Post-colonial Approach To The Theme Of Wide Sargasso Sea

Jane Rhys is honored as one of the most distinguished British novelists in the twentieth century. The acquisition of this distinction is mainly due to the publication of her novel Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966. The novel Wide Sargasso Sea mainly displays to the readers the story how the white Creole girl Antoinette develops from a simple, innocent girl to a mad woman. It is known as the prequel of Jane Eyre, but it is by no means a sequel of it. With her own life experience as a white Creole and her experience living in West Indies as a blueprint, setting the abolition of slavery in West Indies in the nineteenth century as the background of the times, Rhys breaks the class limitation embodied in Jane Eyre, restores Antoinette and other West Indians a real state of survival as the West Indian subalterns. This paper seeks to set post-colonialism as a theoretical basis, make a complete interpretation of the complicated ethnic confrontation, patriarchal oppression and other social conflicts happened under the post-colonial context.As a multi-cultural theory, post-colonialism mainly concerns the cultural discourse power relations between the sovereign state and the colony as well as racism, cultural imperialism, national culture, cultural identity and other new problems. Post-colonialism denies all the master-narrative, believing it is the dominant Eurocentric narrative, so the criticism of Euro-centralism is the basic task of post-colonialism. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys breaks the single master-narrative mode, arranges different narrators in each part, gives subalterns the opportunity to voice their own sound, thus the sound constitutes a powerful post-colonial resistance discourse. The novel describes not only the suffering of Antoinette and other Creoles and blacks, but Rochester, the spoken-man of the patriarchal and colonial system can not escape his tragic fate.This thesis attempts to take post-colonial reading to Wide Sargasso Sea from three aspects. Chapter One reveals the post-colonial discourse. The white British have been long obsessed with the aura of superiority that is from the complex of national identity and the complex of national culture. While because of years of colonial oppression, West Indians are considered inferiors that's not only seared by the colonists but conceived in their own heart of hearts. Chapter Two interprets the living condition of the subalterns under the social reality dominated by the Eurocentric notion from racial discrimination, patriarchal oppression and parental betrayal aspects. Chapter Three deals with the fact of Eurocentric subversion by discussing from two aspects, namely, non-violent resistance and violent revolution. Through the discussion of the three chapters, this thesis has attempted to draw the following conclusion: In the post-colonial period, Euro-centric discourse is the social root that leads to the tragic life of the hero and heroine. Dominated by this ideology, only the breeding of antagonism and hatred can be indulged, culminating in both sides lose. Therefore, only by eliminating racial discrimination, cultural hegemony and spiritual monopoly, promoting a symbiotic exchange of dialogue and multi-cultural discourse of power, and dispelling the inequality and confrontation between peoples, can the mutual integration of the world's different cultures and sharing of civilization resources be achieved and eventually heads for global peace.