Identity In Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea

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In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys deals with identity through two major characters: Antoinette and her husband, Rochester. The novel deals with both the English and Caribbean Identities and explores the effect of conflicting identities within these various characters. Through this exploration, Rhys explores the idea that identity is both something that is inherited and acquired. Rhys also highlights an important issue to the reader, which is that you shouldn’t have your identity forced upon you but be true to your own roots.
The novel is set in 1830 In Jamaica, with Antoinette a creole women – a person of mixed European and black descent living on the impoverished Coulibri Estate in Jamaica. Which has recently become part of the Great British
In renaming Antoinette, Rochester confuses her sense of identity even further. As earlier in the novel Antoinette remembered kissing a mirror, where her physical self and reflected self represented her two conflicting identities, and when she kissed her reflection they were fused. As Rochester changes her name and later locks Antoinette in the attic without a mirror, she does not know her own name or her physical identity, as Antoinette explains, "long ago when I was a child and very lonely I tried to kiss her. But the glass was between us-hard, cold and misted over with my breath. Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?"; even the slightest bit of identity Antoinette had before this was aggressively attacked and erased by Rochester, leaving Antoinette a "ghost" to herself and the
Shown by the character of Antoinette who adopts a Caribbean identity and feels ostracized by her English peers and the sense of English identity. On the other hand, Rochester has a strong sense of English identity and attempts to erase all traces of Caribbean identity in Antoinette, and in the process even partakes in Caribbean culture himself. Therefore Antoinette 's fabrication of identities and Rochester 's later manipulation leads Antoinette to have no identity causing her to slip into madness. Rhys exploration of the key theme of identity through the character of Antoinette shows the reader the dangers of not being true to your own roots but having them forced upon

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