1. The document provides an academic analysis of alienation and madness in Jean Rhys's novel Wide Sargasso Sea. 2. It discusses how Rhys uses narrative techniques like shifting perspectives between characters to mirror the fractured psyche and explores the inner worlds of her characters. 3. Key themes examined include the cultural displacement experienced by characters in being torn between England and the West Indies, and how confinement and isolation in the attic symbolize Antoinette's descent into madness exacerbated by social and emotional isolation as a Creole woman.

1. Alienation and Madness
in
'Wide Sargasso Sea’

2. Academic Details
Name : Rinkal Dangar
Roll No:18
Enrollment no : 4069206420220007
Paper name: The Postcolonial Studies
Paper no: 203
Paper code: 22408
Topic: Alienation and Madness in 'Wide Sargasso Sea’
Submitted to : Smt. S.B.Gardi, department of English M.K.B.U
Dated on: 18/10/2023
E-Mail : dangarrinkal0609@gmail.com

3. Introduction of the Writer
● Jean Rhys, whose full name was Ella Gwendolen Rhys Williams, was a British author
known for her novels, short stories, and her significant contribution to literature in
the 20th century. She was born on August 24, 1890, in Dominica, a Caribbean island
then part of the British West Indies. She later moved to England, where she
became a prominent writer.
● Rhys's narrative technique mirrors the fractured psyche of her characters, weaving
a fragmented tapestry of memories and emotions. It's in this narrative disarray that
we glimpse the madness creeping into the minds.
● Jean Rhys's writing is often praised for its psychological depth and its exploration
of the inner worlds of her characters. Her work has had a lasting impact on
literature and continues to be studied and admired for its contribution to the
modernist and postcolonial literary traditions

4. Alienation and Madness in Wide Sargasso Sea
To begin with, the narrative is divided into three parts, with Rhys’s protagonist, Antoinette, narrating the first part
while her unnamed husband, who is Rochester in Jane Eyre, narrates the second part, and then the third narration
goes back to her. Rhys’s avant-garde narrative perspective is suggestive: it presupposes the complex, undulating
nature of the human psyche and its inability in establishing the ‘centre’ amidst interlocking emotional and psychic
experiences that trouble it. Rhys first suggests this very nature of the human mind through her title, Wide Sargasso
Sea. The Sargasso Sea is said to be located Midway between the Atlantic Ocean and the West Indies. It is known for
its complex currents, which make it very difficult for sailors to navigate.(Vrankova)
Like the Sargasso Sea, a mass of seaweed surrounded by swirling currents in the Atlantic Ocean, the novel’s
troubled heroine is suspended between England and the West Indies and belongs fully to neither. (McKenzie)
Rhys, therefore, uses the Sargasso Sea to foreground the complex nature of the currents of the human mind as
regards race, gender, and segregation. However, in the midst of these, she attempts to locate the ‘centre’ of the
spherical nature of the human psyche in the character of her heroine, Antoinette. Interestingly, locating the ‘centre’
is paramount in Caribbean works that examine issues of slavery, exploration, segregation, and so on:
.

5. The Emergence of Madness
● One day a young girl followed me, singing “Go, white cockroach,
go, go.” I started walking fast, but she walked faster. “White
cockroach, go, go. Nobody wants you here. Go away” (Rhys)
● Rhys establishes a world in which everything rests on
problematic and strained relationships: between people of
different nationalities, races, languages, classes, against which
the struggle to maintain connection even within a family can
seem puny and defeated. (Savory)

6. Implied Madness
● Rochester enjoys torturing his victim, having pretended she is mad and done everything he
can to mistreat her until she feels like she is indeed going mad, he makes sure she can
never get away from him: ‘She’s mad but mine, mine … my lunatic. My mad girl’. (Rhys)
● “Infamous daughter of an infamous Mother” (Rhys 167)
● “I never loved, I never esteemed, I didn't even know her. I was not sure of the existence of
one virtue in her nature”(Bronte)
● It meant nothing to me. Nor did she [...] She never had anything to do with me at all (Rhys).
● Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea as “most problematic novel, revealing the author’s own
psychological complexity and the inner conflict that tore her mind apart… variously
reflected in all her heroines” (Panizza)
● Antoinette fully belongs neither to Europe nor to Jamaica

7. The Attic's Contribution to
Madness and Alienation in the Novel
Jean Rhys’s story of alienation is centred on two crucial metaphors: the sea and the island. The sea as an image of
separation and an increasing distance suggests the split in both space and time: the conflict between different
civilisations, between the past and the present (e.g., the destructive effects of slavery) as well as between the inner
world of the individual and the surrounding reality.(Vrankova)
Confinement and Isolation: The attic in "Wide Sargasso Sea" is where Antoinette Cosway, the main character, is confined by
her husband, Mr. Rochester. It's a physical space where she is essentially imprisoned, cut off from the rest of the world. This
confinement represents the social and emotional isolation that Antoinette experiences throughout her life as a Creole woman
in a colonial society.
Symbol of Madness: Similar to "Jane Eyre," the attic in "Wide Sargasso Sea" is associated with madness. Antoinette is
perceived as "mad" by her husband, Mr. Rochester, and she is locked in the attic as a result of his growing distrust and fear of
her. Her time in the attic is marked by her descent into a state of madness, which is exacerbated by her isolation.
Identity and Loss: The attic also symbolizes the loss of identity for Antoinette. As she is increasingly isolated and confined,
her sense of self and her connection to her roots begin to erode. The attic serves as a physical and metaphorical space where
she loses her sense of self and succumbs to the oppressive forces of her environment.

8. The Madwoman in the Attic
“Images of enclose and escape,fantasises in which maddened
doubles function as a social surrogates for docile
selves,obsessive depictions of diseases like anorexia,
agoraphobia and claustrophobia.”(Gilbert and Gubar)
“living as an exile in England” (Howells)

9. Continue….
Wide Sargasso Sea psychologically vindicates Antoinette and Annette,
demonstrating their intelligence, powerful emotions, personal
seriousness and correct instincts. But these traits are not enough to
save them. Rochester exploits Antoinette financially, uses her
physically, manipulates her emotionally, betrays her sexually, tortures
her psychologically and incarcerates her bodily until she commits
violent suicide. He enjoys the sympathetic ministrations of his devoted
servant-wife Jane Eyre for the rest of his life.

10. Conclusion
In the novel 'Wide Sargasso Sea,' various circumstances and
objects are used to vividly depict the themes of Alienation and
Madness
The sea also represents displacement, which is a central theme
in the novel. Antoinette and other characters are displaced
from their cultural roots and familiar surroundings. The sea's
vastness reflects the vast cultural and emotional distances that
separate them from their place of origin and their sense of
belonging.

11. References
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Edited by Stevie Davis, Penguin Classics, 2006.
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and
the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination. Yale University Press, 2020.
Howells, Coral Ann. Jean Rhys. St. Martin's Press, 1991.
McKenzie, Earl. Philosophy in the West Indian Novel. University of the West Indies Press,
2009.
Olasupo, Akintunde. “Alienation and Madness: A Literary-Psychopathological Approach.”
Open Science Repository, 16 February 2013, http://www.open-science-
repository.com/alienation-and-madness-a-literary-psychopathological-
approach.html.Accessed 15 October 2023.
.

12. References
Panizza, Silvia. “DOUBLE COMPLEXITY IN JEAN RHYS'S WIDE
SARGASSO SEA.” (2009).
Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea (Penguin Modern Classics). Edited by
Angela Smith, Penguin, 2000.
Savory, Elaine. Jean Rhys. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Vrankova, Kamila. A Fearful Voyage I Had: Dreams of Reality in Charlotte
Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. Dream,
Imagination and Reality in Literature.

13. Thank You