Feminist Concerns in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea: An Analysis

Abstract

The Feminist writers believe that “the personal is political”, everything in this world involves power. Structures of power operate to impose gender stereotypes. Canons are shaped by power corridors. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Rene Descartes and Sigmund Freud whose theories revolutionized the world, perceived women to be incapable of rising above their bodies due to their reproductive functions. Gayatri Spivak in her essay “Three Women’s Texts and Critique of Imperialism” calls Wide Sargasso Sea as “reinscription” of Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Jean Rhys’s protagonist are left alone in the sea of cunning and callous society. Antoinette Cosway, the protagonist of WSS is facing acute identity crisis. Rhys reveals that in her case madness is not genetic but her circumstances lead her to take extreme steps. Michel Foucault in his work Madness and Civilization argues that madness is located in society and culture rather than in mind or body. Colonial mindsets are not able to recognize the cultural differences and measure everything with yardstick of British morality.