Jean Rhys’ novella Wide Sargasso Sea, which was intended to be a prequel to Jane Eyre, follows the story of Antoinette Cosway. Set in a post-colonial Caribbean and later England, this work addresses many of the issues associated with colonialism. One such issue is the oppressive patriarchal structure of colonial societies. This novella reflects on the experiences of women in these patriarchal societies of the era, working to show how this system oppresses women. This aspect of Rhys’ story can be analyzed much deeper when applying Stephen Greenblatt’s essay
Culture. Applying Greenblatt’s conception of culture as a system of mobility and constraints one can better understand the relationship between Wide Sargasso Sea as a literary work
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In summarizing the relationship between constraint and mobility Greenblatt says that mobility is an expression of exchange, that
“a culture is a particular network of negotiations for the exchange of material goods, ideas, and
. . . people” (Greenblatt 229). He goes on saying that “the two concerns are linked, for a culture’s narratives . . . are crucial indices of the prevailing codes governing human mobility and constraint” (Greenblatt 229,230). Greenblatt holds that writers master these codes, that they are
“specialists of exchange” (Greenblatt 230). It is in this way that literature performs a kind of cultural work, that it has sense of power in relation to cultural constraints and mobility.
Literature enacts cultural constraint and mobility through its rhetorical procedures of praise and
Blame (Greenblatt 226). Through her work Wide Sargasso Sea Rhys explicitly reflects on the system of constraint and mobility in early nineteenth century colonial culture. Her work serves to “shape, articulate, and reproduce” the ratio of constraint and mobility of the culture of her time, and ultimately is an attempt to alter these boundaries (Greenblatt 229). While it would be easy to read this novel as
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One of the levels of oppression that this symbol encompasses is that associated with gender, for it is Antoinette’s marriage to this white
Englishman that ultimately leads to her ruin. Having not married for love, but because her unnamed husband (who is intended to be
Bertha Mason’s husband Rochester in Jane Eyre) is offered a large sum of money by Mr.
Mason’s son to propose to Antoinette. The two hardly know each other, and their marriage is loveless and clearly incompatible. Rochester is a cold man who offers nothing of himself to
Antoinette. Sure he lusts after her sexually, but he did not love Antoinette. As he clearly says,
“I did not love her. I was thirsty for her, but that is not love . . . she was a stranger to me” (Rhys
78). Rochester felt no love when looking into Antoinette’s “sad, dark alien eyes”; he felt hate
(Ryhs 56). When he would look at her he saw “the hatred in her eyes” and felt his “own hatred spring up to meet it” (Rhys 139). Rhys certainly paints the picture of a very unhappy marriage. In addition to Rochester’s disregard for Antoinette’s happiness, readers see very clearly how in marrying Antoinette he comes to control her life completely. There are several
Culture and the self exist symbiotically, one cannot exist without the other. Culture is the all encompassing social-structure of a given society. It is the child of people, a child that grows to adulthood quickly, and begins to control its parents molding of itself, it encompasses those who create it. Culture is fluid.
Ruth Benedict discusses her views of culture as personality-writ-large in her famous novel “Patterns of Culture”. This means that a culture is a magnification or reflection of the personalities of the people in a group. In other words, what one could say about a group of people could also be said about their culture. Benedict believes that what constitutes culture is not the material or external aspects but stems from a shared mindset, stating that “what really binds men together is their culture—the ideas and the standards they have in common,” (Benedict 1934:16). Basically, traits of a culture rely on inherent and intrinsic natural instincts. She emphasizes the notion that the individual and their broader culture share a “consistent pattern of thought and action” constantly intertwined through their principal ideals, motives, values and emotions (Benedict 1934:46). It is through this shared system of beliefs that core...
Culture is an essential part of every human being. People can fall under the category of one culture or they can fall under many. Values derived from culture tend to reflect in an individual’s or a society’s understanding of what is wrong and right. In culture, there are many significant features. Some are material, such as food and clothing, and non-material, such as beliefs and ideas. These material and non-material objects help to push people into powerful roles and they maintain the power. With the power these people then have a strong influence on the beliefs and ideas of the lower people. They have the ability to alter and change their beliefs at any time and most times, they follow along with it. These ideas and thoughts have been in place for many decades, since cultural theorists, such as Marx and Habermas, began explaining them. They have been a thought for decades
The sense of fear attributed to the setting in 'Wide Sargasso Sea' may have been influenced by Rhys' own experiences as a creole woman growing up in the Caribbean. Rhys' great-grandfather's house was burned down by members of the local black community in an act of revenge, as he was a slave-owner. This event is often considered to have inspired Rhys to write about the arson of Coulibri. This supports the idea that Rhys was influenced by her own feelings of fear in her own home, which indicates that fear is a vital part of the setting in the
historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; Culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action.”
Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre depicts the passionate love Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester have for each other, and as Bertha Mason stands in the way of the happiness of Brontë's heroine, the reader sees Mason as little more than a villainous demon and a raving lunatic. Jean Rhys' serves as Mason's defendant, as the author's 1966 novella Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel to Jane Eyre, seeks to explore and explain Bertha's (or Antoinette Cosway's) descent into madness. Rhys rejects the notion that Antoinette has been born into a family of lunatics and is therefore destined to become one herself. Instead, Rhys suggests that the Cosways are sane people thrown into madness as a result of oppression. Parallels are drawn between Jane and Antoinette in an attempt to win the latter the reader's sympathy and understanding. Just as they did in Jane Eyre, readers of Wide Sargasso Sea bear witness to a young woman's struggle to escape and overcome her repressive surroundings. Brontë makes heavy use of the motif of fire in her novel and Rhys does the same in Wide Sargasso Sea. In Rhys' novella, fire represents defiance in the face of oppression and the destructive nature of this resistance.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette's family is shattered when the ex-slaves torched their home. Her brother died in the fire and that caused her mother to go insane, then her husband left her, which even made her situation worse. Under the care of her aunt, she attended a convent. The convent became her refuge and sunshine, a place where she wished for happiness. "I thought at first, is there no happiness? There must be. Oh happiness of course, happiness, well." (Rhys 34) After all, Antoinette never was a very happy child. Her parents never really gave her love, her father was too busy drinking himself to death and her mother was too busy doing her own thing.
A culture is less exact. It can mean the types of conventional conduct which are attributes of a given society, or of a gathering of social orders, or of a specific race, or of a specific region, or of a specific timeframe.
“Culture is often described as the combination of a body of knowledge, a body of belief and a body of behavior. It involves a number of elements, including personal identification, language, thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions that are often specific to ethnic, racial, religious, geographic, or social groups”.
A person’s culture is an assembly of their thoughts, practices, beliefs, values, traditions, relationships, and roles (Geurink, 2012, p. 267). An expected behavior is associated with a group of people who share an ethnicity, race, language, and religion (p. 267). Culture, a specific set of practices and behaviors, implies the
doubt, where what is in question is the limits rather than the identity of a culture.
As cited by the National Institute of Health, “Culture is often described as the combination of a body of knowledge, a body of belief and a body of behavior. It involves a number of elements, including personal identification, language, thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions that are often specific to ethnic, racial, religious, geographic, or social groups” (NIH, n.d).
Rhys, Jean, and Judith L. Raiskin. "Wide Sargasso Sea." Wide Saragossa Sea: Backgrounds, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. 3-112. Print.
While applying the psychoanalytic lens to Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, readers can see Antoinette Mason-Rochester not as a dangerous mad woman, but as a character struggling with an inability to cope with insecurities that ultimately lead to her own self-destruction. Antoinette became so paranoid from her mindset of being harassed that she became “so afraid, [she didn’t] know why, but so afraid”. All the time”(105). In an attempt to cope, she tried staying away from people and situations that made her uncomfortable (Monroe). Antoinette found refuge in nature whenever she felt threatened by people.
Culture can be present in any group, large or small. There are no special skills required to form a culture, all that is needed are the thoughts and ideas of the social group’s members. These provide a meaning to the people inside the culture and provide something to study for those outside the culture who wish to better understand it.