Being the Meat in the Sandwich: Implications of the double colonisation of empire and patriarchy by the female characters in Wide Sargasso Sea

Part of the definition of ethnic identity can often times be the common rejection of other ethnic values for a specific reason. This rejection of influence from other ethnicities seemed to be quite a common theme in all of the novels reviewed in our selection, but most abundant in Coming of Age in Mississippi, by Anne Moody. In this novel there was consistent conflict among black slaves due to the turmoil endured throughout lives in which rich, white plantation owners were served. Many slaves, and freed slaves that maintained the same duties with pay when awarded their freedom, were fed up with working for men that had treated them so poorly in the past. Lack of employment options

In this short work Professor Huggins explores the position and achievement of black slaves in American society, with its dream of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness', from which they were excluded, except as necessary instruments. Wisely, instead of cramming a narrative of 250 years of complex social and economic history into 242 pages of text, he uses his talents as an established historian of black American culture to offer the general, rather than the academic, reader an admirable blend of the higher generalization and the higher popularization.

One of the most unique things about New Orleans particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries where this image is derived from was race and racism. People were excluded or included, considered inferior or superior based on the race they belonged to. To this end, Indians, and African Americans were classified on the lower end of the race totem pole while whites were seen as superior. Furthermore, one’s stance in society or occupation was determined by their race. The whites were majorly businessmen and land owners presiding over big farms that they owned. The blacks and the Indians were mostly peasants ‘owned’ by the white people and forced to work on the farms of the white people against their will owing to the fact that they were imported from their original residences as slaves (Appleby, Eileen and Neva 18). It is, therefore, clear that race and racism played a significant role in helping define New Orleans as we know it today. Bringing racism to the fore provides a platform upon which it can be alleviated to help

Myths of Harmony by Marixa Lasso is a harrowing account of racial tension and deceit in the Age of Revolution in Colombia. The main theme of the book is that racial harmony is a myth that was cultivated during Colombia’s fight for independence (9). The author states that the lower classes were not any better off after the Revolution than before (4). The culture was known for caciquismo (patron-client relations) and fraudulent elections. These claimed racial equality, but in reality discriminated against certain races (4). Lasso discusses the role of the pardos - free Africans - community as a whole and their role in the political landscape. Racial identities were formed during the Age of Revolution by the struggles of the time period (152). The colonial wars during the Age of Revolution shaped the racial identities of numerous nations. Through racial visionaries, these nations chose a racial identity.

Black Movements In America is written by Cedric J. Robinson, who is a professor of Black Studies and Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Robinson traces the emergence of Black political cultures in the United States from slave resistance in the sixteenth and seventeenth century to the civil rights movement of the present. He also focuses on Black resistance which was forged from a succession of quests such as The return to Africa; escape and alliances with anti-colonial Native- American resistance; and eventually emigration. This is a historical primer whose subject matter is well-indicated by the title. The Narrative focuses on the chronological poles of robinson 's ranging, chronological and compelling narrative of movements in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries maroon societies, and urban community organized during the 'late ' years of black power movements.

“The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South” by John W. Blassingame is the first book about slavery written by a historian in the viewpoint of slaves rather than slave owners. This book analyzes the experience of slaves in the South during misjudgement and confusion. Blassingame targets the different aspects that have influenced the slaves life and the way they lived it. Blassingame writes this book to encounter you in feeling the pain of the slaves but also how they had their own traditions and culture while enslaved.

Even though they are mixed, they do not united as one, each of them have their owned destiny that they wanted to fulfill. Among the three races the two most misfortunate were the Negro and the Indian, these two races have nothing alike, except that they were both treated by the whites or European like a lower animals, who view themselves as a superiors in intelligence, and in power. And those who are inferior rank in the country have to obey and suffer from their tyranny. Negro have been brought from African by the European as slaves to help their master in plantation and agriculture, but he makes them subservient to his use, if they cannot subdue, they will get server punishment or even put to death. Even though they are descendants of the Africans, Negro of the United States had lost their connection with their own country, losing their custom and languages that their forefathers once speak. Losing themselves to the European, they are stuck between the two communities’ one who sold them, and the other who repulsed them. Without a place for them to be, or a place to them to call home, except a place that they know which is their master home. Once the Negro became slaves his lost all his right as a human, he is now a property

The slaves recently brought from agricultural Africa to the industrialize jungles of America had small chances of effectively resisting enslavement enforced by the white men, who made technologies and social order work for them. The recognition of oneself as a slave and adaptation of the Western mode of living and thinking could take a while. It was not until then that a slave could accumulate enough knowledge and resources to dare stand up for himself. However, the historical accounts present a peculiar picture of the black slaves’ values and what they regarded as the major vice of slavery and, consequently as something worth fighting for. As soon as a black slave recovered from the shock of crossing the ocean into a different civilization, he tried hard to reunite with his friends and family.

The book “Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions” written by Dr. Jane Landers explains the impact of the slaves being used by many different nations

Imagine yourself, a proud American starting another chapter in life where your desires and aspirations ahead of you. Then all of sudden undergo dizziness and then wakes up to a time in your ancestry encompassing not a pleasing sight. You walk around the new surroundings, seeking for a form of life to tell you where you are. When revealed to you where and WHEN you landed, your heart races and plummets to the floor at the same time. The one word and time where evil stands necessary and idea of dehumanization is afoot. Slavery: a segment in time surrounding bondage of African slaves under the societal and political supremacy of European America. Yet you pull yourself together, try to adapt to the ways of living hoping to go back to the present. As you learn to know your place in race and gender, you start to realize that your life can be at stake. The gender roles for white and black made an impact distinctively to function in a society on the matter assuring right and just. In the 19th century, America’s antebellum slave society considered toward white Americans as a way of life, but clearly an inhumane society in absolute existence. The existence of the antebellum south.

A patriarchal society is a world in which men are the sole decision makers and hold positions of power. As a result, women are introduced to a world made by men, and a history refined by a man 's actions. In Jean Rhys 's Wide Sargasso Sea, conceptions of gender are purposefully problematized. Women characters such as Antoinette and Christophine are pitilessly exposed to constraints of an imperial world.Wide Sargasso Sea presents a modern form of feminism which takes into account the intricacy of male-female interactions to find that efforts to surpass gender norms are despairing.

Reverting to a previous statement, it’s necessary to spend the final portion of the paper discussing the resilience, perseverance, and the determination for racial equality that African-Americans have displayed since their initial bondage in 1619, and how a Centralist Party could aid and advance progress of the movement for racial equality. Unequivocally, the majority of Caucasians suppressed and oppressed any and all attempts from breaking the bonds of slavery from the 17th to 19th centuries, resisted attempts for decent treatment throughout the 1900s, and condemned strides for total equality as of the last fifty years, a feat still unaccomplished in the 21st century. Martin Luther King Jr. stated the underlying problem with black inferior

   Jean Rhys' complex text, Wide Sargasso Sea, came about as an attempt to re-invent an identity for Rochester's mad wife, Bertha Mason, in Jane Eyre, as Rhys felt that Bronte had totally misrepresented Creole women and the West Indies: 'why should she think Creole women are lunatics and all that? What a shame to make Rochester's wife, Bertha, the awful madwoman, and I immediately thought I'd write a story as it might really have been.' (Jean Rhys: the West Indian Novels, p144).  It is clear that Rhys wanted to reclaim a voice and a subjectivity for Bertha, the silenced Creole, and to subvert the assumptions made by the Victorian text.  She does so with startling results.

The novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë displays a variety of different themes throughout the novel. During the time period in which the novel was published, Great Britain had begun their conquest of Africa and Southeast Asia in a scramble for resources, causing mass death and suffering as a result of the native resistance. Thomas Tracy argues that Jane Eyre is written through a perspective of colonial criticism. Tracy claims that the ending of the novel exemplifies this theme with St. John’s mission to India given as the main example of the colonialist theme being present in Jane Eyre.

Jean Rhys 's Wide Sargasso Sea, written in 1966, is the deeper insight to one of the underlying characters in Charlotte Bronte 's Jane Eyre. In the novel, we experience the challenges one faces when having a cultural background and we see the entrapment of characters leading to indignation and hostility between the servants and their white employers. The enslavement and entrapment of individuals form many of the relationships throughout Rhys 's novel, not only between whites and blacks, but between family as well. Rhys uses situational irony, symbolism, and foreshadowing to show the underlying theme of how entrapping others can stimulate intense relationships between characters.