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Theme Of Postmodernism In Wide Sargasso Sea

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Shahan Pervez Prof. Naveed Rehan LIT – 725 28 March 2018 Postmodern Elements in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea Postmodernism was a movement that came as a response to modernism after World War II. It broke away from enlightenment values. Postmodernists did not believe in any certainty or universal truth. In literature it broke away from traditional modes of writing. It questioned all previously believed norms and standards. “Postmodernism . . . denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for everybody” (Mojgan 2). Postmodernism rejected modernist search for coherence. Intellectuals after the World War II became doubtful …show more content…

Its states in postmodern literature are “ being distrustful to fixity, being circumscribed to people, places or identity, charging society of conspiracy against the people and multiplying the self-constructed plots to prevent the scheming of others” (Mojgan 12). This we can see in Antoinette and her husband. The main character of the novel feel that others are conspiring against them. Antoinette’s three dreams are an example of this. She sees that there is someone who hates her chasing her in dream or she is chasing someone faceless. The parrot that she had only spoke in French and what he speaks meant who was there. It all shows paranoid state and distrust as if everything was against these characters. “I saw two enormous rats, as big as cats . . . staring at me. I stared at them and they did not move. I could see myself in the looking glass . . . staring at those rats and the rats . . . staring at me” (Rhys 75). This reveals the paranoid state of Antoinette. Her husband too feels that the place where he has come is hostile and too much for him. When Antoinette used a substance for her husband to drink so that they could come close to each other he feels that she poisoned him. What he knows from the cousin of his wife he believes and thinks that Antoinette and her family entrapped him to marry her. He is suspicious of Christophine too and writes a letter to an officer informing him about

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