The document provides a summary of Jean Rhys's novel Wide Sargasso Sea in 3 paragraphs. It discusses the post-emancipation setting presented in the novel as one of despair, subverting the conventional view that the end of slavery marked progress. It explores Rhys's portrayal of women in the novel, comparing the experiences of the characters Jane and Antoinette. It also analyzes Rhys's rejection of Enlightenment ideas of autonomy and liberation in the novel, grounded in the nostalgia the character Antoinette feels for the culture of slavery.

1. 203 The PostColonial
Studies
Name : Mayuri Pandya
Roll No: 14
Topic : Women,Slavery and the Problem of
Freedom in Wide Sargasso Sea
Submitted To: S.B.Gardi Department of
English,MKBU

2. Table of contents
About Author
01
02 About Novel
03 Women
04 Slavery
05 Freedom

3. About Author
Jean Rhys was born in Roseau, Dominica, on August 24, 1890. Her father was a Welsh doctor. When she
was sixteen years old, she was sent to England to live with an aunt and to attend the Perse School at
Cambridge and later the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Although Dominica would influence her writing,
Rhys would return to her birthplace only once, in 1936. When her father died, Rhys was forced to take on
a variety of jobs in England, which included working as a chorus girl with a touring musical company, a
mannequin, an artist's model, and a ghostwriter of a book about furniture.
Rhys did not receive much critical acclaim for her works during most of her lifetime, and when it finally
arrived in her later years, Rhys stated that it came too late. Contemporary critics studying her work today
believe that the reason for Rhys's going virtually unnoticed in the literary world was that she was ahead of
her time. Feminist theorists, in particular, believe that Rhys's theme of women as exploited victims was not
easily accepted in Rhys's day. After the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea, however, Rhys was made a
CBE (Commander of the order of the British Empire, an honor bestowed by the queen) in 1978. She was
also awarded the W. H. Smith Award for her last novel, as well as the Royal Society of Literature Award
and an Arts Council Bursary. She died on May 14, 1979, in Exeter. Her unfinished autobiography was
published posthumously under the title Smile Please (1979).

4. About Novel
Wide Sargasso Sea, published in 1966 toward the end of Jean Rhys's writing career, was the most successful of
Rhys's literary works. The novel was well received when it was first published and has never been out of print. It
also continues to draw the interest of academics and literary critics today. The popularity of Wide Sargasso Sea
might be based on several factors. The general reader might enjoy this novel for the captivating story of a lonely
young woman who is driven to near madness by her need to be loved. Literary theorists, on the other hand, find
Rhys's novel rich in the portrayal of the damaging effects of colonization on a conquered people and the
debilitating consequences of sexual exploitation of women. Another group of readers, those interested in
multiculturalism, might be drawn to Wide Sargasso Sea for the insider's view that Rhys provides of nineteenth-
century life and culture on a Caribbean island.
Wide Sargasso Sea was written as Rhys's attempt to explain the character of Bertha Mason in Charlotte Brontë's
Jane Eyre. Rhys wanted to explore the reasons why Bertha Mason went mad. In doing so, Rhys fills her story
with conflict. There is the clash between former slaves and their previous owners; the overall misunderstandings
between the white and black races; the disparity in beliefs between the old white plantation owners and the new
English immigrants who come to live on the island. There is also the battle between men and women as they try
to satisfy their needs through their relationships with one another. And finally, the ultimate conflict, the interior
confusion the protagonist must face between her emotional and rational state of being.

5. Jean Rhys's Presentation of the Post Emancipation Jamaica setting of wide sargasso sea as one of
despair Subverts a conventional, progressive conception of history that the end of slavery marked a
triumph of good, will over. vicious greed and a spiritual and ethical advance for mankind In Novel. the
locus of despondency is Antoinette, for whom the Abolition of slavery Act means the death of her
immediate family members from Antoinette's Pespective the liberation the New English bring both rips
away safety and imposes new, repressive social control.

6. Women
European woman as bounded Slave is one of the most pivotal of these metaphors. Protesting not a lack of
women's rights but a set of european Expectations For creoles.Rhys ironically borrows the Enlightenment
analogy of women's Subjucation and chattel slavery.
Wide Sargasso Sea purposefully problematizes its conceptions of gender. "All women characters in
Rhys's fictions are mercilessly exposed to the financial and gendered constraints of an imperial world"
(Humm 187). This imperial world is created and controlled by white men. While Jane too is excluded, the
result for Antoinette is the development of a forced dependency on the very world that excludes her. She
represents a particularly modernist perspective on the suffering of woman: the abstract sense of
nothingness Antoinette experiences is so much worse than the concrete and real suffering Jane endures
and can therefore deal with and even battle. For Antoinette, even happiness is not real and elicits fear
(Rhys 55). The differences between the portrayal of each of these two women's lives significantly changes
the way we as readers understand how each novel conceives of womanhood and its associations.

7. Jane and Antoinette are both distressed by the issues posed by being a woman in a male-dominated society, but
they each deal with these dilemmas in a unique way. Jane has a very romantic and Victorian approach, whereas
Antoinette has a distinctly modernist approach. Jane battles a daunting but distinguishable foe. She is headstrong
and stubborn, refusing to be mistreated, whether it be by Aunt Reed, Brocklehurst, or Rochester. She manages
the socially ambiguous position of governess with dignity and practicality. Jane Eyre takes a special interest in the
lives of women and the internal psyche of one particular, bright woman. The novel upholds a belief that women
can achieve their goals. Jane gets what she wants: she marries Rochester, she finds (as well as creates) a family,
she becomes socially respectable and even gains financial independence. Rochester loves Jane as a wife and
respects her for her intelligence and talents. Jane also has no trouble at all in describing how she feels women
are restricted, she says:
"Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their
faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too
absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrowed-minded in their more privileged fellow-
creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making pudding and knitting stockings, to playing on the
piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or
learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex." [Brontë 112-13]

8. Wide Sargasso Sea maintains a steady absence of faith in woman's ability to transcend the oppression of her
gender. Rhys's novel depicts the near impossibility of "success" for a woman in a patriarchal world. This is a
strikingly different kind of feminism. Whereas Jane has developed many resources and defenses she can rely on
to get her through her tribulations, 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 the misery his answer of, "No, I do not" brings (89).

9. Slavery
Rhy's radical rejection of Enlightenment ideas of autonomy and liberation
is grounded in the novel in Antoinette's nostalgia for the culture of
slavery.
The burning of Coulibri tears down the facade of peace supported by
subtle smiles and frowns. In its destruction of the boundaries Of the
estate, the Fire reveals an intensity of feelings between Freedman and
planters and exposes hostility towards the Mason that the house walls
had hidden. Antoinette's perspective Shapes her experience of the fire.
Antoinette see only smoke and hears. "a horrible noise..Like animals
howling, but worse", perpetuating planter racism, which denied the
humanity of African West Indians in order to Justify Slavery.

10. The Fiery Death of coco. Annette's parrot assumes similarly
Metaphysical proportions. Because Mason has clipped his wings,
Coco cannot escapes. As Antoinette relates, "He made an effort to
Fly down but his clipped wings failed him and he fell Screeching
surmising that a Local Superstition about seeing a parrot die
causes the rioters to lose their momentum, Antoinette
attributes.the appearance of coco to divine intervention. However,
in the Novel's Symbolism, Coco's death prefigures Antoinette's
dream death both parrot and heroine are controlled and reduced
by a Metropolitan English Man who Ironically espouses the the
doctrine of liberation.

11. Freedom
Reflecting this English, Male desire for control, Part Two of The Novel Shifts to the perspective of the
unnamed Rochester. His narrative Command, however, is compromised by the difficulty he has adapting
to his new west Indian environment Recovering from a tropical Fever and experiencing culture shock
Rochester describes his perspective as one of confused impressions, " having blank in mind that cannot
be filled up".Overwhelmed by the dramatic physical features and sensuality Of the west Indies Rochester
imagines his new found Powerlessness as enslavement by a woman he associates with the land.
Antoinette's desire for an eroticization of her own powerlessness reverses her official historical social role
instead of slave holder she Plays the slave and simultaneously enacts a particular, antifeminist vision of
femininity as Complementary masochism to powerful male sadism.

12. Citation
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Signet Classic, Penguin Books USA Inc. New York: 1982
Gilchrist, Jennifer. “Women, Slavery, and the Problem of Freedom in Wide Sargasso Sea.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 58, no. 3,
2012, pp. 462–94. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24246943. Accessed 4 Oct. 2022.
Humm, Maggie. "Third World Feminisms: Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea." Practicing Feminist Criticism: an introduction. Great Britain:
Prentice Hall, 1995.
“The Experience of Womanhood in "Jane Eyre" and "Wide Sargasso Sea."” The Victorian Web, 21 May 2004,
https://victorianweb.org/neovictorian/rhys/lewkowicz14.html. Accessed 4 October 2022.
“Wide Sargasso Sea.” Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/wide-sargasso-sea. Accessed 4
October 2022.
123RF, www.123rf.com/photo_60257520_abolition-of-slavery-abolition-of-slavery-amendment-slavery-picture-towards-freedom-
woman-in-chains-.html. Accessed 4 Oct. 2022.
123RF, www.123rf.com/photo_17578413_picture-walking-with-his-head-down-women-with-a-chain-on-his-leg.html. Accessed 4 Oct.
2022.