Essay on The Tragedy of Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea

The story begins in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. Back then females are looked upon as a debilitated creature with low social status where they have to be deferential and obedient to the males. Back then slavery was allowed and the author shows how Tituba was an African American slave who was serving her master, Reverend Parris. The only reason why women are important is for giving birth and being a housewife. They end up serving their husband and being obedient by doing what the husband says so. It is set out that the only way for women to obtain or approach power is to be continuously and steadily dishonest. An exception however, would be Rebecca nurse, who was one of the few good Christian woman blessed with many children which held her in high esteem.

The text recounts the events leading up to the the disappearance of Miranda, a young British girl who is struggling to deal with her mother’s sudden killing in Haiti, where she was on a work trip. The narration by the house, her twin brother Eliot, and Ore, a Nigerian girl she meets while at Cambridge leads us to find about Miranda’s pica, a desire to eat non-nutritive substances which lapses into more nefarious, vampiric desires. This is a condition that has plagued her family, particularly the

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.

Larissa Jordan was a peppy young girl, especially for one who grew up on the Black Isles of Doracha. As a child, she had never been told of the island's’ dark history, nor had she been told of the reasons why families were forced to move away from the mainlands and onto the Isles. And what you don’t know can’t hurt you. At least, that’s what Larissa’s parents believed; and for twelve years, twelve blissfully peaceful years, they appeared to be correct.

As the main character in the novel, Antoinette faces threats both internal and external during her childhood. Firstly, Antoinette’s mother shows signs of madness and melancholy in her daughter's childhood. Moreover, her mother shows partiality for her littler disabled brother and didn’t like her even she was fed up with her. “Once I touched her forehead trying to smooth it. But she pushed me away…as if she had decided once and for all that I was useless to her.”(5) Thus, Annette’s illness condition has deep influences on Antoinette, which becomes the most threat from internal household.

       As the tale begins we immediately can sympathize with the repressive plight of the protagonist.  Her romantic imagination is obvious as she describes the "hereditary estate" (Gilman, Wallpaper 170) or the "haunted house" (170) as she would like it to be.  She tells us of her husband, John, who "scoffs" (170) at her romantic sentiments and is "practical to the extreme" (170).  However, in a time

The thought of the scandal haunts her the most. She fears of losing control of her surroundings, and the fear of her own body being dominated by other people inculcates in her conscious. She gets afraid of losing her higher social rank in the society and the fear of not fulfilling her desires and even her projections surrounds her everywhere.

She's at school. shes scared because her teacher because she's the wife of the police officer("I tried to sing out, but I just couldn't")page 70. She's becoming more afraid so she won't be latter to stand up later on for others. They needed food so she asked for food for her and her brother. Some people are still nice in the world

By defying her father’s wishes and running away, she loses what little societal power she had when she was connected to her father. While running away, she gained a sense of power by rebelling against her father. By going against her father’s wishes she goes against gender norms and solidifies who her identity as a person and not as an object. She is no longer connected to her father and is not seen as a possession by

It had been five years since Colette’s horrible nightmare. She was now living in a little cottage at the edge of the monastery grounds. She had taken work from the monks cleaning and organizing their antiquity scrolls. She had met a wonderful man, a blacksmith in the neighboring village. They had married and were expecting their first child. Colette had never spoke of that frightful time not even to her husband, but now that she was pregnant she could not stop thinking about

Content drowsy from her bath and cider, Audra sat back and re-read the lengthy letter Geraint had sent her last week, talking about his and Rhan’s trip to Marseille, where they had spent a wonderful month strolling along the powdery sand and drinking in the beauty of the azure sea. As always, the letter concluded with an open invitation to visit, something Audra never felt she had the time to do. But if she maintained that attitude, that she was too busy, at one point, she might turn around to find she was an old woman and that life had slipped her by.

She tries to be better than him in doing stupid things. The police hated her because everybody reported problems against her. Thomas, after a while, got affected by his troublous sister. People started to distrust him and started calling him the brother of the kind witch. He got super

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 “prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or exercise of authority, control, or power; tyranny; exploitation” (“Oppression”). In order to discuss Edward’s role in patriarchal and colonial forms of oppression, his marriage, and emotional connection to Antoinette, symbolic representation, and cultural differences will be analysed and discussed, focusing on any evidence of both forms of oppression.

“’Is it true…that England is like a dream? Because one of my friends who married an Englishman wrote and told me so. She said this place London is like a cold dark dream sometimes. I want to wake up,’” (Rhys, ) says Antoinette to her English husband. For Antoinette, the fathomable world stretches does not stretch beyond the Caribbean, for she was raised in Jamaica and, during the course of the novel, finds herself on honeymoon in Dominica. The homeland of her husband is a distant myth, and the canvas onto which she can paint her most vivid refuge. With a dead and forgotten father, a mother driven to cold insanity, and the slaves-turned-servants as her only companions, haunting memories are the islands’ prime commodity for Antoinette.

The critical responses provided in the Penguin Books edition of Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, states: “the only difference between [Jane and Antoinette] is their positons, one is on the edge of the empire, the other at its center” (162). The unnamed author of the response undermines the importance of this difference and fails to see how it affects the how each of the characters are represented. The lack of acknowledgement the position from which Jane narrates, the centre— characterised by Walker (1999) as white male and heterosexual— makes it easy to read her narrative as a chronicle of a marginalised orphan who overcomes the odds forced upon her by society and fate to become a self-sufficient, Byronic woman who defies societal expectations of women and asserts herself as a