Now that you’ve read the excerpts from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (JE) and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (WSS), please respond with 3-4 paragraphs to one of the following questions. Include quotations from the text to support your analysis.  Cut and paste proofread text as you will not be able to delete or edit your post; please do not upload attachments.

1.  How is the role of the “other” subverted regarding race/ethnicity in “Part One” of Wide Sargasso Sea?

2.  How are traditional gender roles reinforced and/or subverted in the excerpts from Jane Eyre or in Wide Sargasso Sea?

3.  Discuss how class and wealth or Empire, Colony, and the “British Gaze” function in the excerpts from both WSS and JE.

4.  Examine the role nature plays in “Part One” of WSS and how the “tropicalized” setting is characterized.

5.  Examine the duality and parallels that exist between the characters in “Part One” of WSS or between WSS and JE.

6.  Discuss how religion and spirituality function in WSS & JE.

7.  Knowing that WSS is written after and in direct response to JE, discuss how mental illness and “sanity” are treated differently in WSS.

8.  Examine the role beauty and standards of beauty play in WSS. 

Rhys, Jean s’s novel “Wide Sargasso Sea” reinterprets the image of the narrated by Antoinette. It not only shows the marginal status in the gap between white culture and black culture but also reflects the author’s identity anxiety. The novel begins with “They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks,”(9). The phrase shows the embarrassing situation of the narrator. The narrator is a wanderer who has no roots and can’t find roots. And she was called “white cockroach” and “white nigger” by local blacks. In the 1930s, the abolition of slavery passed, as a former slave owner, they were hated by black people. As white people, they were abandoned by their home country, the United Kingdom, and became a scapegoat for the evil of slavery. At the same time, Antoinette and her mother are very beautiful, so they are rejected by local whites and blacks. Therefore, she and her family became “other” people besides whites and blacks.

Although Antoinette was the daughter of a slave owner but lived a poor life, the blacks almost ran out and the only horse in the family was poisoned. She didn’t even have a fitted skirt. Antoinette lives with her mother and her brother, but her mother does not care about her. Her mother seems to have exhausted all her energy for life and for her mentally disabled younger brother. Antoinette lived a lonely life in an environment full of estrangement and hatred. The white neighbors never looked at them right, and the blacks hated and despised them as poor whites. The only playmate she had in her childhood, the little black girl, Tia had also ruthlessly ridiculed, “They didn’t look at us, nobody see them come near us. Old time white people nothing but white nigger now, and black nigger better than white nigger,”(14). Through the child naive discourse, it clearly shows the black hatred of whites and blacks against whites. And the burning manor is the upgrade and performance of this hatred. Antoinette is eager to get the approval of the black culture. So, when the black people burned the manor, she did not want to leave but ran to Tia. Because she felt that Tia was part of her life, they always eat together, sleeping together and swimming in a river, she is determined to live with Tia, never leave. But Tia has hurt her and broke her fantasy. She realized that she does not belong to black people and cannot get the approval of black culture.

Antoinette also eager for white culture and has always had an illusory image of the United Kingdom. Her mother remarried a real white man, Mr. Mason. And their family began to live like the way of life of the British. Antoinette is happy that she is like a British girl and as they are closer to the United Kingdom. But it didn’t long, because Mr. Mason thought that the black people were simple and lazy, and he thought to introduce labor from the East Indies to replace the black people. The blacks felt the threat and triggered the incident of burning the manor. Her mentally disabled younger brother was burned to death and her mother was hit and become crazy in the incident of burning the manor. Antoinette’s contact with white culture failed, and the white culture brought her disaster, not happiness. As an “other” who is not recognized by whites and blacks, Antoinette is constantly trying to get close to white culture or black culture. She is eager to find her sense of belonging in it, but the reality gives her a blow. She was still a rootless person as “other”.

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