Wide Sargasso Sea Critics Flashcards
Penny Boumelha; the madwoman.
Jean Rhys has set out to vindicate “the madwoman”, she emphasized her role as “the legacy of imperialism concealed in the heart of every English gentleman’s castle”
Steve Padley; author’s intentions.
Rhys’ writing focuses on giving “a voice to the voiceless”.
Alexis Lykiard; what Wide Sargasso Sea achieves.
- “original achievement in Wide Sargasso Sea was to extend, explore, modernize, while also rendering timeless, that cry, that yearning, and all those other vital elements she rediscovered in Bronte’s novel”
Letter by Jean Rhys; Bronte’s story of Bertha Mason.
“That’s only one side - the English side”.
Alan Gordon; dreams.
“dreams [in Wide Sargasso Sea] provide glimpses of the repressed or unexpressed emotions of characters…they also foreshadow events for the benefit of the characters and the reader.”
Rebecca Ashworth; Antoinette’s identity compared to Rochester’s identity.
“In contrast to her husband’s ostensibly fixed nationality and race as an English white man, Antoinette’s identity is unstable, leading her to constantly seek reinforcement through her image in a mirror”
Veronica Gregg; significance of Antoinette viewing Rochester’s house being made of cardboard & theme of women’s role in society.
“Antoinette perceives the house as made of cardboard, symbolic of her entrapment ‘between the pages of a book’”
Missy Dehn Kubitschek; what Wide Sargasso Sea demands of the reader & theme of colonialism.
‘demands that the reader interpret the plot from a marginalist perspective’
Maritza Stanchich; significance of Antoinette’s third & final dream.
‘In Antoinette’s final dream, she conjures her own destiny, perhaps taking control for the first time in her life’
Angela Smith; the novel explores the in-betweens & theme of belonging.
The novel explores the ‘negotiation of the space between audiences and performers, sanity and madness, expectation and fulfilment, acting and being’.
Angela Smith; “Rhys hears…” & theme of colonialism, racism, giving a voice the voiceless.
“voices that Bronte’s novel pushes to the margins”
Angela Smith; presentation of truth.
Likens the narrative presentation of truth to Heart of Darkness - “fleeting and uncertain”
Angela Smith; foreshadowing.
“What haunts the reader of this text is the knowledge of what will happen to Antoinette”
Angela Smith; Rhys’ achievement with the opening lines of Wide Sargasso Sea & theme of truth.
Compared to Jane Eyre’s definitive opening, Rhys offers “a hesitant tone” of rumour, hinting at the subjectivity of truth & the unreliability of the narrators throughout the entire novel.
Angela Smith; similarity between Rochester & Mr. Mason & theme of patriarchy & theme of colonialism.
“Mason and Rochester both demand that those around them should play the parts they would have in England.”
