Postcolonial Feminism In Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea

Postcolonial feminism refers to the women of those countries which were colonized once by another country. It has been identified by many critics of the world that the sorrows and suffering of the postcolonial women is far more than the women who were colonized. In this paper I will review the novel Jean Rhys’ novel Wide Sargasso Sea and try to focus on the sufferings of the postcolonial women. Kumar Mishra in his article, Postcolonial feminism: Looking into within-beyond-to difference stated Postcolonial feminism is an exploration of and at the intersections of colonialism and neocolonialism with gender, nation, class, race, and tradition and culture with all traditional feminine color (129-30). It has been observed that the women of the post

Though the novel has been marked as the prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre but we also find so many postcolonial feminist aspects have been emerged in this novel. Before analyzing the novel from the postcolonial feminist point of view we need to give a brief summary of the novel- Antoinette is a young girl lost his father in early nineteen century Jamaica. When Emancipation Act of 1833 has been passed and black were started to be freed. This ruins her father’s financial strength. Mr. Mason marries Antoinette’s mother but leave her after some day when she becomes mad. Antoinette starts her life in Aunt Cora’s house and starts schooling with the other Creole girls. When Aunt Cora moves to England and we meet an unnamed person whom we presume to be Rochester of Jane Eyre. Mr. Mason’s son Richard Mason offers him money to propose her step sister Antoinette. Later on we see Antoinette marries that unnamed person who starts to hate her after few days sensing the insane characteristics of Antoinette. The unnamed man whom we presume to be Rochester in Wide Sargasso Sea personified as a white greedy man who marries Antoinette the heroine of the novel without knowing her only for money. If we analyze Wide Sargasso Sea from the feminist point of view, we will see Antoinette suffering from the male dominance and oppression from the very

Antoinette Cosway and Jane Eyre were seen as two sides of the same coin: both victims of the workings of a homogeneous system of sexual domination.” (81) The unnamed husband of Antoinette names her “Bertha” which suggests that he is trying to convert her from Jamaican to British. Carine Mardorossian also mentions, “He renames his wife "Bertha," thus domesticating her in terms of class as well as of sex and race, and confines her to an attic, the othered space against which his English house can define itself. Antoinette resists his masculinist and imperial enterprise, however, by rejecting the ominous name and by disturbing temporal succession and contiguity. (81) In this novel we see the miserable condition of the widow in a postcolonial society. After the death of Antoinette’s father her mother Annette is being accused and ostracized by the Jamaican elite society for the relation with a Spanish guy. They didn’t consider her socio-economic and physical demand. It gives a clear light on the patriarchal attitudes towards women