Jean Rhys's Antoinette's Search for Home in the Vast Sargasso Sea (1966) presents some of the complex problems of postcolonial Caribbean society. Rhys' protagonist, Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole from Jamaica, suffers from racial antagonism, sexual exploitation, and male repression. She is the victim of a system that has not only dispossessed her of her class, but has also deprived her as an individual of any means of survival and meaningful, independent meaning. Postcolonial Caribbean society is not able to respond and meet the expectations of colonized peoples. after its emancipation, but it persists and remains in the older residues of the colonial project. Emancipation does not offer new structures, power relations and hierarchies, but leaves gaps and complications for more dangerous clashes and differences. Antoinette in the vast Sargasso Sea is not able to acquire her identity and respectable recognition. Antoinette is crushed by her husband's colonial prejudices and is separated from the status of the other. I take the liberty of now calling Rochester, Antoinette's anonymous English husband, because this novel has attracted the attention of scholars as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Rhys herself says she wanted to rewrite the story of a marginalized Jamaican woman, distorted and silenced by a Western writer. I think this gives me a valid reason to call him Rochester, who is Bertha Mason's husband in Jane Eyre, and who is responsible for this unfortunate woman's descent into madness and imprisoned life in her attic. My intention is not to restrict the possible complication and freedom of interpreting an unmanned character in Wide Sargasso Sea but to illuminate and extend the idea that Rhys advances in complicating the silence of Jane Eyre.... .. middle of paper.... ..cism. "A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. 667-707. Nunez-Harrell, Elizabeth. "The Paradoxes of Belonging: The White West Indian Woman in Fiction. " MFS Modern Fiction Studies 31.2 (1985): 281-293.McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Context New York: Routledge, 1995.Mezei, Kathy ““And He Kept His Secret”: Narration., Memory and madness in the wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys " Critique 28.4 (1987): 195-209. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: Penguin, 1968. Tyson, Louis. “Postcolonial criticism”. Tyson, Louis. Critical Theory Today New York: Routledge, 2006. Thieme, John. “Rewriting the Caribbean Pre-Text and Context.” )the writing of the Empire. Ed. Théo D’Haen. Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998. 81-98.

Essay / Jean Rhys's Antoinette's Search for Home in the Vast Sargasso Sea (1966) presents some of the complex problems of postcolonial Caribbean society. Rhys' protagonist, Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole from Jamaica, suffers from racial antagonism, sexual exploitation, and male repression. She is the victim of a system that has not only dispossessed her of her class, but has also deprived her as an individual of any means of survival and meaningful, independent meaning. Postcolonial Caribbean society is not able to respond and meet the expectations of colonized peoples. after its emancipation, but it persists and remains in the older residues of the colonial project. Emancipation does not offer new structures, power relations and hierarchies, but leaves gaps and complications for more dangerous clashes and differences. Antoinette in the vast Sargasso Sea is not able to acquire her identity and respectable recognition. Antoinette is crushed by her husband's colonial prejudices and is separated from the status of the other. I take the liberty of now calling Rochester, Antoinette's anonymous English husband, because this novel has attracted the attention of scholars as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Rhys herself says she wanted to rewrite the story of a marginalized Jamaican woman, distorted and silenced by a Western writer. I think this gives me a valid reason to call him Rochester, who is Bertha Mason's husband in Jane Eyre, and who is responsible for this unfortunate woman's descent into madness and imprisoned life in her attic. My intention is not to restrict the possible complication and freedom of interpreting an unmanned character in Wide Sargasso Sea but to illuminate and extend the idea that Rhys advances in complicating the silence of Jane Eyre.... .. middle of paper.... ..cism. "A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. 667-707. Nunez-Harrell, Elizabeth. "The Paradoxes of Belonging: The White West Indian Woman in Fiction. " MFS Modern Fiction Studies 31.2 (1985): 281-293.McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Context New York: Routledge, 1995.Mezei, Kathy ““And He Kept His Secret”: Narration., Memory and madness in the wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys " Critique 28.4 (1987): 195-209. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: Penguin, 1968. Tyson, Louis. “Postcolonial criticism”. Tyson, Louis. Critical Theory Today New York: Routledge, 2006. Thieme, John. “Rewriting the Caribbean Pre-Text and Context.” )the writing of the Empire. Ed. Théo D’Haen. Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998. 81-98.

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