ScholarScript

Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) reimagines Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre from the perspective of the silenced Creole woman, Antoinette Cosway. This paper argues that Rhys deploys the postcolonial gaze to reverse the imperial lens of the canonical text.

Introduction

The novel emerges from a deeply felt anxiety about the authority of the colonial narrator. As Spivak notes, the subaltern cannot speak within the discursive structures of empire, and Rhys's project is precisely to grant speech to the subaltern woman. The narrative is split into three parts, each contesting the right to narrate the other.

Intersection of Race and Gender

Antoinette's marriage to Rochester strips her of her name, her dowry, and finally her sanity - an inversion of the Victorian marriage plot. DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt1ggjk2.5

Conclusion

By burning Thornfield Hall, Antoinette reclaims the agency that both empire and patriarchy denied her, completing Rhys's rewriting of the colonial archive.