Themes in Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys The main themes in Wide Sargasso Sea are slavery and entrapment, the complexity of racial identity and womanhood or feminism. In all of these themes the main character who projects them are Antoinette and Christophine. The theme slavery and entrapment is based on the ex- slaves who worked on the sugar plantations of wealthy Creoles figure prominently in Part One of the novel, which is set in the West Indies in the early nineteenth century. Although…

Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea attempts to prove just how closely intertwined dreams and reality are. Rhys meticulously weaves dreams into real life, ultimately creating a novel that conjures a very ethereal truth. Trying to draw the line between what is real and what is fake is nearly impossible and, by the end of the novel, the reader is left in a state of lucid uncertainty. Rhys’s clever use of slumber in Wide Sargasso Sea reveals an enhanced sense of character progression, the inevitability…

Jean Rhys, born in 1890 on the Island of Dominica to a Welsh father and a creole (West Indian) mother experienced the difficulty of integrating into British culture due to her Caribbean origin struggling to create an identity for herself. In her novel ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ (1996) Rhys depicts how she was deeply influenced by this creole heritage, exploring the struggle of finding ones place and identity in relations to race. She contrasts the European discourse with the creole discourse, focusing…

Wide Sargasso Sea is a novel written by Jean Rhys, discussing the life of Antoinette Cosway. Antoinette and her family are Creole and they live on a sugar plantation in Jamaica. Due to Antoinette’s Creole background, she and her family face a lot of problems and discrimination during their lives. However, when Antoinette grew older she had one friend named Tia. They played and talked together despite their obvious differences. On the night that Coulibri is set on fire, Antoinette flees with her…

In Jean Rhys’s novel Wide Sargasso Sea, Edward Rochester can be considered as an embodiment of patriarchal and colonial oppression. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, patriarchal means, “relating to, characteristic of, or designating a society or culture in which men tend to be in positions of authority and cultural values and norms are seen as favouring men…” (“Patriarchal”) moreover colonial means “of, belonging to, or relating to a colony…” (“Colonial”). In addition, oppression means…

“write [her] name in fire red” (53) by the end of the novel. Throughout Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys magnifies the themes of madness and power by analyzing Rochester’s and Antoinette’s interactions with one another to ultimately teach a lesson that can be interpreted in many different ways. Their downfalls are created by the catastrophic conflicts with each other and the environment around them. It becomes more clear what Jean Rhys intends; she relates the text to present-day social issues that a reader…

Ideas like slavery and post-colonial aftermath on former British colonies are dominant ideas in Jean Rhys' 1966 novel "Wide Sargasso Sea". The writer focused on providing a realistic display concerning feelings in former British colonies as individuals struggle to reclaim their cultural identity in environments destroyed as a consequence of oppression occurring during British influence. The first part of the novel focuses extensively on people who were formerly slaves working on plantations owned…

A theme that Rhys uses throughout her novel was identity crisis. The main female characters in Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette depended on her force marriage husband Rochester to help her show her identity but instead both of their identities were disrupted in the novel leaving Antoinette fighting alone with a daunting question: “Who she were?” Antoinette fails to gain her identity, despite her struggle as a Creole woman in the face of racial and cultural rejection. We first see Antoinette identity…

Comparing Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte In the novels Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, the theme of loss can be viewed as an umbrella that encompasses the absence of independence, society or community, love, and order in the lives of the two protagonists. They deal with their hardships in diverse ways. However, they both find ways to triumph over their losses and regain their independence. The women in both novels endure…

The Tragedy of Wide Sargasso Sea In Jean Rhys' novel Wide Sargasso Sea, whether Antoinette Cosway really goes mad in the end is debatable. Nevertheless, it is clear that her life is tragic. The tragedy comes from her numerous pursuits for love and a sense of belonging, and her failure at each and every one of these attempts. As a child Antoinette, is deprived of parental love. Her father is a drunkard and has many mistresses and illegitimate children. According to Daniel Cosway's account…