Wide Sargasso Sea Kiera Sandusky Joan Cristy Maguad

Wide Sargasso Sea Kiera Sandusky, Joan Cristy Maguad, Ruby Agustin, Sean Mc. Lynn

Connections Character ● Fanon: distinct compartments of settler and native o Settlers are foreigners that represent England, Natives dream of replacing settlers o Both groups unite within each other’s respective circles in times of trouble ● Rhys: Antoinette doesn’t fit perfectly in one or the other o “I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all” (Rhys 61) o The family is excluded from both circles § “Plenty of white people in Jamaica. Real white people, they got gold money. They don’t look at us, nobody see them come near us. ” (Rhys 17) o Antoinette is isolated from everyone (her family, Christophine, her husband, outside world) Violence ● Fanon: “Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon” (79) o Definition: to free a colony to become self-governing or independent ● Rhys: Recurring similar events o Fire at Coulibri, fire at Rochester’s house in England o fighting § with servants (rocks thrown at Antoinette pg. 27, slap fight pg. 60) § with stepbrother (107) Exploitation ● Fanon: Colonizers take raw materials from colonized countries and force labor from colonized people o “Europe has stuffed herself inordinately with the gold and raw materials of the colonial countries” (Fanon 98). ● Rhys: Rochester marries Antoinette for her money, locks her away o Antoinette on why she can’t leave Rochester: “ I have no money of my own at all, everything I had belongs to him” (66). o Christophine tells Rochester that she’ll take Antoinette away and travel the world if he gave them some of her dowry

Why Was It Difficult to Make Connections? ● Fanon discusses decolonization on a large scale; Rhys focuses on smaller population (group of characters) ● Situations in the novel are not discussed in Fanon’s work o Second generation population aren’t mentioned § Antoinette, mixed race children o Compartments within Fanon’s “distinct compartment” § Gender roles Was there anything else that anyone found difficult?

How to Bring in Second Source ● Use theoretical text (Fanon) and literary text (Rhys) to form your text (1 st draft). Then create conversation between your text and another scholarly text (Spivak, Parry, Raiskin). ● Figure out what you’re asking, what are other contributors asking? o Do the questions/opinions diverge or are they congruent? o Shift your question so that you will be able to create conversation with the scholarly text.

Wide Sargasso Sea and a Critique of Imperialism by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ● ● ● Feminist novels like Jane Eyre ignore the imperial/colonial history of England. o “It seems particularly unfortunate when the emergent perspective of feminist criticism reproduces the axioms of imperialism. A basically isolationist admiration for the literature of the female subject in Europe and Anglo-America establishes the high feminist norm” (240). Antoinette is main character in novel, at the expense of Christophine’s story. This limits how far beyond Jane Eyre Rhys was able to take Wide Sargasso Sea. o “Wide Sargasso Sea marks with uncanny clarity the limits of its own discourse in Christophine, Antoinette’s black nurse” (244). o “Christophine is tangential to the narrative. She cannot be contained by a novel which rewrites a canonical English text within the European novelistic tradition in the interest of the white Creole rather than the native” (246). o “Wide Sargasso Sea is necessarily bound by the reach of the European novel” (246). Spivak talks about violence in an interesting way which could influence how you think of violence in your interpretation of the novel and in reading Fanon. o “In the figure of Antoinette, whom in Wide Sargasso Sea Rochester violently renames Bertha, Rhys suggests that so intimate a thing as personal and human identity might be determined by the politics of imperialism” (242).

Wide Sargasso Sea and a Critique of Imperialism by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ● Original Thesis: o In the novel Wide Sargasso Sea, author Jean Rhys shows how the attitudes that shape patriarchal culture and colonial culture are related by drawing a parallel between the oppression of women and the oppression of colonized people. ● New Thesis: o While Spivak identifies the divide between the feminism of novels like Jane Eyre and postcolonialism, she does not recognize the importance of intermediary novels such as Wide Sargasso Sea. Jean Rhys bridges the gap between feminism and postcolonialism by depicting the similarities between colonial and patriarchal forces in her novel.

Two Native Voices in Wide Sargasso Sea by Benita Parry ● Parry is arguing against Spivak. ● She takes issue with Spivak’s response to identity - Antoinette as the native female sacrificed in the cause of subject-constitution (247). ● Christophine is unheard by Spivak because “a black female who in WSS is most fully selved, must be reduced to the status of a tangential figure” (248). ● According to Parry, “Christophine subverts the Creole address that would constitute her as domesticated Other, and asserts herself as articulate antagonist of patriarchal, settler and imperialist law” (248). She does so with her use of obeah, her refusal of her patronymic, refusing her sons’ fathers as husbands, and in her criticism of Rochester’s economic and sexual exploitation of Antoinette. ● Christophine is the native voice.

Two Native Voices in Wide Sargasso Sea by Benita Parry ● Original Thesis: Rhys seems to imply that there is a similarity between individual gender roles and colonial structure that goes unrecognized by Frantz Fanon. ● New Thesis: With Antoinette and Christophine, it seems as though Rhys is drawing attention to the complications that Fanon fails to recognize, insisting that identity is far more complex than just being consigned to a compartment.

England: Dream and Nightmare by Judith Raiskin ● Jean Rhys is one of the first female writers of her time to enter the West Indian literature discussion. o She focused a lot of her work specifically on women of the West Indies. ● Discusses the realities of England in relation Antoinette o Importance of the Miller’s Daughter painting and that idea of England. o Difference between her idealized England the realities of England. o Loss of her mental stability increases her delusions of time and place. o Antoinette’s identity of being British and Caribbean Creole. § Antoinette’s rebellion and destruction is not directed towards the British part of herself but her identity as a British/Creole (257).

England: Dream and Nightmare by Judith Raiskin ● Original Thesis: The two compartments stated in Franz Fanon’s argument does not neatly place Antoinette as either settler or native. ● New Thesis: Antoinette fits into both of Franz Fanon’s compartments, however according to Judith Raiskin, it is a more complex situation. Antoinette is a more a native to the Caribbean and a settler to England.

England: Dream and Nightmare by Judith Raiskin ● Raiskin expands on Antoinette’s separation from her “mother land” and out of place identity in it. ● The dreams that Antoinette has are a symbol of how her mental state is deteriorating as she loses focus on her identity. Her final dream is the resolution she has come to. ● “. . her dream of an England of snow, cornfields, and milllers’ daughters progressively becomes her dream of violence and destruction. ” - Antoinette is led to believe that England is something she should praise because it is a part of her but the reality of the hatred towards her turns her feelings into another direction. “Antoinette’s Rebellion and destruction are therefore not directed against the British part of herself but against a brutal political reality that threatens her own identity as a British/Caribbean Creole” (pg 257) ● Shows how Antoinette does not deny that she is English but has a hard time accepting the realities that brings when she identifies culturally as Caribbean She pushes back unconsciously with her mental state and destruction of herself force towards those who have betrayed her because of who she is. (Her husband, Tia)

England: Dream and Nightmare by Judith Raiskin Original thesis: The division of race as Fanon says led Antoinette to internal violence as a response to her identity. New Thesis: The external oppression that Antoinette feels from her homeland of England is what drives her to have an internal mental battle to fight back for what is left of her identity.