Rhys Presentation Supplemental Information

Here is the supplemental information for our Rhys presentation this morning. It's a pdf, though not an incredibly large one.

Rhys Supplement.pdf

Hope this helps anyone interested in following up :).

(Thanks, Dr. Shlenski, for hosting the file)

Cheers!

--Jer

Colonizing Dialectic Self-Assumed Identity

Wide Sargasso Sea Close Reading: Colonizing Self-Assumed Identity

Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea predicates the situation of a post-colonial society in the midst of confusion in the wake of slavery Emancipation. Rhys’ novel takes a close look at traditional colonial roles of hierarchy and power that the characters assume, but, at the same time, reflects much of the more contemporary post-colonial theories through the attempts to make sense of a society interlocked between slavery and colonization. The colonial ideals and practices that continue to persist have victimized, at one point or another, each of the characters whether they are acting as oppressor or oppressed. The lack of concrete self-identity can be attributed to the ambivalent environment that the characters inhabit. Ultimately, the racial and cultural identity crises that arise can be identified through the European Rochester, the Black former slaves and servants, and, most of all, the Creole Cosways. These characters articulate the continuing prevalence of hierarchies and the colonial effects on their self-image through the microcosmic power structures that they create and exist in.
Rochester is a product of the colonial mind frame. He has traveled to Jamaica in order to marry into Antoinette Cosway’s wealth despite her Creole status. Rochester is the victim of the primogeniture laws that still exist, for he is the youngest son and is, in essence, forced into this compromising position of marriage. Rochester’s position vis-a-vis slavery and colonization is never quite clear. On one hand he recognizes exalting former slave owning plantocrats as hypocrisy, but on the other hand over the course of his stay he assumes the role of Master and exerts his self-imposed power over his household. In fact, he sets himself as superior to Antoinette and claims her as one of his possessions, and powerfully proclaims that “she is mine.” In spite of Antoinette’s progressive insanity, Rochester still sees her as something to covet as a possession: only further revealing his desire to control and exert power. As the oppressor in his household, Rochester has adopted the roles of the slave owners that he scorned earlier in the novel. However, it is not until near insanity himself that he takes on such a position. Rochester’s own insanity stems from the anxieties that the twisted power structure of colonization has established. His fears of cultural miscegenation between himself and Antoinette are directly linked to a deeply embedded colonial attitude.
Under the assumed power of Rochester and what he represents, are the colonized Black servants and former slaves. The servants that continue to wait upon Antoinette Cosway and her husband Rochester are the only revelations into the condition of colonized peoples. They continue to work for the Cosway family despite their status as brutal former-slave owners. Although they are still a colonized people, slavery has fairly recently been abolished and they reflect several traits of the attempt at decolonization. The Blacks in the story fit two different profiles. There are the reluctant servants who still assume their subordinate roles, and there are the angry former slaves who are violently in opposition to their white neighbors, be they European or Creole. In one sense they are respectively the diverters and the reverters. For, the diverting servants refuse to acknowledge the power structure of the oppressor and attempt to forget the past. This is expressed best through Baptiste’s uneasiness with Rochester near Pere Lilievre house. He denies the existence of a road, as some form of European civilization, even though according to Rochester there is a very distinct road. Furthermore, the violence of the reverting ex-slave population is a clear physical demonstration against the white culture. In both cases, a sense of identity is assumed, even though it is in relation to the white inhabitants.
Finally, the situation of the Creole population finds itself without a clear concept of identity, as it is locked between two cultures. Colonization is responsible for their ambivalence, for it thrust a peoples in an unnatural setting did not allow for any adaptation. As the above two populations discussed have a distinct cultural memory to enhance their decisions and actions, the Creole, specifically the Cosways, do not. Even though they appear to have white skin the Cosways are distinctly Caribbean in cultural identity. However, they are “marooned” as Annette Cosway states, for they are neither accepted by the European society nor the Black society. In the other sense of the word they are isolated among unforgiving social forces, they are either “white niggers” or “white cockroaches.” Rochester and Antoinette are ultimately torn apart through the uncanny nature of her dual presence vis-a-vis Rochester’s apprehensions. The lack of a concrete European identity and the presence of a strong Other identity in the Cosways plays an undeniably strong role in their insanity.
The role of assumed identity is key to assessing the degree of colonial influence upon individuals directly involved with the colonial process. All characters, within the microcosmic power structure of the house, are representative of colonization in action. The identity that they assign to themselves, and therefore dialectically to others, reveals the colonization of not only bodies but of minds as well.

Afloat in a Sea of Faces: Islanders and the Ocean in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea

Upon reviewing the email outlining our topic for the response paper, after I had already written mine, I realized I had not focused on any aspect of postcolonialism and can't really tie it in with what I wrote. I will try to write another paper by tomorrow but here is what I did write.

Afloat in a Sea of Faces :
Islanders and the Ocean in Jean Rhys’ "Wide Sargasso Sea"

sargasso: "seaweed," 1598, from Port. sargasso "seaweed," perhaps from sarga, a type of grape (on this theory, the sea plant was so called from its berry-like air sacs), or from L. sargus, a kind of fish found in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic, from Gk. sargos.
(online etymology dictionary)


"My mother usually walked up and down the glacis, a paved roofed-in terrace which ran the length of the house and sloped upwards to a clump of bamboos. Standing by the bamboos she had a clear view of the sea, but anyone passing could stare at her. They stared, sometimes they laughed. Long after the sound was far away and faint she kept her eyes shut and her hands clenched. A frown came between her black eyebrows, deep – it might have been cut with a knife. I hated this frown and once I touched her forehead trying to smooth it. But she pushed me away, not roughly, but calmly, coldly, without a word, as if she had decided once and for all that I was useless to her". (Rhys 5).


This passage, from the beginning of Jean Rhys’ "Wide Sargasso Sea", is highly significant to
a reader’s understanding of the rest of novel. In addition to the obvious, that being that the title
of the book refers to the passage, it contains a plethora of meaningful references.
Even the first line lets us know quite a lot about the character of Annette. We know that
she paces daily in a roofed-in terrace. Though pacing in an enclosed space puts one in mind of an
imprisoned existence, which is a recurring theme in the novel, Annette prefers the glacis
because from there she can view the sea. The sea means freedom, escape, a better life, perhaps
a wish to return home for Annette.
Anyone who has lived on an island knows that for an islander the sea takes on a different
meaning than for someone from a mainland place. Many people who come to an island from a
mainland find the surrounding sea a type of an entrapment, a foreboding element. While those
who have lived always on an island know the sea to be a positive element, insulating one from
the outside world while at the same time offering a hope of escape, renewal and freedom. One
never knows what or who will arrive with the tide … or when one embarks on a journey where
those waves will take one. For Annette, who is an islander from Martinique, the sea is a positive
element, perhaps one of the few in her life. Annette continues to pace up on the glacis, even
though she can be seen by her neighbours, and is often made an object of ridicule. Annette is
nothing if not determined. While she is not unaffected by the laughter “she kept her eyes shut
and her hands clenched. A frown came between her black eyebrows,” she continues in her silent vigil.
The last two lines of the passage are also significant to one’s understanding of the
protagonist Antoinette, throughout the remainder of the novel. Antoinette is portrayed as a
sensitive child who hates to see her mother suffering and angry. But instead of loving and
embracing her, her mother rejects her and her concern. Not in a passionate, momentary way
but “calmly, coldly”. An emotionless rejection, which Antoinette internalizes as meaning her
existence is unimportant to her mother.
Throughout the novel Antoinette’s sense of rejection shapes her life. The pacing upon
the glacis also is reminiscent of the scene in "Jane Eyre" when Mrs. Rochester (Antoinette) kills
herself. Mrs. Rochester jumps from the roof of Thornfield in a blaze of flames. In contrast with her
mother’s cold relentless pacing, Antoinette succumbs to society’s rejection. She is as
impassioned, fiery and emotional as her mother is cold, calculating and emotionless.


Works Cited

Rhys, Jean. "Wide Sargasso Sea". London: Penguin Books, 1968.

Harper, Douglas. "Online Etymology Dictionary":
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sargasso November, 2001.

Repression: That's Obeah Too

Yet one day when I was waiting there, I was suddenly very much afraid. The door was open to the sunlight, someone was whistling near the stables, but I was afraid. I was certain that hidden in the room (behind the old black press?) there was a dead man’s dried hand, white chicken feathers, a cock with its throat cut, dying slowly, slowly. Drop by drop the blood was falling into a red basin and I imagined I could hear it. No one had ever spoken to me about obeah — but I knew what I would find if I dared to look. Then Christophine came in smiling and pleased to see me. Nothing alarming ever happened, and I forgot, or told myself I had forgotten.

(Rhys, 13)

As elsewhere in Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette narrates her expedition into Christophine’s room as a sort of lucid dream. While her description is reliable to an extent, it is tainted by her ‘certainty’ of obeah trappings lurking just out of sight, unperceivable and yet apparent to her mind’s eye in visceral and gory detail. While these images are not real in the conventional sense of the word, the fact that Antoinette is determined to forget, or more specifically repress her fantasies lends them even more credence later on. Freud has it that repressed memories have a seemingly untraceable effect on conscious thought. Thus by repressing her seemingly unfounded fears now, Antoinette retains their power to affect her later perceptions, while making them invisible to further scrutiny.

Antoinette’s husband plays a similar game later in the book. He receives two letters from Daniel Cosway, the first of which he mirthfully denies, but keeps in his pocket – hiding or repressing it – and the second of which he verbally denounces to Baptiste, refusing to acknowledge its possible contents. When actually meeting Daniel, the husband interrupts the man’s allegations against his wife by making for the door, and leaves without responding to the man’s claims. While a later internal monologue shows the husband accepting the notion that he has been duped in his marriage, it never addresses Daniel’s allegations of Antoinette’s promiscuity, further suggesting that these have been forced from his consciousness. While Daniel’s words “Give your love to your wife – my sister . . . you are not the first to kiss her pretty face,” (Rhys, 79) simply prompt the husband to leave and avoid facing this fear, the form they take upon resurfacing, “Give your wife my sister a kiss from me. Love her as I did – oh yes I did. How can I promise you that?” (Rhys, 102) show that while he has done his best to repress this fear, this has caused him to lose sight of the truth, and amplify his fear into a phantasm of devastating proportions further leading to his frightening conclusion, “She thirsts for anyone – not for me” (Rhys, 107).

It should be pointed out that while Antoinette’s fear of Christophine’s obeah practice is, at the point where the above excerpt is introduced, based purely on speculation, her fear does turn out to be true. This plays off yet another motif of the novel, in that the characters of Wide Sargasso Sea tend to live up to the very worst of the expectations placed on them: Antoinette suspects Christophine of being an obeah woman and this is revealed to be true, Aunt Cora fears Antoinette’s husband will mistreat her after taking her money and he does, and Antoinette’s husband fears his wife has slept with Sandi and others before driving her to do that very thing. This propensity for fatalistic prophecy hangs strongly over the book, and is related to the idea of obeah. In the mind of Antoinette’s husband, obeah is itself related to the poison or impurity that has entered their relationship, while Antoinette sees her husband's ability to manipulate her as a form of the same thing. “You’re trying to turn me into someone else, calling me by another name,” she tells him, “I know, that’s obeah too” (Rhys, 95) and this foreshadows not only the ultimate fulfillment of her husband’s fears, but also her transformation into the Bertha of Jane Eyre. In actual fact, both Antoinette and her husband have been poisoned by their own fears and beliefs of the other, this is what causes their relationship to shrivel, and fall apart.

By repressing fears, as Antoinette does in the above passage, the characters of Wide Sargasso Sea validate those fears. These function like a poison or black magic, and once implanted below the surface of the dreamlike narrative, spread and devour the characters they possess. On the slippery slope created by their own denial, Antoinette and her husband, cannot help but become Bertha Mason and Edward Rochester respectively. Their future has, after all, been pre-written.

Cited: Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. London: Penguin, 1966.

The Suffering of Antoinette

Antoinette is the principal and the most important character in Jean Ryes’ Wide Saragossa Sea. She is subjected to the tyranny of a husband, a traumatic childhood and people who do not love her, even her own mother, except for Christophine. Her power in the novel is limited and she has literally no sway over anyone. Questions arise of her sanity, her innocence and if she is devious in any way. It is in my mind that she goes in and out sanity and insanity yet remains innocent throughout the entire time of the novel. She is rarely ever devious and seems too love everyone in a child like manner. This funnels into her escape the only way she could.
Her innocence is undisputed. She acts like a child throughout the entire novel: she asks countless questions, doesn’t seem to understand anything and asks Christophine for a love potion to seduce her husband into loving her again (p.69). Although she is supposedly grown up, there doesn’t seem to be any maturity in her actions or speech.
The question of if she is sane or not is a somewhat different topic, but while reading her I got a sense that somehow her innocence and insanity were mixed together; as if it was a precursor for her later insane escapades with her husband and her demise. She is so innocent that she cannot understand why he does not love her and why he hates her, and this leads to her eventual breakdown and the fate that her mother endured. She recalls the reason for her mother’s hatred of her to Mr. Rochester: “Then there was the day when she saw I was growing up like a white nigger and she was ashamed of me, it was after that day that everything changed” (p. 84). She blames this on herself, although in reality it is societies. It would be a hard, traumatizing experience: living with a mother that hates you in a world that hates you. Like I said already, this gives possible reason for her breakdown in the later part of the novel. She tells a tragic tale of her life and the truth, but Rochester does not believe it. Her dreams are a good source of her sanity. The first one she has is when she is young and leaves her waking up in a sweat. In it she is wandering through a wood and someone is watching her and hating her (p. 10). She is subject to this fear that surrounds her and takes ownership over her wherever she goes. Reality is exaggerated in her dreams. The last couple (pp. 120-121) consist of dreams of Sandi and Mr Rochester and a red dress that sets on fire, which in the dream burns her master’s house down. The red dress is the only thing she has left from her previous life and empowers her to take action, which she does by mimicking the dream in reality: The only way she could get free.
In conclusion Antoinette is the deepest darkest character in the novel. Her innocence is unmistakable. Her insanity is haunting: she knows it is there but cannot escape it (just like he first dream). It is unfortunate that the only way she could be free from fear and oppression is by taking her own life.

Welcome!

Welcome to the English 438/Caribbean Postcolonialism blog! Post away, but please remember to be respectful of others' views, even when you disagree.

About the title of this blog: I thought it would be correct to make reference to Salish language, in acknowledgment of our postcolonial geography and history at UVic. T'ilum is a word meaning "sing." —LS