A Reading Of Wide Sargasso Sea From The Perspective Of Lacan's Mirror Stage And Sexual Relations

Wide Sargasso Sea as a reversal of Jane Eyre appeared in 1966 in literary circle. The writer Jean Rhys reshapes the mad wife of Rochester, Bertha Mason who is imprisoned in the attic in Jane Eyre. The madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre is deprived of the right of discourse. All the things about her are narrated by the others. In the narration of them she is repulsive in appearance and is a stumbling block in the happy matrimony life of Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. In Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys rescues Bertha Mason from the attic and turns her from"the other"on the margin into"the self"in the center of the text. In the novel, the ex-wife of Rochester, Antoinette Cosway narrates her story, her secrets and her memories. In the whole story, Antoinette's personality transforms from wholeness and sanity to confusion between reality and dream.With much attention to Jean Rhys, researches of this novel at home are like kaleidoscope. Some analyze the themes and artistic features of the novel; some focus on symbols, aesthetic images and death images; some read it from the perspective of semantic oblong, some from the angle of narratology; some stress on characterizations and some compare the novel with others. In any way the researches of this novel focus on the colonialist discourse. Critics abroad study this novel from the perspective of narrative strategy and feminism. A few critics and researchers have paid attention to the characterizations, but they stressed on the relation between the disposition and fate of characters. Therefore, this paper, in accordance with the presupposition of Lacan's theory about the mirror stage and the sexual relations, attempts to analyze the characterization of the heroine Antoinette and both the inner cause and outer cause of her transformation from a normal person into a mad one. Lacan's theory has a deep influence on feminism. The theoretical foundation of this thesis includes Lacan's mirror stage and his views on sexual relations. The object of this thesis lies in probing into the arduous journey in which the heroine Antoinette identifies the self in marginalized achievement of the writer, who endeavors to do some meaningful research on novels. Furthermore, we hope it could be a significant complement for the existed studies of the novel and the experience of it can be used for future researchers.This paper begins with a brief introduction to Jean Rhys's life experience and her works. The object of the study of this paper, Wide Sargasso Sea, is staged in Westward Island of India. Antoinette, the heroine is one of White Creoles, who are hybrid descendants of colonists and aborigines. The background of the story is the liberation in Dominica, which leads to the freedom of black slaves. In this novel, it shows the decline and waning of a class and along with it the trauma of local habitants. Meanwhile, it displays the living predicament of a woman who hardly locates her self identity.Chapter One provides a brief literature review of the studies of the novel Wide Sargasso Sea in China and in the West. It is followed by an introduction to the writing purpose as well as the theoretical basis of this paper. The theoretical basis of this thesis is Lacan's mirror stage and his views on sexual relations. In mirror stage, a child does not treat the body in bits and pieces any more. It gains a whole conception of the self. Mirror stage is a crucial phase for a child to identify itself. In Lacan's views on sexual relations, men have phallus, and they own power to control women. Women as castrated subjects admire the penis. They desire to have what they are in need, so they are easily to subjugate to men's power and to fall into predicament.Chapter Two in accordance with Lacan's theory of the mirror stage mainly discusses the confusion of Antoinette's self identity and the arduous journey of her self recognization in Black culture and in White culture. At the same time, the analysis of the contents of her dreams reveals the plight of Antoinette's self location and the mutual mirror images with her mother, the black girl Tia and Amelie.Chapter Three in terms of Lacan's views of sexual relations further discusses the course of Antoinette's losing her sanity and struggling with death under the dual depressions of patriarchal society and capitalist society, on the basis of her confusion of self identity. Finally Antoinette reidentifies the self through the reunion with the black girl Tia.The last part is the conclusion of this thesis. Reading Jean Rhys's novel Wide Sargasso Sea in the light of psychoanalysis, this thesis probes into the experience of the heroine Antoinette's seeking for the self, and losing the self.