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Theme Of Language In Wide Sargasso Sea

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This essay deals with the language in Wide Sargasso Sea, the linguistic features and the thesis that the work can be identified as a Caribbean work of literature.
Wide Sargasso Sea is a postcolonial novel published in 1966 written by Jean Rhys. It is a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre from 1847 and tells the story of Antoinette
Cosway, a white Creole. It begins with Antoinette’s youth in the Caribbean and then her unhappy marriage with an English nobleman, who is never named in the novel, but supposed to be Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. This nobleman forces her to accompany him to England and to change her name. It is in England as well, where he declares her mad and where she finds herself without a sense of belonging as she is neither …show more content…

While the first two parts are full of lush descriptions of the Caribbean, in the last part, England is not described much. That is mainly the case because in this part the story is predominantly told from Antoinette point of view and she is already locked up in the attic of
Thornfield Hall after she had been declared mad.
Nazli 2
Main focus of this essay is the use of language in Wide Sargasso Sea. The language is kept quite simple, but every word is weighted with enormous significance, starting with the first line “They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks” (Rhys 1). These two sentences already give the hint that trouble is occurring in this novel and that the community the story is set in, is marked by racial issues.
The next lines give away that the narrator’s family does not belong to the group of white people, and, as the novel goes on, they also do not belong to the group of black people – they are Creoles.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, language is not just used as a medium for communication, but is also a marker for social rank and class as well as race and ethnicity. Also gossip is a powerful tool of language in this novel. In the form of gossip or lies, fear and mistrust …show more content…

The linguistic variety and richness of the Caribbean is reflected in Wide Sargasso Sea in the speech of servants, black workers and white Creoles, as well as in place names and songs. This is also seen with Christophine. “She had a quiet voice and a quiet laugh (when she did laugh), and though she could speak good English if she wanted to, and French as well as patois, she took care to talk as they talked.” (5). Here, Christophine shows an awareness of how language marks a person's place in society. Even though she can speak good English, she knows that to assimilate with the black Jamaicans, she has to speak English in the same way they do. Her speaking patois also gives an exotic notion to the

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