Jean Rhys 's Wide Sargasso Sea

The reading that I chose for this assignment is from Chapter Six in the required book for class “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”. The chapter title is “The Sea Around Us” where the primary concentration of the chapter was the consequences that humans have on the planet with the focus on ocean acidification. This happens from the carbon dioxide we pump into the air and it slowly seeps back down into the oceans and slowly increases the PH level thus causing the ocean to be more acidic. In about one hundred years do you believe that, oysters, mussels, and coral reefs survive?

The film The Sea Inside shares the heart warming real life story of a man named Ramon Sampedro. At the young age of twenty-six he suffered an accident while diving into shallow waters of the ocean that left him a quadriplegic. Now at the age of fifty-four, Ramon must depend on his family to survive. His older brother Jose, Jose’s wife, Manuela and their son Javi do their best to take care of Ramon and make him feel loved. Although Ramon is extremely grateful to his family and friends for their help all these years, he has come to see his life as aggravating and unsatisfying. He wishes to die with the little dignity he has left in his life. However, Ramon’s family is dead set against the thought of assisted suicide and the

for; we are introduced to her from when she is young so we know and

Burroughs talks about how the sea is contradictory on its own, in its immensity. It mocks its victims “with the most horrible thirst”, and it smites everything like a hammer, while sometimes caressing like the hand of a lady. The breaking of its waves is violent, yet as it reaches the sands it reminds us of the rustle of a child's

As the book follows the life of Jeannette, her dream starts out as a fantasy of hope for her father. When her father was sober he was her best friend. Yet he developed a drinking problem right before Jeannette was born, that developed and worsened over the span of her life. Her mother accounts that when they lost a child, his drinking started,

Throughout her early childhood, she ignores her father's drunken escapades, and thinks of him as a loving father and excellent teacher of the wild. It isn't until her junior year of high school that she realizes the indisputable flaws her father has. She resents Dad's drinking and how he constantly lets her and the rest of the family down yet never openly admits it or allows his flaws to be discussed. Jeannette also begins to resent her mother, whom she’s never been close to. Some cause of her resentment includes her mom’s refusal to hold down a job long enough to provide her kids with a stable food supply, especially since Rex won’t be providing like he says he will. This resentment eventually motivates her to move away from her parents and Welch. She ends up in New York City with her sister Lori in which she focuses on her studies and becomes a successful journalist. Jeannette is a natural forgiver and it shows even when she moves away from her parents, but this doesn’t stop her from being haunted by her past and with her transition from poverty into the upper-middle class. By the end of the novel, Jeannette is a symbol of the resilience and

The main argument of the book ‘The Sea-Wolf’ is about opposing behaviors of human being depicted by the role of nature in revealing the inner self of a person. In this regard, London uses two of his main characters to demonstrate the distinct opposing sides of human beings. The first part is about Humphrey, who is a young Dutch struggling with his demons and difficulties in the sea as he hope to change his life and those of fellow crews . Humphrey is initially weak, rich and naïve, and with straight morals . Humphrey believes on fairness, compassion, and all through the story despite being close to the evil Larsen he refuses to follow his footsteps .

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.

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.

Rather than exploring lighter tones in her stories, she can only express herself through trauma. Let’s now explore what methods Danticat uses to explore such literary cliché’s within ‘Children of the Sea’.

When Antoinette’s husband takes her to England, he locks her up in the attic and leaves her without a sense of self. Antoinette says that "There is no looking-glass here and I don’t know what I am like now…. Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?" (107). Without being able to see herself through a looking-glass, Antoinette doesn’t understand who she or what her purpose is, which is very upsetting for her. This loss of self- identity causes Antoinette to act out and worsens her mental health issues. When Antoinette sneaks out of the attic and sees herself in the looking-glass, she says she sees “the ghost, the man with the streaming hair” (???). After being locked away, she is unable to recognize her own physical appearance. Through this description, Rhys is showing that Antoinette’s identity has been completely taken away from her and recognizing the importance of knowing who we are. As, without an identity, Antoinette no longer has a purpose for

Authors, Jean Rhys and Charlotte Bronte constructed their novels in completely different time periods and came from different influences in writing. Jean Rhys’s fiction book, Wide Sargasso Sea is an interesting relation to Jane Eyre. The female character of Jane Eyre forms into a furiously, passionate, independent young woman. The female character of Jean Rhys’s illustration is a character that Jane will know further on as Rochester’s crazy wife who is bolted in an attic. Jean Rhys further studies this character, where as Charlotte Bronte approved that it was left explained (Thorpe 175). Antoinette, considerably like Jane, evolves in a world with minimal amount of love to offer. Both these women are taken cared of as children by

Gordon, Alan. "Dreams in Wide Sargasso Sea." Dreams in Wide Sargasso Sea. Victorian Web, 21 May 2004. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.

 Though this is a childish taunt in the novel, the truth of it is that nobody does want Antoinette; as Teresa O'Connor points out, not even her own mother: 'Antoinette is also alienated from the meagre remains of her family itself, and, most specifically, from her mother's love' (Jean Rhys: the West Indian Novels, 172).

this is a dangerous place for them to be in, and that, like Eden, the