| Jean Rhys is one of the most famous and important British female writers. Most of her novels were written in the 1930 s and 1960 s. She pays much attention to the women from the marginalized society and analyzes their process of questing for identities. Due to her unusual life experiences both in the West Indies and abroad, her novels are mostly set in Paris or England and her characters are always with a West Indian background. She mainly writes about the exploitation of women, being conscious of them as a group in society, of their low economic positions and of the roles imposed on them by a male society. Wide Sargasso Sea is her masterpiece and looked upon as the sequel of Jane Eyre. As a typical postcolonial work, it has been widely read and spoken highly of by many critics since it was published. It makes the silenced Bertha speak and become a vivid white Creole Antoinette in this novel. The unique scenery in the West Indies depicted by Jean Rhys attracts the readers a lot. And the heroine’s special life experiences and her identity crisis touch us so much. With the help of the theories of postcolonialism, this thesis tries to explore further of the reasons of the heroine’s identity crisis, the process of questing for it and the final success of finding her unique self.This thesis is composed of four chapters. Chapter One consists of the introduction of the author Jean Rhys and her main works as well as the theories of postcolonialism. Chapter Two focuses on the main reasons of the heroine’s identity crisis: the racial conflicts, the gender oppression and the Euro-centric discrimination. Chapter Three is mainly on the process of the heroine’s questing for identity, her failure in fusing into the black or the white world, her inner psychological vacillation and her recognition of the value of being her unique self. Chapter Four is the conclusion part, including the main findings, the limitation of the study and the suggestion for further study. |
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