Writing, racial identification, and mental illness in A Question of Power and Wide Sargasso Sea

This study considers the relationship between race and mental illness in A Question of Power by Bessie Head and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Both Elizabeth in A Question of Power and Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea undergo traumatic events in which they are abandoned or betrayed because of their racial difference. I argue that analyzing how the women's mental illnesses are shaped by these traumatic experiences provides a framework for understanding how the protagonists cope with illness and subsequently gain agency. Even as Elizabeth and Antoinette struggle with the debilitating aspects of mental illness, the novels show that the portrayal of mental illness can be productive. In Head's novel, institutional authorities categorize Elizabeth based upon her biracial identity and cultural stereotypes of mental illness, but the hallucinations that accompany her illness enable her to understand the mechanisms of her oppression. Similarly, in Rhys's novel, Antoinette's husband attempts to make her into an English subject but cannot erase her attachment to Jamaica. Through traumatic retelling and grieving, Elizabeth and Antoinette acquire some agency, respectively.;The introduction provides a critical and theoretical context for A Question of Power and Wide Sargasso Sea. The study is situated among theories of colonial and postcolonial identification, gender criticism, and patriarchal and disciplinary control. These bodies of criticism help show how the problems of racial and gender identification are often compounded in colonial and postcolonial settings. Additionally, psychoanalytic models of literary agency allow me to consider whether these narratives of illness might be productive. Chapter one explores how Elizabeth, through her hallucinations, gains insight into her traumas and connects her victimization to systemic forms of racism and gender oppression. Chapter two discusses how Antoinette's grief for her severed Jamaican roots, which I theorize as melancholia, provides her with agency in the novel and in literary history. This melancholia enables her to maintain some independence from her husband and also facilitates the novel's postcolonial critique of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre . In my conclusion, I consider how the telling of these narratives provides cultural healing for the communities of women in and outside the novels.