Blind Spots And Restore

The Dominican woman writer Jean Rhys(1890-1979) who had a long-term reside abroad, published her last novel Wide Sargasso Sea in London, 1966. The novel created much of a stir, and received rave reviews. In the past 40 years, the studies on Jean Rhys, especially on her novel Wide Sargasso Sea become more and more plentiful,for the reason that it has intertextuality with the novel Jane Eyre written by the English novelist, Charlotte Bronte. The comparative studies on the two novels are especially abundant in the criticism. Inspired by the intertextuality, the thesis concentrates on the rewriting of the classical text into the processed text, trying to illustrate the literature and cultural significance generated in their conversation.In the 20th century, some classical works suffered a lot from being rewritten and deconstructed. According to the phenomenon, the author comes up with the thesis of scotoma and restoration which suggests that there are innate blind spots in every works. A scotoma means a part which was not referred in the works. But the fascination and the significance of the work lies in the exploration and restoration of the scotoma. According to this, the author takes for it that the rewriting of the literature was stimulated by the post modernity and post colonialism.The first part focuses on the introduction of her life experience, literary career and her unsociable and eccentric personality. The second part introduced the writing course of the novel and the studies on it at home and abroad. Compared with the abundant accomplishment abroad, the domestic study of the novel just stays on the surface, or just repeats what others have already achieved. It's neither integrated nor in depth.In the second part, on the basis of a lack of sympathy for the mad Bertha in Jane Eyre and the tone of sentimental nostalgia in Wide Sargasso Sea, the thesis discovers that the reason why the two novels have different emotional effect is the diversity of time constraint and the disparate of narrative ethics caused by it.In the third part, on the basis of Freud's psychoanalytic theory and Michel Foucault's theory on madness, the thesis expounded the reason of Bertha's madness or in other words, the truth of her madness. Rhys wanted to rouse Bertha's dearest memories, and gave her a chance to tell her own story so that her madness can get treatment in the process and the accomplishment of her narration,In Orientalism, Edward Said suggests that orientalism can contribute to a dangerous history ethics, which has a potential destructive power. The power makes the underdogs and losers the victims of human progress. The author of thesis tries to illustrate the effect Wide Sargasso Sea have on Jane Eyre in the process of the deconstruction of post colonialism and recovery the history of colonialismIn the conclusion, the thesis finishes with an open-ended conclusion and comes up with some unsolved puzzles in the research into Wide Sargasso Sea, with the hope of getting more information about more and further studies on it.