Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys, an English woman writer born in Dominica, published Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966, which marked the peak of the her writing career. Wide Sargasso Sea, her best-known novel, caught the immediate attention of critics. Critics in England and in the West Indian place her respectively in the rank of their foremost writers. She is acknowledged as "the best living English novelist" in The New York Times and recognized as one of the major Caribbean writers. Wide Sargasso Sea not only earns Rhys a place in the literary canon but also brings her the prestigious W. H. Smith Award and Heinemann Award. Meanwhile, she has got the prestigious Council of Great Britain Award in that Wide Sargasso Sea explores the wordless and negative character, Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre and looks into the tragedy from Bertha's view. Rhys gives voice to Antoinette (Bertha Mason), who remains silent in Jane Eyre, as well as to the colonized people, who are objectified in colonial texts, exploring what is behind the tragedy, thus subverts the patriarchal and colonial discourses. In this sense, Wide Sargasso Sea is not only a brilliant deconstruction of Bronte's legacy, but also a record of the damning history of colonialism in the Caribbean Islands.This thesis is divided into five parts. The first part briefly introduces Rhys's unique life experience, which has great influence on her novels and her inspiration for her attempt to rewrite Jane Eyre. Part two mainly focuses on three representative women characters and their confrontations with men as the male-female confrontations well demonstrate how Rhys deconstructs the patriarchal discourse. In Part three analysis is centered on the function of Rhys's application of mirror device through which we can better understand how Rochester, the symbol of Britain Empire, feels the crisis of identity in the hostile West India and, how Antoinette finally rediscovers her identity, identifies with the black and abandons England, thus subverts the colonial discourse. Part Four is a contrast analysis of the relationship between Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre. Although Rhys creates her masterpiece within the framework of Jane Eyre and some critics are convinced of the dependence of the former on the latter, a careful reader might find convincing reasons to believe thatthere exists the possibility that these two texts are independent and to some degree the former is the subversion of the latter, which helps to further understand the feminism in the latter. Based on the above arguments, the last part of this thesis draws the conclusion that Wide Sargasso Sea subverts not only two dominant discourses but also the imperialist canon, thus it deserves to be seen as the most rebellious counter-discourse. Moreover, it is also the author's sincere wish that this thesis is not a valueless attempt in searching for the better understanding of the canonical Jane Eyre.