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. : 2

Batch : 2024-26

E-mail : vaghanijay77@gmail.com   

Assignment Details:

Paper Name : Literary Theory & Criticism and Indian Aesthetics 

Paper No. : 109

Paper Code : 22402

Unit : 2- Northrop Frye's The Archetypal Criticism

Topic :“The Archetypal Feminine: The Mother and Virgin Archetypes in Literature and Their Subversions”

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

Submitted Date : April 17, 2025

The following information—numbers are counted using QuillBot:

Words         : 1784

Characters         : 13212

Characters without spaces : 11502

Paragraphs         :98

Sentences         : 162

Reading time         :7 m 8 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.

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 the clash between center and periphery, white supremacy and marginalized identity. Antoinette, as a white Creole, occupies a liminal space—neither fully European nor entirely Caribbean. This hybridity renders her doubly “othered”: rejected by both the colonizer and the colonized.

Mahmut Akar (2022) calls this “the othering of women by the otherised”—a complex dynamic in which the colonized man (Rochester, as representative of imperial patriarchy) enforces the same oppressive mechanisms upon the colonized woman. Rhys thus exposes how colonialism perpetuates internal hierarchies of power even among the oppressed. The Caribbean landscape itself, lush yet menacing, becomes a metaphor for Antoinette’s fragmented cultural identity—a paradise haunted by historical violence.

Madness and Isolation: The Psychological Landscape of Antoinette

Ainaab Tariq (2024) interprets Antoinette’s mental collapse as a product of social isolation, racial displacement, and emotional betrayal. Torn between her Creole heritage and her English husband’s rejection, Antoinette’s identity disintegrates under the weight of colonial duality.

Madness, in this sense, becomes both symptom and resistance. It signifies not only psychological breakdown but also rebellion against imposed categories of race and gender. Martina Tucci (2024) describes this as “fragmented identity”—a consciousness split between multiple worlds. The locked attic of Jane Eyre transforms into a symbol of colonial confinement, while Antoinette’s final act of setting fire to Thornfield can be read as an assertion of agency through destruction—a fiery reclamation of voice.

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