- The document presents a post-colonial critique of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte using Jean Rhys' prequel novel Wide Sargasso Sea. - It analyzes the colonialist portrayal of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre, describing her as savage and beast-like, versus her identity as a Creole woman from the Caribbean in Wide Sargasso Sea. - Wide Sargasso Sea attempts to tell Bertha's story from her youth in the Caribbean through her unhappy marriage and displacement in England, challenging the Eurocentric misrepresentation of her character in Jane Eyre.

2. Presented by: Saiqa Manzoor
Course instructor :Dr. Usman Ghani
A post colonial
critique on Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte
with the help of its
prequel Wide
Sargasso Sea by Jean
Rhys

3. Colonialism, imperialism and Hegemony
Imperialism – policy of extending the rule of a nation or
empire over other nations
Colonialism – political, social, economic, and cultural
domination of a territory and its people by a foreign
power for an extended period of time
Colonialism is the building and maintaining of colonies in
one territory by people from another territory.
Sovereignty over the colony is claimed by the
metropolis.
Social structure, government and economics within the
territory of the colony are changed by the colonists
Reasons for colonialism
Search for wealth, trade
Need to settle excess population
Evangelical zeal
Theoretical framework
Ideological legitimization
Eurocentric racism ( Rudyard Kipling 1899)
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burde
n

4. WHITEMAN’SBURDEN
 Take up the White Man‘s
burden—
—Send forth the best ye
breed—
 Your new-caught sullen
peoples,
—Half devil and half child.

5. COUNTER BACK TO COLONIALISM
 Frantz Fanon (1967)
He was influential in the field of
post-colonial studies and was
perhaps the pre-eminent thinker
of the 20th century on the issue
of decolonization and the
psychopathology of
colonization.
 Edward Said
Orientalism (1978) the theory's
founding work
Edward Said analyzed the
works of Balzac, Baudelaire and
Lautréamont, exploring how
they were both influenced by
and helped to shape a societal
fantasy of European racial
superiority.
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6. • Charlotte Bronte (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) a British novelist, the eldest out of
the three famous Brontë sisters whose novels have become standards of English
literature ( isogloss of Eurocentrism )
• Jane Eyre a retrospect novel, tells the story of a plain governess (Jane) who is an
orphen , after early life difficulties, falls in love with her employer, Mr. Rochester.
They marry, but only after Rochester's insane first wife, Bertha Mason (of whom
Jane initially had no knowledge) dies in a dramatic house fire.
Novelist and Novel

7. Charlotte through her protagonist Jane by
following the technique of ‗Bildungsroman‘ over
generalize the elements of ‗Englishness‘ as was
the tendency of that age along with other English
canons
Jane Eyre , an autobiographical novel deals with
matter of Identity
( Creole-Bertha vs Englishness-Jane)
Identity is whatever makes an entity recognizable. In
psychology and sociology, identity is a person‘s
conception and expression of his individuality or
group affiliations. In post colonial studies identity
refers to identity of subaltern ;the fact of being
who or what they are.
Creoles are culturally alienated people,
Europeans born or living in West Indies, educated
to conceive of England as ‗Home‘ they were also
excluded as colonials inferiors.
Ideological grounds…

8. • The character of Bertha Mason is of crucial importance
to the whole plot of the novel in maintaining the
‗colonial hegemony‘ and ― cultural oppression‖ of the
colonizers on the colonized without taking into account
the feelings of the later.
• Unnaturally exaggerated character of her where horror
and pity is predominant.
• Highly hostile representation by authoress.
• A continuous threat
Character of Bertha Mason

9. We become first aware of her
existence on the page 108 when Jane
hears a ― curious, distinct,formal
mirthless laugh‖. Then for several weeks
she heard that thrilling laugh and ―
eccentric murmurs‖ which constitutes ‗
sound only‘ but NOT speech. What a ‗
dehumanized‘ status is given to a
woman of flesh and blood is nothing
but penned through a highly colonial
mind.
Character of Bertha
Mason contd..

10. Soon it was presumed that the unknown
source of sounds are of some devil
―There was a demoniac laugh, low,
suppressed and deeply uttered…‖ Jane
Eyre p.150 ― A satan in his subordinates
form p.212. It was strongly assumed
that voices are not produced by a
human at all ― This door was open , a
light shone out of the room from within: I
heard thence a snarling snatching
sound, almost like a dog quarreling
p.211, ― a canine noise p.213
Character of Bertha Mason
contd..

11. • This representation of Bertha Mason as a savage, beast like ,
a blood sucking vampire brought to a climax by the writer
when Bertha Mason attacks and injures her own brother_Mr.
Mason by biting him viciously. Mr Rochester‘s warning to her
brother in the words as if she is unearthly spirit ―I warned
you,‖ was his friend‘s answer; ―I said—be on your guard
when you go near her‖
• By the time Bridges intervenes the wedding ceremony of
Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester , it was well established that
the mysterious figure , hardly human , imprisoned in the
Thornfield‘s secret chamber is dangerous for other people‘s
lives and should be barred in isolation. Bronte is at great
pains to describe that such treatment on the part of
Rochester is not only justified but indispensible as well
Character of Bertha Mason contd..

12. • This is what justified by Rudyard Kipling as ‗WHITE MAN‘S BURDEN‘
the lines of his poems goes like this
Take up the White Man‘s burden—
—Send forth the best ye breed—
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
—Half devil and half child
The same philosophy ―civilize the uncivilized ones‖ is what
professed by many colonial minds like Max Boot in his book ― The
Savage Wars for Peace‖ insists that Kipling was right, that
―colonialists everywhere, usually received scant thanks
afterward.‖
To name but few Ronny Heaslop by E.M Forster and Kurtz by
Christopher Marlow
Aligning with colonial tradition…

13. ACLEARMARKOFCOLONIALITY…
No objection/ sympathetic word for
Bertha’s fate
It is thus justified by the writer: ―since
the medical men had pronounced her
mad, she had of course been shut up‖
Science+society+religion+Rochester+J
ane… all professed the ideology of ―
extermination of brutes‖

14. OTHERS VS WE OR CENTRE VS PERIPHERY
 Jane holds the ‗centre‘ seeks to
establish herself on the expense
of ‗periphery‘ that is Bertha, Mrs.
Reeds, Georgiana, Eliza and
Miss Branche Ingram. Her own
words goes like this ―Miss
Ingram was a mark beneath
jealousy: she was too inferior to
excite the feeling...her mind was
poor and heart barren‖
 beast, tigress, a clothed hyena,
lunatic, seeming paradox to the
‗freshness‘ presented through Jane
 Through Bertha‘s savage state of
being Jane realizes that her ‗self‘ is
civilized, through her physical
obliteration(erasure) she finds her
happiness. It was more than
important for Charlotte to present a
silent figure, denied a voice and is
unable to speak
Jane Eyre Bertha Mason

15. By a Dominican writer Jean Rhye as a
prequel to Jane Eyre.. A prequel is
unlike a sequel, a text whose narrative
takes place before the primary text.
‗Wide Sargasso Sea‘ tries to tell the
story of Bertha , the daughter of a
Creole mother from the time of her
youth in the Caribbean to her
unhappy marriage and
‗Displacement‘ in England.
Wide Sargasso Sea

16. She reinvents that sense of ‗ alterity ‘ and
came about with an attempt to dig for us ‗the
lost identity‘ of Mr. Rochester‘s mad wife,
Bertha Mason as Rhys felt that with the
Eurocentric prejudice Charlotte has totally
misrepresented a Creole woman and the West
Indies.
―why should she think that Creole women are
lunatics and that? What a shame to make
Rochester‘s wife, Bertha an awful madwoman
and I immediately thought I‘d write story as it
might really have been.‘ (Jean Rhys: The West
Indies Novels, p.144)
so Rhye‘s text is an answer to the
Essentialism and subvert assumptions of
Victorian text.
Wide Sargasso Sea

17. • The opening of the novel WSS is set in 1833 a British owned Jamaica
where the protagonist Antoinette conveys the story of her life from
childhood to arranged marriage with an unnamed Englishman
(implied as Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre) as the novel progresses,
Antoinette whom he renames Bertha , descends into madness.
• The novel is split into three parts:
• Part one takes place in Martinique, Jamaica is narrated by Antoinette
which includes the facts of her life including her mother‘s madness.
• Part two is from the point of view of her husband following their
marriage in Dominica. One of the likely catalysts for Antoinette‘s
downfall (an increased sense of paranoia tinged with disappointment)
is the suspicion created between husband and wife by Daniel
Cosway_a relative of Antoinette.
• The third and the shortest part is again from the persective of
Antoinette, now known as Bertha, living in Rochester‘s mansion called
her ‗Great House‘. At the end of the novel decides to take her own life
but it‘s not suggested how much did she succeeds in her attempt
Wide Sargasso Sea plot overview

18. • The novel WSS ends with house on fire (set by Antoinette) and
then we have the following concluding paragraph: ― Grace
Poole was sitting on table but she had heard the scream too, for
she said ,‖What was that?‖ She got up, came over and looked
at me. I lay still , breathing evenly with my eyes shut. ―I must have
been dreaming‖ she said. Then she went back, not to the table
but her bed. I waited a long time after I heard her snore , then I
got up, took the keys and unlocked the door. I was outside
holding my candle. Now at last I know why I was brought here
and what I have to do. There must have been a draught for the
flame flickered and I thought it was out. But I shielded it with my
hand and it burned up again to light me along the dark
passage‖.
Wide Sargasso Sea

19. • As Creoles are culturally alienated people, Europeans born or
living in West Indies, educated to conceive of England as
‗Home‘ they were also excluded as colonials inferiors. As the
same time they were racially privileged to Africans who existed
as bound labor. In Rhys‘ novel Antoinette‘s mental breakdown is
attributed to a large part to her inability to adapt to the life and
culture of England as acute ‗Alienation‘ she feels. To Rochester
she is simply another aspect of ‗West Indies‘_Otherness that he
cannot connect with: ― She never blinks at all it seems to me.
Long, dark, alien eyes. Creole of a pure English descent she may
be, but they are not English or European either‘ (WSS,p.40)
Rhye‘s justification…

20. .