Sailing In The Dark

Jean Rhys portrays white creole women in her novels.Returning from the birthplace of the West Indies to the "motherland",white creole women become "others"in the eyes of Europeans.On the one hand,white creole women fall into a dependent survival dilemma,an unspeakable language dilemma and an uncoordinated state of mind.On the other hand,Rhys delivers a weak spiritual struggle through carnival-narratives and memory writing.The literary practice of Rhys is an autobiographical writing.The alienated mother-daughter relationship in family life has led Rhys to present a hostile model motherhood in literary creation and the terrible influence of this uncoordinated relationship model on daughter's adult life.In addition,there is a deeper connotation of this mother-daughter relationship,that is,the rejection of the British mother.The pattern of abandoning-abandoned in the emotional experiences makes Rhys not only write the experience of female being abandoned by men,but also put the focus on the devastating influence on women;at the same time,Rhys reveals the hidden connection between sex and money and class.The repressed desire in European life led Rhys to give out the voice of white creole women,and to create a pattern of multiple-narrative voices.In the literary practice of writing white creole women,Rhys not only refers to the literary traditions,but also innovates the way of narrating stories.By reshaping the image of Bertha/Antoinette,Rhys traces the history of the white creole woman,restores another historical truth that may exist under the cover of Western centralism,and questions the legality and holiness of imperialist colonial behaviors.By using prototype character of Iocaster and "mad woman",Rhys subverts the image of the Empire and forced readers to reexamine the definition of "crazy".By following the "wandering" motif,Rhys tells the story of white creole women "going home",revealing the nature of white creole women's homeless existence.