Assignment paper 203

 This blog is a part of assignmnet of paper 203- Postcolonial studies.

Name: Devangini Vyas

Batch: 2024-26

Roll No: 3

Email: devangivyas167@gmail.com

Paper- 203- Postcolonial studies

Unit: 3 Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea

Date of Submission: 7 november 2025

Submitted to: SMT.S.B. Gardi Department of English MKBU.

Introduction

Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) is one of the most important feminist rewritings of canonical literature. Written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the novel gives voice to Bertha Mason—the “madwoman in the attic”—whose silence and erasure in Brontë’s text have long been criticized by feminist and postcolonial critics.

Rhys transforms Bertha, renamed Antoinette Cosway, from a voiceless gothic monster into a complex woman whose identity is shaped and ultimately destroyed by patriarchy, colonialism, racial hierarchy, and the male gaze.

Through Antoinette’s tragic story, Wide Sargasso Sea becomes a feminist critique of how women’s bodies, desires, voices, and sanity are suppressed by patriarchal systems. Rhys exposes the deep injustices faced by women in the nineteenth-century Caribbean and England, challenging readers to reconsider who gets to tell their own story.

Patriarchy and the “Madwoman”: Reclaiming Female Voice

In Jane Eyre, Bertha Mason is presented only through Rochester’s description: violent, immoral, and insane. She has no voice of her own. Rhys undertakes a radical feminist recovery by giving Antoinette her own narrative, emotions, desires, and memories.

This narrative reclamation is itself a feminist act. Rhys argues that the “madwoman” is not inherently mad—she is driven to madness by:

• forced marriage,
• silencing,
• cultural displacement,
• patriarchal control,
• and psychological manipulation by Rochester.

The novel demonstrates how patriarchal narratives produce madness by denying women space to speak or define themselves. Antoinette’s fractured voice is symbolic of how women’s identities break under systems of power that exclude and define them from the outside.

Marriage as Patriarchal Imprisonment

Rhys presents marriage not as a romantic union but as a site of gendered power. Antoinette’s marriage binds her legally, sexually, and emotionally to Rochester, a man who sees her not as a partner but as an exotic possession.

Rochester renames her “Bertha” against her will—an act symbolic of patriarchal authority over a woman’s identity. Renaming becomes a form of colonization: to claim the right to name is to claim ownership of the person.

Rochester also uses Antoinette’s financial dependency to control her. He marries her primarily for her dowry and sees her body and wealth as resources to command. When he falsely accuses her of infidelity and madness, he uses patriarchal legal structures to justify her confinement.

This portrayal exposes how marriage in patriarchal societies becomes a mechanism for silencing women and denying them autonomy over their own names, desires, and lives

Female Sexuality and the Fear of the “Other” Woman

Rhys’s novel also examines how female sexuality becomes a source of male anxiety and societal control. Antoinette’s beauty and sensuality are interpreted by Rochester as dangerous, wild, and uncontrollable. He fears her partly because she does not fit the European ideal of a submissive wife.

Instead of understanding her cultural background, he interprets her emotional intensity as madness and her longing for affection as instability.

This fear reflects how patriarchy constructs the “Other woman”—the passionate, emotional, irrational woman who must be tamed or silenced. Antoinette becomes a victim of these gendered stereotypes. Rochester’s inability to comprehend her sexuality leads him to punish and isolate her, turning desire into a pretext for domination.

Feminine Space and Confinement

The symbolic spaces in the novel also reveal patriarchal control. Antoinette begins in the lush, open landscape of Jamaica and Dominica—a place associated with freedom, sensuality, and connection with nature.

But after Rochester’s arrival, her world shrinks. She is gradually removed from:

• her home,
• her social space,
• her sense of belonging,
• and ultimately her own body.

The final confinement in the attic of Thornfield Hall is the ultimate expression of patriarchal imprisonment. In that dark, locked room, Antoinette loses all physical and psychological freedom. The attic becomes a metaphor for women’s silenced place in history—hidden, controlled, and forgotten.

Female Madness as a Product of Oppression

A major feminist contribution of Rhys’s novel is the re-interpretation of Antoinette’s madness. Instead of inherent insanity, Rhys shows madness as a culmination of trauma inflicted by:

• sexual betrayal,
• racial humiliation,
• economic dependency,
• cultural dislocation,
• and marital imprisonment.

Patriarchy defines “madness” as any female behavior that resists control. When Antoinette protests, Rochester interprets her resistance as insanity. When she expresses desire, he calls it excessive. When she speaks of her fears, he calls them irrational.

Rhys reveals that madness is not the opposite of reason—it is a weapon used by patriarchal society to delegitimize women’s pain and lock them away.

Female Solidarity and Its Limits

The novel also highlights relationships between women—Antoinette and her mother, Annette; Antoinette and Christophine; Antoinette and Amélie. These relationships reveal both the power and fragility of female connections under patriarchal structures.

Christophine is the novel’s strongest feminist presence, offering Antoinette emotional guidance and teaching her resistance. However, even Christophine cannot oppose the legal and racial power Rochester holds.

Through this, Rhys shows that patriarchal institutions are so deeply entrenched that even strong women cannot always protect one another from enforced domination.

Conclusion

Wide Sargasso Sea is a foundational feminist text that powerfully reclaims the erased voice of Charlotte Brontë’s “madwoman in the attic.” Through Antoinette’s tragic journey, Jean Rhys critiques the intertwined systems of patriarchy, colonialism, racial hierarchy, and marital oppression that shape—and ultimately destroy—a woman’s identity.

The novel forces us to confront how women’s voices have been suppressed in literature and history, how female desire is feared, and how patriarchal narratives turn suffering into madness.

By giving Antoinette her voice back, Rhys not only rewrites a literary classic but also exposes the gendered violence hidden beneath the surface of canonical stories. Wide Sargasso Sea remains an essential feminist text that continues to challenge and expand our understanding of women’s experiences, agency, and representation.

References:

Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 1, 1985, pp. 243–261. JSTOR.https://www.jstor.org/stable/1343469