In Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea," the theme of interrogating hybridity is central, examining the complexities of identity, colonialism, and cultural blending. The novel scrutinizes the tensions and conflicts that arise from the mixing of different cultures and backgrounds, particularly through the lens of Antoinette Cosway, exploring the struggles of being caught between multiple worlds and identities.

1. Interrogating
Hybridity: Reading in
Jean Rhys’s
Wide Sargasso Sea
Department Of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

2. ● Name - Hina Parmar
● Roll No - 10
● Sem - 3
● Enrollment no - 4069206420220021
● Batch - 2022-24
● Email - hinaparmar612@gmail.com
● Subject - Interrogating Hybridity: Reading in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso
Sea
● Paper code - 22408
● Paper no - 203
● Paper - The postcolonial Studies
● Submitted to - Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English, Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Personal Information

3. Points to ponder
❖ Jean Rhys
❖ Wide Sargasso Sea
❖ Concept of Hybridity
❖ Hybridity in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’
❖ Hybrid Culture causes Psychological Break Down
❖ Conclusion
❖ References

4. Jean Rhys
❏ Jean Rhys, born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams (1890 -1979), was a
Dominican mid-twentieth-century writer and novelist. She was neither
European, nor Black but White and West Indian, an ethnicity which stamped
her personality as an outsider. Regarding this exotic background, the opposing
forces of society made Jean sing a different tune to life. The author lived a long
life but it was her childhood in the Caribbean that molded her personality as a
writer. Crushed by the harsh nickname of the “White cockroach”, Jean mirrored
the West Indian heroine of her chef-d'oeuvre, Wide Sargasso Sea. She once
declared “I have only ever written about myself”.
❏ In her study of Rhys’s life and work, Carole Angier asserts that Wide Sargasso
Sea is Mrs. Rochester’s story; but it is also, of course, Jean’s story. It is Jean’s
whole story”. Like Antoinette, she also bent under the pressure of the colonial
“Centre”, England. (Hanif)

5. Wide Sargasso Sea
❖ The 1960s, the decade in which Wide Sargasso Sea was published by Jean Rhys,
coincided with the time when postcolonialism as a critical theory got popularity.
❖ This piece of work has been acclaimed as an advocate of postcolonialism by some
critics.
❖ Wide Sargasso Sea was written almost as a protest against Jane Eyre, a novel
written by Charlotte Bronte in the nineteenth century. Bronte created a character
Bertha Mason who is the evil entity which lurks somewhere in the attic of
Thornfield where her protagonist Jane goes. The presentation of this helpless
character appears to be rather unfair to Jean Rhys.
❖ Jean Rhys comes to the defence of this woman. About the presentation of Bertha in
Jane Eyre.
❖ Spivak Gayatri Chakravarty writes: In this fictive England, (Bronte‟s Bertha) must
play out her role, act out the transformation of her “self” into that fictive other, set
fire to the house and kill herself, so that Jane Eyre can become the feminist
individualism heroine of British fiction…At least Rhys sees to it that the woman
from the colonies is not sacrificed as an insane animal for her sisters consolidation.
❖ Rhys gives Bertha a story, a background and also explains to the reader why this
woman became insane. Bronte explained her insanity rather irresponsibly by merely
pointing out that madness was inherited by Bertha and also because she was too
passionate. Rhys throws light on the trauma experienced by Antoinette, Rhys‟s
name for Bertha in Wide Sargasso Sea.
(Bhattacharjee)

6. Concept of Hybridity
❖ Hybridity, a concept popularized by celebrated postcolonial critic Homi. K. Bhabha,
is the creation of new cultural forms and identities which can be seen a result of the
colonial encounter.
❖ Hybridity is, originally a term related to botany, originally refers to grafting of
different species into a singular one.
❖ Hybridity is actually the clash of cultures and this clash of cultures produces
something new and brilliant, as the fiction of Salman Rushdie (India), Wilson
Harris (Caribbean) and the plays of Wole Soyinka (Nigeria) demonstrate.
❖ Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) is one of those fictions which beautifully
sketches the picture of hybridity.
❖ Hybridity also enables the postcolonial writer to negotiate the dangers of cultural
binarism (us/them) and the fundamentalist urge to seek ‘pure’ cultural forms.
(Nayar 200) These observations are important for the understanding of Jean Rhys’s
novel Wide Sargasso Sea.
(Mondal )

7. - In his Location of Culture, Bhabha argues that “Hybridity is
the sign of the productivity of colonial power, its shifting
forces and fixities; it is the name for the strategic reversal of
the process of domination through disavowal (that is, the
production of discriminatory identities that secure the 'pure'
and original identity of authority)”.
- He further remarks that “the display of hybridity - its
peculiar 'replication' – terrorizes authority with the ruse of
recognition, its mimicry, its mockery”. Therefore, “mimicry
emerges as the representation of a difference that is itself a
process of disavowal”. Indeed, he considers mimicry as the
post-colonial process of destabilizing the norms of the
colonizer which complicates the authority of the original.
(Hanif)

8. Hybridity in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’
- Homi K. Bhabha believes that the roots of hybridity are located in culture. He maintains that cultural
hybridity “entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy”. He has called hybridity “the
Third space”, where a dialogue between two different cultures is established and our sense of the historical
identity of culture as a homogenizing, unifying force” is challenged.
- Rhys’s novel is a case in disagreement with Bhabha’s speculations in this regard. In fact, in Wide Sargasso
Sea, to be a Creole or a “Hybrid” is essentially negative. Suffering from a troubled identity, the hybrids are
mostly regarded as outsiders. This novel revolves around Antoinette, a hybrid female who is rebuffed both
within her birthplace, the Caribbean island, and later in England, where she married an English man.
Keeping the woman under close surveillance, we find her miserably de trop to both black and white. The
heroine could never cherish the hope that she would one day be an English woman; neither will she ever be
a true West Indian. Therefore, belonging to everywhere and nowhere creates a homeless outsider who is the
target of hostile discrimination.
- As Hellen Carr rightly suggests, “Homelessness is the terrain of Rhys’s fiction, dealing as it does with those
who belong nowhere, between cultures, between histories”. But unlike many postcolonial critics, including
Bhabha, Rhys is hesitant to celebrate this hybridity and, more, is critical of its threats.
- The writer even points to Antoinette's fear of hybrid features when Antoinette is chased by the biracial boy.
She depicts him as having “a white skin, a dull ugly white covered with freckles, his mouth was a negro’s
mouth and worst, most horrible of all, his hair was crinkled, a negro’s hair, but bright red and his eyebrows
and eyelashes were red”. (Hanif)

9. ● The wide Sargasso Sea also falls in the scope of Homi Bhabha’s notion of Literary Hybridity. In the
essay “Of Mimicry and Man,” Bhabha questions the ambivalence of western authority (Singh).
Singh attempts to explain the notion of mimicry and hybridity. According to Singh, literary
“hybridity at the level of narrative form is fundamental to what we now know as postcolonial
literature. Modern literary forms such as the novel and the short story are modes of writing invented
in the West” (2009). (Kumar)
● Antoinette sees her life becoming a repetition of her mother’s, She was not only aware of the
similarities in their situation but realised that her own experience is a further stage in the
deterioration of the Creole woman. Antoinette becomes the victim of her hybrid identity.
Antoinette’s review of her story makes it evident that the trouble and the tragic result is not only
because of her mother’s rejection of her, or her husband’s rejection, as Adjarian points out:
“Antoinette’s psychological breakdown can also be linked to unconscious expectations she takes
into her marriage with Edward Rochester, which in the end are never satisfied”, but it is her identity
crisis, the society which is responsible for her disorientation.
● According to Missy Denn Kubitschek, “both the action of Wide Sargasso Sea and Rhys action in
writing the novel speak for remaining to assimilate.” (Kubitschek 27) Antoinette’s review of the
stages of her isolation, rejection and alienation embodies her search for identity and place and
culminates in her search for meaning. Antoinette feels “in between” because she lives between the
worlds of white Europeans and that of black Niggers and she is able to move between them and
mingle with those who live in each culture, but scorned by both groups for her difference. The
identity crisis of Antoinette, caused by Hybridity, ultimateleads her to suicide. This act of suicide
can be seen as the personal revolt of Antoinette, a resistance over her identity crisis. (Mondal)

10. ● Antoinette’s difficulties in constructing an identity of her own, her submissive
character from the beginning till the end, and the series of struggles she
undergoes can be perceived from Erikson’s socio-psychosocial theories of
identity and identity crisis. According to Erikson, the first step (0-1½) in a
child’s development is Trust vs. Mistrust, where the baby develops a sense of
trust towards it caregivers or a sense of mistrust if he or she finds them to be
unreliable. The second step (1½-3) is Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt. In this
stage, success leads to autonomy, failure to shame and doubt. In the novel, these
two stages remain vague and almost unrevealed due to the fact that our
knowledge of such events depends on what the narrator Antoinette can see and
narrate. We know that Antoinette’s father died when she was young. Due to the
natives’ hatred and discrimination against the whites, Antoinette’s childhood was
filled with loneliness, poverty, anxiety and fear.
● Applying Erikson’s theory, we find that Antoinette is becoming increasingly
desperate in search for social acceptance, moving between attempting to fit
herself into first the role of a Caribbean native and second that of a white English
girl. As an adolescent, Antoinette is keen on the notion of possessing a socially
acceptable identity in the face of cultural and racial rejection. Viewed as a hybrid
descending from English and Caribbean origins, Antoinette realizes that she is
rejected by both white and black cultures of which she is composed. (Yousef)

11. Hybrid Culture causes Psychological Break Down
● Antoinette's insanity can be connected to oblivious desires she considers her marriage with
Edward Rochester as utter fiasco in her life. Unfit to locate a brought together feeling of self
in her associations with Annette and Christophine, Antoinette endeavors to search for it in
her new spouse. It’s all owing to chaos of hybrid culture.
● When his underlying interest with her distinction has worn off and he finds out about her
family ancestry, he draws from her, leaving Antoinette edgy to win back oneself asserting
“reflect” she thought she had in Rochester.
● She starts gradual weakness and loss of memory and Antoinette's close relationship is called
into question and the pronouncements that characters in Jane Eyre make about the origins of
Antoinette's insanity.
● This is woven dexterously in this narrative by the writer as he treats the issue of the
character's mental illness but provides the reader with no clue and reason behind that
madness. It was asserted by Christophine that Annette became insane and mad due to her
inability to assimilate in new culture. These are the havocs of transculturality which causes
problems. Daniel Cosway is of the opinion and has different claim from what Rochester
says about her in Jane Eyre: that “... she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through
three generations!” (Hafeez)

12. Conclusion
Antoinette sees her life becoming a repetition of her mother’s. She was not only aware of the similarities in their
situation but realised that her own experience is a further stage in the deterioration of the Creole woman.
Antoinette becomes the victim of her hybrid identity. Antoinette’s review of her story makes it evident that the
trouble and the tragic result is not only because of her mother’s rejection of her, or her husband’s rejection, as
Adjarian points out: “Antoinette’s psychological breakdown can also be linked to unconscious expectations she
takes into her marriage with Edward Rochester, which in the end are never satisfied”. (Adjarian 203), but it is her
identity crisis, the society which is responsible for her disorientation.
According to Missy Denn Kubitschek, “both the action of Wide Sargasso Sea and Rhys action in writing the novel
speak for remaining to assimilate.” (Kubitschek 27) Antoinette’s review of the stages ofher isolation, rejection and
alienation embodies her search for identity and place and culminates in her search for meaning. Antoinette feels
“in between” because she lives between the worlds of white Europeans and that of black Niggers and she is able to
move between them and mingle with those who live in each culture, but scorned by both groups for her difference.
The identity crisis of Antoinette, caused by Hybridity, ultimately leads her to suicide. This act of suicide can be
seen as the personal revolt of Antoinette, a resistance over her identity crisis. (Mondal )

13. References
Bhattacharjee, Ms. Sharmila. “Wide Sargasso Sea: Robust Defence of Protagonist rather than a Strong Post- Colonial Statement.”
International Journal Of Advance Research And Innovative Ideas In Education, vol. 2, no. 3, 2016, p. 7.
Hafeez, Amber, et al. “An Analysis of the Representation of Hybrid Culture and Transculturalism in Jean Rhys’s “Wide Sargasso Sea.”
Journal of Social Sciences Review (JSSR), vol. 2, no. -, 2022, p. 8.
Hanif, Mohsen, and Shima Peimanfard. “Antoinette the Outsider: The Representation of Hybridity and Mimicry in Jean Rhys’s Wide
Sargasso Sea.” International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, vol. 72, no. -, 2016, p. 7.
Kumar, Khemendra K., and Dr. Subashni Lata Kumar. “Literary Hybridity in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea.” The Criterion: An
International Journal in English, vol. 13, no. VI, 2022, p. 8.
Mondal, Dr. Jati Sankar. “Interrogating Hybridity: Reading in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.” International Journal of Creative
Research Thoughts (IJCRT), vol. 8, no. 4, 2020, p. 7.
Yousef, Tawfiq, and Reem Abu-Samra. “Identity Crisis in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea Revisited.” Journal of Literature and Art
Studies, vol. 7, no. -, 2017, p. 13.

14. Thank You