Assignment Paper No. 203 : Fragmented Voices and Colonial Madness: Feminist and Postcolonial Perspectives in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

Fragmented Voices and Colonial Madness: Feminist and Postcolonial Perspectives in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

This blog is a part of the assignment of Paper 203: Literary Theory & Criticism and Indian Aesthetics 

Academic Details:

Name : Jay P. Vaghani

Roll No.         : 06

Sem. : 3

Batch : 2024-26

E-mail : vaghanijay77@gmail.com   

Assignment Details:

Paper Name : The Postcolonial Studies

Paper No. : 203

Paper Code : 20408

Unit : 3 - Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea 

Topic :Fragmented Voices and Colonial Madness: Feminist and Postcolonial Perspectives in Jean Rhys’s 'Wide Sargasso Sea'

Submitted To : Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Submitted Date : November 8, 2025

The following information—numbers are counted using QuillBot:

Words         : 1793

Characters         : 13187

Characters without spaces : 11450

Paragraphs         :74

Sentences         : 146

Reading time         :7 m 10 s

Table of Contents

Personal Information

Assignment Details

Abstract

Introduction

The Silenced Woman: Feminist Reclamation in Rhys’s Narrative

The Postcolonial Lens: Creole Identity and Otherness

Madness and Isolation: The Psychological Landscape of Antoinette

Narrative Technique and Multiplicity of Voice

Conclusion

Abstract

Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) reimagines the life of Bertha Mason—the “madwoman in the attic” from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre—giving voice to a silenced Creole woman trapped between race, class, and gender hierarchies. This paper examines the novel through feminist and postcolonial perspectives, exploring how Rhys exposes the mechanisms of “othering” and cultural displacement. Drawing on Mahmut Akar’s theory of “the othering of women by the otherised,” Silvia Cappello’s postcolonial discourse analysis, and Ainaab Tariq’s psychological reading of Antoinette’s madness, the assignment interprets Wide Sargasso Sea as a layered narrative of identity, alienation, and resistance. Through narrative fragmentation and dual perspectives, Rhys transforms silence into storytelling, madness into meaning, and colonial trauma into a voice of defiance.

Introduction

Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea stands as one of the most important postcolonial and feminist reinterpretations of English literary history. By rewriting Jane Eyre from the perspective of the colonized Creole woman, Rhys challenges the imperial gaze that once rendered her invisible. As Britannica notes, Rhys’s novel “illuminates the intersection of race, gender, and power in the post-Emancipation Caribbean.”

Set in Jamaica and Dominica shortly after the abolition of slavery, the novel traces Antoinette Cosway’s descent into madness and her gradual transformation into the voiceless figure known as Bertha Mason. This descent, however, is not purely psychological—it is the product of social, racial, and patriarchal othering. As Mahmut Akar (2022) argues, Rhys “gives voice to the voiceless” by allowing Antoinette to narrate her fragmented consciousness. The result is a deeply unsettling portrait of colonial madness where personal trauma mirrors collective dislocation.

Hypothesis

This paper hypothesizes that Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea reclaims the silenced voice of the colonial “madwoman” by rewriting Jane Eyre through a feminist and postcolonial lens. Rhys transforms Antoinette Cosway from a marginal figure of insanity into a symbol of resistance, exposing how gender, race, and colonial power intersect to construct madness as a form of otherness. The novel suggests that Antoinette’s psychological fragmentation is not innate but socially and culturally produced through patriarchal domination and colonial displacement. By giving Antoinette her own narrative voice, Rhys subverts the imperial authority of English literature and redefines madness as an act of both survival and rebellion.

Research Questions

How does Jean Rhys use Wide Sargasso Sea to challenge the colonial and patriarchal ideologies embedded in Jane Eyre?

In what ways does the novel reinterpret the figure of the “madwoman in the attic” as a feminist symbol of resistance rather than insanity?

How does Rhys represent Creole identity and racial hybridity as sources of both empowerment and alienation?

What role does narrative structure—shifting perspectives, fragmented chronology, and linguistic hybridity—play in expressing themes of dislocation and silencing?

How does Rhys transform madness into a metaphor for postcolonial trauma and the search for selfhood?

The Silenced Woman: Feminist Reclamation in Rhys’s Narrative

Valerie Roper (1988) identifies Wide Sargasso Sea as a radical act of storytelling where women reclaim narrative authority from patriarchal control. In the Victorian imagination, the “madwoman” symbolized suppressed female desire and disorder. Rhys reverses this trope—madness becomes a metaphor for the oppression and silencing of women.

Through Antoinette’s first-person narration, the reader gains access to her emotions, fears, and fragmented memories. The alternating voices of Antoinette and Rochester create a tension between male authority and female resistance. Rochester’s refusal to use her real name (“Bertha”) exemplifies linguistic colonization, as language itself becomes a weapon of control. Thus, Rhys’s narrative transforms the silenced woman into the storyteller—reclaiming not only her identity but also her humanity.

The Postcolonial Lens: Creole Identity and Otherness

Silvia Cappello (2009) explores Wide Sargasso Sea as a confrontation between “Creole discourse” and “European discourse.” The novel stages an ongoing conflict between center and periphery, civilization and wilderness, white supremacy and marginalized identity. Antoinette, as a white Creole woman, exists in an unstable position—she is neither completely European nor authentically Caribbean. This liminal status situates her in a constant state of cultural and psychological displacement. She becomes a living embodiment of hybridity—caught between two incompatible worlds that both reject her. Her mother’s madness and her own alienation mirror the trauma of those who belong to no fixed identity or homeland.

Mahmut Akar (2022) describes this as “the othering of women by the otherised,” where the colonized man, represented by Rochester, reproduces the very structures of oppression once imposed upon him. Rochester’s attempt to rename Antoinette as “Bertha” symbolizes the act of silencing and redefinition that colonial discourse performs upon the colonized subject. Through this act, he enforces patriarchal and imperial control over her body, voice, and identity. Rhys, therefore, exposes a hierarchy within the hierarchy—demonstrating that even within systems of subjugation, domination continues to replicate itself along lines of gender and race.

Furthermore, the Caribbean landscape plays a crucial symbolic role. Its lush, tropical beauty contrasts with its dark history of slavery and violence. The natural environment seems alive, shifting between comfort and threat, mirroring Antoinette’s mental disintegration. The landscape functions almost as a psychological extension of her divided self—a space of both desire and danger. In this way, Rhys transforms the Caribbean setting into a metaphor for Antoinette’s fragmented consciousness, a paradise tainted by historical trauma and cultural displacement. Ultimately, Wide Sargasso Sea becomes not only a story of an individual woman’s breakdown but also a profound exploration of how colonial history fractures identity, voice, and belonging.

Ainaab Tariq (2024) interprets Antoinette’s mental collapse as a result of profound social isolation, racial displacement, and emotional betrayal. Growing up in a post-emancipation Caribbean society, she inherits her mother Annette’s loneliness and insecurity, both of which are intensified by the hostility of the black community and the indifference of the white colonizers. Torn between her Creole heritage and her English husband’s rejection, Antoinette struggles to locate a stable sense of self. Her identity gradually disintegrates under the weight of colonial duality—she is simultaneously privileged and powerless, desired and despised.

Madness, in this sense, becomes both a symptom of oppression and a form of resistance. It represents not only psychological breakdown but also a rebellion against the social and patriarchal categories that seek to confine her. Martina Tucci (2024) defines this state as a “fragmented identity”—a consciousness split between multiple worlds, reflecting the internal consequences of colonial hybridity. The forces that silence and define her—race, gender, and imperial power—are turned inward, resulting in her mental fragmentation.

The locked attic in Jane Eyre, which Rhys reimagines in Wide Sargasso Sea, becomes an architectural metaphor for colonial and patriarchal imprisonment. In that confined space, Antoinette’s madness becomes the only means through which she can express herself—a silent scream that echoes the historical silencing of colonized women. Her final act of setting fire to Thornfield Hall can therefore be read as an assertion of agency through destruction. The flames that consume the house also consume her suffering, transforming her madness into a moment of liberation. Through this act, Antoinette reclaims her narrative, challenging both patriarchal domination and colonial authorship.

Rhys thus transforms madness from a mark of weakness into a symbol of empowerment. It becomes the language through which Antoinette resists erasure and asserts her fragmented yet unyielding identity. In this way, Wide Sargasso Sea turns psychological trauma into political commentary, revealing how colonialism and patriarchy together construct—and confine—the female mind.

Narrative Technique and Multiplicity of Voice

Teresa Winterhalter (1994) emphasizes that Rhys’s narrative structure—the shifting points of view, fragmented chronology, and unreliable narration—reflects the novel’s central theme of dislocation. The dual perspectives of Antoinette and Rochester expose how truth is mediated through power. The reader witnesses the colonial act of silencing as it unfolds in language itself.

This narrative “rage for order,” as Winterhalter terms it, mirrors Rochester’s desperate attempt to categorize and control what he cannot understand. Yet Rhys’s prose resists such control through its lyrical, dreamlike quality. By weaving Creole rhythms and Caribbean imagery into English syntax, Rhys enacts what postcolonial theorists call “linguistic creolization”—a subversion of the colonizer’s language from within.

Conclusion

Wide Sargasso Sea dismantles the imperial binaries of sanity/madness, center/periphery, and colonizer/colonized. Through Antoinette’s fragmented voice, Jean Rhys reclaims the silenced narratives buried beneath the English canon. The novel becomes not merely a prequel to Jane Eyre but a critique of the entire colonial ideology that produced it.

By combining feminist reclamation with postcolonial resistance, Rhys exposes how madness can become a form of truth-telling—a language born from trauma yet capable of transcending it. In giving Antoinette her story, Rhys gives history its missing voice.

References

AKAR, Mahmut. “The Othering of Women by the Otherised: Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea as the Voice of the Voiceless.” Anemon Muş Alparslan Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, Anemon Mus Alparslan Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 3 Dec. 2022, www.academia.edu/99254579/The_Othering_of_Women_by_the_Otherised_Jean_Rhys_s_Wide_Sargasso_Sea_as_the_Voice_of_the_Voiceless. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Wide Sargasso Sea". Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Nov. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Wide-Sargasso-Sea. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Jean Rhys". Encyclopedia Britannica, 10 May. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Rhys. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.

Cappello, Silvia. “Postcolonial Discourse in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’: Creole Discourse vs. European Discourse, Periphery vs. Center, and Marginalized People vs. White Supremacy.” Journal of Caribbean Literatures, vol. 6, no. 1, 2009, pp. 47–54. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40986298. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.

ROPER, VALERIE P. “WOMEN AS STORYTELLER IN ‘WIDE SARGASSO SEA.’” Caribbean Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 1/2, 1988, pp. 19–36. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23210989. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.

Tucci, Martina. “Wide Sargasso Sea: Examining Antoinette’s Fragmented Identity.” Arcadia, 19 May 2024, www.byarcadia.org/post/wide-sargasso-sea-examining-antoinette-s-fragmented-identity

. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.

TARIQ, AINAAB. “(PDF) Madness and Isolation in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’: A Psychological Exploration of Antoinette’s Mental State.” International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology, Apr. 2024,

www.researchgate.net/publication/379885378_Madness_and_Isolation_in_Wide_Sargasso_Sea_A_Psychological_Exploration_of_Antoinette’s_Mental_State. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.

Winterhalter, Teresa. “Narrative Technique and the Rage for Order in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea.’” Narrative, vol. 2, no. 3, 1994, pp. 214–29. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20079640. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025