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Victim of Colonization: Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea

Hafize Gül Koparaoğlu (Dokuz Eylul University) [BIO]

Email: gulkop@gmail.com

 

ABSTRACT:

In Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Jean Rhys rewrites Jane Eyre and creates a new white Creole protagonist called Antoniette. Jean Rhys gives voice to the colonized people through Antoniette Mason who is totally silenced, dehumanized and mistreated. Growing up at the time of emancipation in Jamaica and being caught in between English imperialism and the black natives, Antoniette marries an English man and later this marriage prepares her end. The novel tells us the domination between the oppressor (Britain) and the oppressed (Jamaica).

In this paper by concentrating on “the silenced” voice of the protagonist, I will try to show how the writer exhibits the issue of resistance and how the protagonist becomes the victim of the colonization.