertextual similarities and differences between the two texts to prove

that Antoinette's struggle is much more difficult than Jane's . Zaibaq also

concentrates on theories related to familial relationship and doesn't apply

intertextuality like the current study does. Yet, it has been useful in

providing a model application of postcolonializm by comparing the two

novels.

Walker, Lisa .Looking like what you Are: Race, sexual style and the

construction of identity.PhD. Louisiana State University and

Agricultural & Mechanical College, 1995.

This study explores the function of body politics in constructing minority

identities, or how people's physical and stylistic attributes are invested with

meanings about who they are. It is interested in how race and sexual

19

differences are defined in the confluence of discourses around visibility and

invisibility. This study has been useful in providing application of racial,

sexual and identity issues from a post-colonial perspective on many texts

including Jean Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea .Yet, it differs in its

concentration on physical, racial and sexual aspects.

In fact, the main reasons that stand behind choosing this topic are as

follows: First, postcolonial period arrives at different times in different

nations. Consequently, The process of postcolonial rewriting has been

questioned repeatedly by scholars around the globe. However, Post-

colonial rewriting are studied as a result of the colonial experience which

gives rise to a host of questions concerning the impact of colonial period

literature .

postcolonial criticism and literature, as well as cultural studies and

multicultural texts, have developed an important role in postcolonial

literature . These contemporary literary voices are changing the notion of

identity, for they argue that “sameness” is an impossible goal for multi-

cultural writers to achieve; what they have in common is the collective

experience of their differences. In arguing that the West has constructed the

Third World as Other, postcolonial literature are creating a new history for

their nations through the text, as the researcher attempts to show in this

study . It is a history that exposes the oppressive and often crushing

20

influence of the West to reveal elements of the culture that are ignored in

texts of white European origin.

a great deal of cultural and literary resistance of the postcolonial

realm is demonstrated by means of literary works. The emergence of

postcolonial literature in the past few years shows that literature has

become a "writing cure" for the formerly colonized subjects to express their

discontent and to regain what they have been deprived of in the years of

colonization. This method enables writers of different ethnicities or of (pre-

) colonized background to document their personal experience or the

communal histories of their once colonized countries. The composition of

postcolonial literary works functions as literary resistance. It is the media

for literature writers or critical theorists to imagine, re- construct the

oppressed stories of their own or of their forefathers, and to express their

opinions about the condition of the Coloniality or postcoloniality.

Notably, Said's Orientalism (1978) had a great impact by telling us

how the image of the colonized people was formed by the Western

scholarly and literary works in which the Orient was described as inferior,

irrational, and depraved. A good example of that is the mad Creole

woman(that this study tackles) who was born in Jamaica (one of the former

British Caribbean colonies), was described in Bronte's Jane Eyre as a

"madwoman" who uttered not a single word but "growled like some strange

21

wild animal". Because of her insanity, Antoinette/Bertha was confined in

the attic in the province in England by her English husband who regretted

having been married to the Creole and was ashamed of her. Therefore,

readers know how the Englishman thought of and dealt with her, but never

know how the Creole thought of him. The Creole can be the "Oriental" for

the English in the sense that Said mean's it. Rhys imagined and described

the med woman's past life in Jamaica which was omitted in Jane Eyre. In a

way, she seemed to anticipate Said's idea in advance--that the point of view

of the oriental was missing in Western literature.

Thus, this study sheds light on some important contemporary

postcolonial theories to give an insight into the mutually interactive

relationship which exists between literary texts and their cultural and

historical contexts. Furthermore, to show that Rewriting as opposed to

merely writing is significant for post-colonial authors because in many

ways they have themselves been "written" as Said asserts "They describe

us ... That's all. They have the power of description, and we succumb to the

pictures they construct" (168).

The second reason for choosing this topic is that in the context of

postcolonialism, the subject of the mad wife has "evoked the most

extensive criticism, serving as an ideal example for colonial repression and

anxieties" (Rubik 28).Therefore, this study shows that what Rhys

22

overthrow's in Wide Sargasso Sea is precisely the fictional image that is

planted on the subaltern characters. Antoinette's struggling journey , for

instance, may be interpreted as the resistance to the colonial gaze, which

the Western hegemony fixes upon the Other or the marginalized Third

World.

However, the existence of the Creole who appeared in Jane Eyre has

gone unrecognized for a long time and was suddenly paid attention to in

1960's. It is due to Rhys's most famous novel, Wide Sargasso Sea , that the

Creole woman in Jane Eyre comes to be recognized dramatically because

Rhys takes up the Creole woman as the protagonist in Wide Sargasso Sea.

In the classical Western literature, the point of view is always that of

the European, who adheres to traditional European value systems. Thus, the

importance of the project of creating revisions critical of existing cultural

traditions can be summarized in this statement by Adrienne Rich:

Re-vision--the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of

entering an old text from a new critical direction-is for women more

than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we can

understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot

know ourselves ... We need to know the writing of the past, and know

23

it differently than we have ever known it; not to pass on a tradition but

to break its hold over us.(35)

Therefore, the significance of the current study lies in its attempts to

prove that Rhys provides what may be termed a postcolonial critique of

Bronte's colonial text to give readers a glimpse of the world-wide activities

of British imperialism. Thus, it is hoped to widen the awareness and

understanding of Rhys's unique style and her individual rewriting of Jane

Eyre in order to reveal her postcolonial issues.

Third, Bronte's masterpiece is present in literary programs world-wide.

Mostly, it is taught as a text-book. Hence, this study is meant to deepen

scholars awareness of its impact as one of the most reputable, inspiring and

productive texts in English literature. It has generated many diverse and

controversial critical readings and has produced not only sequels, but

prequels or other spin-offs, among them classic novels such as Wide

Sargasso Sea and Rebecca, causing it to function as a foundational myth

for many other texts.

However, a great deal of studies, theses and dissertations have

tackled Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea, but none have applied both

intertextuality and postcolonial theory within one dissertation. Therefore,

this study is hopefully meant to enrich researchers, students, and readers,

24

knowledge of the novels discussed and the history of British colonialism of

the nineteenth century.

IV

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Abstract

This study explores a postcolonial text Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys which rewrites an earlier colonial text, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. The heroines in both Jean Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea are subjects of domination and humiliation by the system of patriarchal and colonial oppression. However, Bronte and Rhys offer two different ideologies and therefore two different representations of social reality that reflect each author's consciousness and world view. Therefore, the researcher's principal objective is to expose how Wide Sargasso Sea goes beyond Bronte's text to reveal issues related to colonialism that Bronte overlooks and ignores like racial and gender inequality in the British colonies by questioning some common assumptions of the colonial society to reinstate the marginalized in the face of the dominant. Rewriting, as Terry Threadgold describes, is a transformative way to make "new discursive spaces" where "the unthought" and "the unspoken" are made "visible and audible"(56). In Wide Sargasso Sea Rhys seeks to uncover an alternate truth, exposing the limits of a literary canon that assumes a shared white heritage in its audience . It is a revision in which the madwoman silenced in Jane Eyre speaks and tells her own side of the story. Her voice exposes and turns upside down the values, patriarchal and colonialist, upon which the plot and characters of Bronte's novel depend. Therefore, Rhys provides what may be termed a postmodernist and a postcolonial critique of Bronte's colonial text to give us a glimpse of the world-wide activities of British imperialism.

In her book A theory of Parody, Linda Hutcheon (1947-) refers to postmodern parodial rewriting as "repetition with critical difference" (6).Therefore, this study aims to investigate these critical differences to show that Jean Rhys is what one may call, in Roland Barthes's terms, reader-turned-writer. Moreover, her parodial rewriting of Jane Eyre as Wide Sargasso Sea re-presents Bronte's one-sided narrative by telling the unspoken, untold text by the now-present, open –mouthed Antoinette, and the process it transforms in Edward Said's words "giving voice to what was silent or marginally present" (66). Hence this study explores how Wide Sargasso Sea fills the gaps within Jane Eyre by employing intertextual strategies that point us to a particular process of reading to challenge the colonial canon and reveal possibilities of alternative interpretation .

Submitted by: Nada Mohammad Al Amri Supervised by: Dr. Abu-Talib Ahmad

Dean of the College of Arts and Administrative Sciences:

Dr. Anjab Ghulam Naby Qutb Addi

II

Table of Contents English Abstract……………………………...………………...…..………………..111

Arabic Abstract…………………………………..……………..……………..………IV

Acknowledgments……………………….…...…………………................................V

Introduction …………………..……………………………………………………….1

1- Chapter One : (Re-)Telling History …...…………………………………………..26

2- Chapter Two : Charlotte Bronte's Celebrated Heroine…………………………..…64

3- Chapter Three : The Silent Speaks……………………………………………..…109

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………192

Works Cited……………………………….…………………………………………212