Wide Sargasso Sea Revisited: Elizabeth Nunez’s Bruised Hibiscus and Men Women Business

In contrast to a more feminist perspective, LeBlanc views Grand Isle not as a female colony but as distinctly patriarchal. The fact that mother-women seem to rule enhances this reading according to their own submission into the phallogocentric demands of the island and culture beyond. The island visitors’ rejection of Mademoiselle Reisz, a woman who fails to conform to the expectations of a heterosexually normative society (and a woman who is, according to LeBlanc, culturally coded to be read as nonheterosexual), underscores the supremely heterosexual patriarchy that dominates Grand Isle.

Initially, the titles of both novels also provide a strong grounding to understanding the status of women at the time. Rhys’ novel refers to the Sargasso Sea, located in the Atlantic Ocean. This is known for the infamous Bermuda Triangle, described as an oceanic black hole where ships disappear under mysterious circumstances. One interpretation of this title could imply that characters may be imprisoned in their personal ‘Bermuda Triangle’, where Antoinette grapples with her racial identity as a white Creole. Furthermore, the Sargassum is a weed native to the Sargasso Sea, which was symbolic of neglect, devastation, and disorder. [1] This echoes the sentiments of the protagonist of the novella, Antoinette. Antoinette embodies the inherent misogyny prevalent during the 20th Century, where women were often reduced

For centuries, a great deal of ethnic groups have been disempowered and persecuted by others. However, one should realize that none are more intense than the oppression of women. In the novel, The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, women living in the Mango Street neighborhood suffer from their restricted freedom. Three such women, Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally, provide great examples. All try to escape from their dreadful environment. Most of them fail, but at first, Sally seems to succeed in escaping from her father. However, she ends up meeting a husband as equally bad as her father. Ultimately, the men who live with Rafaela, Mamacita, and Sally act as insuperable obstacles that limit the freedom in their women’s lives.

In Wide Sargasso Sea, author Jean Rhys uses intertextuality to tell the story of Antoinette Mason. Intertexuality is when an author bases their book/novel off of another text. In this case, Wide Sargasso Sea is shaped from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and it elaborates on the character of Bertha, who is Antoinette Mason in Rhys’ novel. By reading Wide Sargasso Sea we are enlightened on things in Jane Eyre that Bronte does not tell us about or elaborate on. Also, by reading Jane Eyre we understand things about Wide Sargasso Sea that Rhys doesn’t include in her novel. Both authors have created compelling novels that aren’t built from each other and provides a deeper understanding of one

In the novel Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, Antoinette Mason’s identity is frequently discussed. Antoinette, the daughter of ex-slave owners and a woman whose life is dictated by mental illness, grows up in the Caribbean as a Creole during the nineteenth century. As a young adult, she is forced into a marriage with a white man from England, an event that ultimately leads Antoinette to her downfall. At the start of the novel, Antoinette and the characters around her are optimistic about their identity and future. As the plot progresses, Antoinette increasingly struggles to understand who she is and what her future entails. Ultimately, Antoinette loses her identity and her purpose. Throughout the text there are many reoccurring motifs. A motif

This book is about the life of a black young girl, Zarite (known as Tete) that is purchased at 9 years old by Violette, a mixed race prostitute, to be the personal slave of Eugenia Garcia del Solar, the Spanish wife of Toulouse Valmorain, a French guy owner of one of the biggest sugar plantation of Saint-Domingue, that is run by black slaves. Throughout the novel, Zarite tells her story as a representation of the exploitation of slaves on the island in the eighteenth century, their lives and how they fought for freedom. “He had never thought about Tete’s sentiments; he assumed they were very limited. In

Crossing the Mangrove by Maryse Condé first published in 1989, offers a fitting representation of French Caribbean history and culture. The novel stands out for its celebration of diversity and the concept of root identity throughout French Caribbean society. Condé’s novel reflects on the people living in Guadeloupe and the complex system that colonialism has created in the Caribbean. Also, it links the créolité movement from its counterpart Negritude and demonstrates how it shapes the identity of individuals living in the French Caribbean. The population of Rivière au Sel exemplifies the mixture of Guadeloupian people and how they interact with each other in a small community. Countless waves of immigrates to the Caribbean have brought African, East Indian, Europeans, Asians and other racial groups to live in close proximity to each other in Guadeloupe. In Praise of Creoleness, it explains the emergences of créolité and how it is a metaphor for a unique Caribbean identity completely separated from other movement in the Caribbean.

Central to Fanon’s philosophy concerning the process of Decolonization rests the mutual understanding among both groups that their positions are the result of specific historic processes. Yet, under the oppression of the colonizers, the colonized fail to empower themselves because the colonist, “continues to fabricate the colonized subject.” (Fanon 826). This fabrication manifests in the colonizer’s use of institutional mechanisms such as education, incarceration and economic opportunity to promulgate a collective identity in which the identity of the colonized remains that of a people born less-than their oppressors. Adopting this false identity, the colonized community becomes, “a sector of niggers, a sector of towelheads,” whose, “dreams of possession,” (Fanon 827) remain dreams until those colonized peoples are able to empower themselves and overthrow the colonizer’s systems of control. Like Marx, Fanon seeks to deliberate the exact modes and methods by which the colonial system retains power over the colonized peoples, their lands, and the resources which abound throughout them. Unlike Marx, Fanon credits the direct subjectgation of countless peoples from countless nations, tribes and languages to “what race one belongs to.” (Fanon 827) The presupposition that the colonizer forever remains, “first and foremost the outsider” (Fanon 827) further supports the philosopher's absolute means of societal upheaval in that Marxist economic theories of oppression pertaining to the bankers, customs house, and elsewhere fails to account for the sociological justifications which the colonial system propagates

In the Discourse on Colonialism, Cesaire illustrates a compelling relationship between colonized states and the proletariat class. He conveys that the proletariat socio-economic class allows for the possible unification of society against the powers of colonialism. Interestingly, the comparison reflects as these elements extend from constructed illusions to unequivocal creeds. By isolating and juxtaposing the two groups, Cesaire is able to elaborate on how he believes that race and class unite to dominate 'inferior subjects' in nations throughout the globe. Throughout the essay, Cesaire provides reasoning for the socially constructed experiences of those dictated by colonial imperialism, particularly Africans, and proletarian conflicts in

not be, made directly, without ‘mediation’. It could only be made through the impact on popular life of the post-colonial revolution (Hall, 231).” It is through this that we see that peoples oppression is contingent upon what the rest of the world and how the rest of the world views a specific race.

Aime Cesaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, first published in 1955, reads as a passionate and scathing piece of prose, laying heavy, but warranted criticism on Europe, the oppressed classes and those who continue to allow such oppression to continue. While being written around 1955 specifically about colonialism, it bears many explicit and metaphorical statements which can be applied to our situation today, both in terms of racial struggles as well as struggles against capitalism and imperialism. While all these struggles are intimately intertwined, it is important not to conflate them, emptying each of their specificity. Cesaire’s politics, opinions did not remain stubbornly stagnant. Rather, he has proved quite responsive to situational changes, constantly tweaking his thought in reaction to the conditions he found around him. His politics are marked by several shifts, which seem, on paper, to be quite drastic, but are actually rather fluid developments for the most part. The shifts seem to begin from his early immersion in French political theory and culture, particularly as a young man in Martinique, to his part in the Negritude movement accompanied by a distancing from Europe and wholesome embrace of blackness and the idealization of Africa as the homeland. Discourse on Colonialism Cesaire’s work discredit to focus too heavily on this moderate moment. The work in question is, on its own, a much-needed critique of European bourgeois society (although the metaphor can be

Rhys places Antoinette in such a position to show her readers several things: how Antoinette faced racism and prejudice, her misunderstanding of racism, and the violence towards the discriminated. Rhys also shows how apparent the racism towards white people is, with Annette hinting at the destructive nature of the Jamaican people by saying “they are more alive than [Mr. Mason is], lazy or not, and they can be dangerous and cruel for reason you wouldn’t understand” (29). Rhys needs to show that races, Creole and white people cannot escape racism and chooses to use Rochester and Antoinette to help readers better connect with them. The point of this practice is to show Rochester and Antoinette are both victim and helps create a complex connection between them: through conflict, marriage and their individual faults.

Jane Rhys complex writing for “Wide Sargasso Sea”, is devoted to events that explore the fate of a young lonely Creole woman, Antoinette, as she struggles to develop her self-identity in the midst of racial and cultural rejection. Antoinette finds herself trying to feel apart of something so desperately that she ends up clinging onto people that are socially “unacceptable” in her Carribean culture. One who goes by the name of Christophine, a servent that takes on a much more important role. A young childhood friend named Tia who has a significant impact on how Antoinette wants to be identified and lastly her husband whom she was forced into an arranged marriage with. The constant identity crisis that is endured results in the conflicts of Antoinette not relating with the other white characters, like her husband, and results in the roles being reversed when it comes to family and servants.

Introduction: “ There is a great proverb-that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter ”, said Chinua Achebe, the famous Nigerian novelist, and one of the most important voice African literature, the African world, in an interview to “ The Paris Review ”( with Jerome Brooks in 1994 ). Of course his response was certainly contextual to the utter necessity of the colonized African community to be heard, and the story of himself getting inspired to join the bandwagon of the few writers who were trying their best to make their life, culture and anecdotes heard and seen. But, the powerful proverb, even without leading to any deeper metaphorical resonance, or without any particular context, stands startling in revealing the intricate relation between power matrix and the discursive space, the relation between privilege and language. The age old African adage certainly talks about the need of putting up with a discursive resistance against the privileged and the powerful-

In the Castle of My Skin is by its very nature a novel which is difficult to label as its episodic nature underlines the diverse nature of the Caribbean experience. The Antilles were, and are to this day, a region defined by its ethnic and cultural diversity. Due to the multiplicity of experiences which define the region, any singular narrative attempting to portray even one village would be overly simplistic as a result of the singular narrative which define most traditional novel. As such, Lamming utilizing different narrative and form to reflect the always changing diversity of the Barbados. As such, it is impossible for a critique of the novel to address its multifaceted nature, even when dealing with a single theme. In practice, this effectively deconstructs the traditional form of identity within the village in which it is set, while being part of an intellectual movement in Caribbean literature and culture of constructing an identity centered on race, and the unity of historical hardships facing all individuals of African descent in the Americas.