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School of Language and Literature/English G3, Bachelor’s Degree

Supervisor: Sara Bjärstorp Course Code: EN3203

Examiner: Per Sivefors 15 credits

15 January 2010

“I often wonder who I am”:

Identity, Landscape and Sexuality in

Wide Sargasso Sea

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Introduction

Two different worlds but where is my home? A white Creole divided by cultural tensions is the protagonist of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. As a modernist writer, Rhys presents a heroine who is faced with a divided sense of identity. What is interesting for this paper, is the investigation of the mind’s complexities and the psychological tensions of identity that Rhys depicts through Antoinette’s relationship to her husband. As the husband begins to restore his threatened power and control, he makes Antoinette lose her identity which reinforces her psychological instability.

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In order to argue the claim of this paper, it has been divided into two sections that bring up the different issues of landscape and sexuality. First, Antoinette’s divided identity as a white Creole and her psychological instability will be established. Secondly, Antoinette and the husband’s different perceptions of the honeymoon island are going to be investigated. The landscape is depicted as strengthening for Antoinette’s psyche while the husband experiences it as threatening and overpowering. However, Rhys also connects the husband’s perception of the island to his experience of Antoinette’s sexuality. The landscape in combination with his addictive desire for Antoinette’s sexuality, show the husband’s need to regain his control and to ascertain his position. Lastly, this paper will show that the husband’s struggle for power makes Antoinette completely succumb to her unstable psyche.

Landscape

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Antoinette is marked for life by cultural history. Her sense of self is lost since her position creates a feeling of “cultural marginality” (Emery 165) within her that divides her identity.

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said it to her face: “White cockroach, go away, go away. Nobody want you. Go away” (Rhys 7). This statement by the little girl declares the unwanted position of the white Creole. Considering the influence that disdainful remarks have on people makes it possible to assume that Antoinette becomes more aware of her trapped identity. Consequently, the fact that she does not know where she belongs creates a psychological division. Hence, it could be argued that further mental or emotional tensions could worsen Antoinette’s psychological condition. Her divided sense of self makes it difficult to remain stable if that insecurity is reinforced and the power to control it is lost. In fact, Cosway even goes as far as to claim that there is “madness […] in all these white Creoles” (Rhys 58) just waiting to be released.

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169). In addition, in his critical study of Jean Rhys, Thomas F. Staley even claims that Rhys has combined the modernist “emphasis on psychology, sexual motivation, and human alienation” (101) with “the struggle of an individual consciousness […] and the romantic imagery of landscape (101). The fact that Staley not only mentions psychology and landscape but also indicates that sexuality is a part of the combination suggests a connection between the mind and sexual drives. However, this issue of sexuality will be addressed in a later section. What is interesting for now is Staley’s claim that there is a connection between the psyche and Rhys’s depiction of the landscape.

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She understands and knows the island and that gives her the feeling of not being alone. The Caribbean is where she grew up and that makes it familiar to her in a way that supplements her bewildered sense of identity. The landscape expresses the same feeling of loneliness that she experiences inside as a person with a trapped identity. This is confirmed by Antoinette when her husband asks her if the island is just as lonely as it seems, and she answers: “Yes it is lonely” (Rhys 53). It is lonely and lost like her.

However, not to be neglected is the fact that Antoinette actually said that the place was on ‘our’ side. In other words, she also included the husband even though he is of a different opinion. Nevertheless, Antoinette incorporates the husband because she is still under the illusion of being supported by her husband. She makes the claim just shortly after they arrive on the island. In addition, they have just gone through the ceremony that turns two individuals into one. By getting married they have become we instead of you and I for Antoinette, which explains why she wants to include her husband in everything. Thus, it cannot be claimed that she knows her husband well enough to make a justified appreciation of him, considering that she just met him right before the wedding. In combination with the fact that they just arrived on the island means that the husband has not gotten the chance to really experience the landscape yet or to show his true colors. In other words, it is still natural for Antoinette to believe that if the island is on her side, then it should be on her husband’s as well.

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shares many aspects of its culture and values, but being an island means that it lives separated from the mainland. It is stranded and left to tend for itself, which means that it has the possibility of deviating from the cultural frame of the Caribbean. This leaves the island with its own interpretation of that culture. Thus, the island has the ability of making Antoinette feel as if she is not a complete outsider even though she is constantly living in a state of rejection from both England and the Caribbean.

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Antoinette a ‘home’ in the sense that it strengthens her mind by not being alone in this position of division. Division in itself is turned into being natural and ‘normal’, which means that the island lessens the tension between Antoinette’s two selves and makes her psychologically stronger.

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comprehend what he faces on the island makes it problematic for him to control the posing threat of his ‘enemy’.

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The idea of relativity to question the reliability of people’s experiences is further developed by Peter Childs. According to him, “[t]he tendency towards narrative relativity, before and after Einstein, is perhaps the most striking aspect to Modernist fiction […] in its use of perspective, unreliability, anti-absolutism, instability, individuality and subjective perceptions” (66). However, Child’s claim about narrative relativity could be explained further if put in relation to fictive characters. Considering people’s different perspectives and their subjective interpretation of situations makes it difficult to ever really know another person. Childs provides an example from The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford: “After forty-five years of mixing with one’s kind, one ought to have acquired the habit of being able to know something about one’s fellow beings. But one doesn’t” (Childs 66). This inability of trusting your own interpretation of other people can also be applied to Antoinette and her husband. They both have their subjective experience of situations and their cultural differences that prevent them from understanding each other. They have different perceptions of everything, and this is for instance shown through their contrasting interpretations of the honeymoon island. The landscape expresses a sense of relativity by changing according to the perception of the character. This is in line with Einstein’s theory “that the observer’s position will always affect the result” (Childs 66), which is a claim that is further strengthened by Childs. He comments on the modern experience of traveling by train and how “the landscape changed when it was viewed from a different position, that what was seen was always relative to where it was seen from” (70). Consequently, when it comes to Rhys’s depiction of the characters she applies the idea of relativity by making them perceive the same thing differently.

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of that identification. The fact that Staley even goes as far as to say that the husband perceives the place as “strange and threatening” (107), not only emphasizes the husband’s opposing standpoint but also the island’s objection to him as invader. As has been previously mentioned, the husband receives a feeling of hostility from the island that makes him consider it his ‘enemy’. In contrast to Antoinette, the husband is in no sense a part of the island. He is an Englishman who comes from a completely different cultural world than the world he meets on this foreign territory. This is why everything in the beautiful landscape is experienced as overwhelming. He says that there is “too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near” (Rhys 39). The husband is greeted by so many new impressions at the same time that he is unable of processing them all. Everything closes in on him and becomes too much to comprehend. All these new and overwhelming impressions throw him out of balance. It confuses him and makes him bewildered, which jeopardizes his sense of control. Everything is unfamiliar and there is nothing in the landscape that he knows or understands. Hence, he comes to perceive the island as threatening.

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up worthless. And nobody care” (Rhys 9), which suggests that Antoinette is just as wild and untamed as the landscape. Consequently, the same sinister feeling the husband receives from the surroundings he also projects onto Antoinette. She threatens his power by throwing him out of balance in the same way that the overwhelming nature does.

The balance of power becomes an important issue in the husband’s perception of the island and of Antoinette. It could be claimed that the husband sees Antoinette as threatening because the island makes her powerful. Antoinette grew up in the Caribbean which means that she possesses knowledge about the place; she is conscious of dangers that he is unaware of. She knows “the mountains and the blue-green sea” (Rhys 39), its creatures and its hazards. It is this awareness that makes her powerful in the eyes of the husband since it leaves him in a position of dependence. He is forced to trust Antoinette’s instincts and this strengthens her position in relation to him. This realization is expressed by the husband during an expedition:

[S]he was certain about the monster crab and one afternoon when I was watching her, hardly able to believe she was the pale silent creature I had married, watching her in her blue chemise, blue with white spots, hitched up far above her knees, she stopped laughing, called a warning and threw a large pebble. She threw like a boy, with a sure graceful movement, and I looked down at very long pincer claws, jagged-edged and sharp, vanishing (Rhys 52).

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maleness. It makes him want to retrieve his rightful authority; his power and his position as man and protector of the family. However, in order to reestablish his position and gain control, he has to restore the balance in the marriage. Considering that it is the island that gives Antoinette strength and that makes her powerful, it is this connection that the husband has to take control of. The island used to be the only place where Antoinette ever felt really happy (Rhys 95), but by deceiving Antoinette’s emotions and loyalty he alters her inner feelings and security. When the husband takes fancy to another woman he betrays his wife. As a result, Antoinette no longer associates the island with comfort. Instead it is turned into “just somewhere else where I have been unhappy” (Rhys 95). The husband changes Antoinette’s perception of the island and destroys the entire feeling of support that she used to receive from it. Antoinette says: “I used to love this place and you have made it into a place I hate” (Rhys 95), which means that she no longer feels like she belongs in the world. She is rejected both by the Caribbean and by Europe, and now also by the island. There is no feeling of belonging left in her. She even used to think of the island as a person, and now that intimacy has been destroyed by the husband. Instead he has created some kind of hatred within her that is based on the fact that she no longer feels safe or confident on the island. He has suppressed the feeling of strength and company that the island used to provide, which means that she is now all alone in her divided identity again. In other words, the husband’s reestablishing of control reinforces Antoinette’s psychological weakness. His need for power enhances the anxiety that her divided position brings and emphasizes her psychological insecurity. This makes her psyche even more fragile when it comes to emotional disruptions.

Sexuality

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modernism, there was a “desire to break down Victorian-era taboos regarding sex and sexuality” (Dettmar). For instance, Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence was considered scandalous when it was published in 1928 (Dettmar). According to Dettmar, Lawrence defended the sexual content of this novel by saying that, “We are today, as human beings, evolved and cultured far beyond the taboos which are inherent in our culture…The mind has an old groveling fear of the body and the body’s potencies. It is the mind we have to liberate” (Dettmar). Lawrence’s comment emphasizes the connection between the psyche and sexuality by suggesting that there were concerns about the functions of the body and its physical drives. In other words, modernism was a period when the depiction of sexuality evolved together with the investigations of the mind. According to Bell, “[s]exual liberation, and liberation through sexuality, were conscious and central projects of the time. Sex came out of the closet in Freud, Havelock-Ellis, and others, and the sheer openness of treatment was a significant point” (25). However, Bell also adds that while sexuality was considered liberating for many male modernist writers, “for women it was just as likely to be another mode of suppression, and women writers were therefore more aware of underlying contradictions” (25).

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In addition, it could be argued that the husband perceives Antoinette’s sexuality just as intimidating as the island. In other words, it makes him experience the same lack of power that makes him want to regain control and reestablish his position. The connection between sexuality and the landscape in Wide Sargasso Sea has been discussed by several critics. Maria Olaussen claims that “[the husband]’s fear of Antoinette is clearly a fear of her sexuality, and his decision to use his power over her is based on this fear” (65). Hence, it is arguable that the husband finds Antoinette’s sexuality as threatening to his position. Furthermore, when she claims that Antoinette’s “sexual desire is mentioned as part of the bewildering reality of the honeymoon island” (104), she also suggests that Antoinette’s sexuality would have the same effect on the husband as the landscape. Consequently, the husband experiences Antoinette’s sexuality as strengthening for her identity and her psyche, which makes her powerful enough to throw the relationship out of balance. Therefore, in order to restore his control in the relationship the husband has to suppress Antoinette’s sexuality in the same way he had to suppress the strength from the island.

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from the attraction in everything unfamiliar and mysterious. She is a foreign woman who lives in a warm and humid climate, and that makes her exotic and appealing. Antoinette’s exoticism generates an air of sensuality that has the ability to make the husband’s blood race and to increase the speed of his pulse. Her appearance his strikingly not English (Rhys 37), yet she is extraordinarily beautiful (Rhys 46). The exotic aspect of her transforms her into a rare and unique creature that makes her distinctly unlike any other woman he has ever met. She becomes unusual and that creates a fresh interest in the female body; it makes Antoinette exceedingly attractive. Antoinette’s transformation from being just alien and strange to being realized as exotic and alluring, is easy to go undetected because if the ordinary scene. Yet, it is a significant point in the story:

The dining-room was brilliantly lit. Candles on the table, a row on the sideboard, three-branch candlesticks on the old sea-chest. The two doors on to the veranda stood open but there was no wind. The flames burned straight. She was sitting on the sofa and I wondered why I had never realized how beautiful she was. Her hair was combed away from her face and fell smoothly far below her waist. I could see the red and gold lights in it. She seemed pleased when I complimented her on her dress (Rhys 46).

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It could be argued that the husband’s fascination of Antoinette’s body is on the edge of getting out of control. In the novel, Daniel Cosway expresses this observation when he says: “the girl is beautiful like her mother was beautiful, and you bewitch with her. She is in your blood and your bones. By night and by day” (Rhys 59). What Cosway suggests is a sort of addiction to Antoinette’s body. The husband is not only compelled by Antoinette, but constantly feels a physical need for satisfaction by her. He can feel the desire in every part of his body during every hour of the day. For the same reason, the husband not only finds pleasure in his own satisfaction, but also in Antoinette’s. The marital consummation makes her feel alive and wanted, which created a euphoric emotion of happiness (Rhys 55). It is such a strong feeling that she compares it to dying, and the husband is more than willing to oblige her when she asks him if he could make her ‘die’: “I watched her die many times” (Rhys 55), the husband says. He is triggered by Antoinette’s own yearning and that makes it even more satisfying for himself. In spite of this, it could be argued that this feeling of sexual addiction undermines the husband’s control over his wife. It provides Antoinette with the strength to rule him with her body, which reverses the balance in the relationship. In this way, Antoinette’s sexuality becomes threatening to his power.

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Furthermore, this sort of sexual repression that Rhys depicts is in line with modernist writing where “the novel has been read as a search to climb inside the mind, away from the body’s needs and wants: to be free from desire” (Childs 7). By making the husband retreat into his mind to consult his inner will and wishes, Rhys makes it possible for the husband to repress his sexual desires. However, Antoinette is not oblivious to her husband’s changed attraction and she acknowledges that it does affect her: “He always sleeps in his dressing room now and the servants know. If I get angry he is scornful and silent, sometimes he does not speak to me for hours and I cannot endure it any more, I cannot. What shall I do? He was not like that at first” (Rhys 67). The fact that Antoinette emphasizes the husband’s rejection of the marital bed suggests that it not only affects her need for bodily satisfaction, but that it also affects her on an emotional level. She gives voice to the feeling of sexual enslavement by expressing how hard it is to endure living without intimacy. His rejection of her worries her. He makes her long for him, but he does not allow her to express her emotions or desires. By not sleeping in the same bed, he not only makes her sexually frustrated, but he also denies loving her. He does not give her any confirmation of belonging together as a married couple, which leaves her alone and trapped in the relationship. She becomes not only sexually enslaved by her husband, but also emotionally and bodily imprisoned.

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she becomes trapped in the relationship. Therefore it could be argued that this imprisonment deteriorates Antoinette’s psychological condition even further.

Patrick Colm Hogan, among others, has discussed the entrapment of Antoinette. Hogan claims that “Antoinette is a mere function of her husband; he alone has legal identity” (100). Indeed, Hogan’s statement not only suggests that Antoinette is imprisoned in the relationship, but that it also deprives her of her identity. As his wife, Antoinette is more or less considered a property of the husband and is thus turned into an object. She is deprived of her humanity and her individuality. She belongs to him, which means that she no longer has the possibility to find her own personality or to reach self-fulfillment by retrieving her trapped identity: “I cannot go. He is my husband after all” (Rhys 68), Antoinette explains. The husband constrains her chances to heal her psyche and dooms her to live in mental instability. He makes it impossible and confusing for Antoinette’s mind to sort out who she is as a person. She is not allowed to evolve or to go out and find herself. Thus, an identity becomes unattainable for her. It could be argued that the husband’s imprisonment of her achievements enhances Antoinette’s psychological insecurity. It makes her identity no longer only trapped between two different worlds, but also makes it completely irretrievable. Consequently, the husband deprives Antoinette of any identity at all, and that knowledge could be argued to reinforce her mental anxiety. It increases the tension of identity in her mind and makes her psyche crumble from the pressure.

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weakness and seminal depletion” (93). There is this idea of masculinity that men are supposed to be stable, strong and confident. They are supposed to be in constant control in order to support and take care of the family. Hence, what Armstrong suggests is that there is an idea within modernism that males need to protect their masculinity in order to keep their position of power. Women are believed to be subordinate to them, which means that they have to guard that authority by not being associated with weakness. Armstrong explains that they have a “need to defend the self against a collapse into the other” (93). It could be claimed that the ‘other’ represents inferiority, powerlessness and ineptitude, and if the husband would be associated with this weakness it would obliterate his power in relation to Antoinette. Therefore he cannot allow her to rule him with her body, but has to defend himself against the position of powerlessness that her sexuality renders him in.

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Thus, the husband has made Antoinette obsessed by their love-making. Antoinette is both physically and emotionally devoted and perceives the act as a sign of the husband’s love.

In contrast, the only thing the husband wants is to destroy the confidence and strength that physical satisfaction gives Antoinette in order to protect himself from being overpowered. First of all, by re-naming Antoinette ‘Bertha’ the husband wants to transform her into a proper English woman. In other words, he wants to control her by transforming her into something that he understands. Antoinette confirms this when she says: “Bertha is not my name. You are trying to turn me into someone else” (Rhys 95). The husband pressures her into leaving her identity as a West Indian by succumbing to her other sense of self. It could be argued that this transformation would heal Antoinette’s psyche by not being divided anymore. However, considering that the pressure of conformation creates two different forces that are pulling in opposite directions, suggests that it would rather reinforce her unstable psyche than heal it. It enhances her anxiety by forcing her to choose sides and by emphasizing the fact that she does not really belong on either side.

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primitive as “a vitalist self at one with its sexuality and being, freed from modes of censorship imposed by civilization” (140). In conclusion, primitive reactions are the fundamental workings of the human body. As suggested, primitive people are more prone to give into their biological instincts, such as emotions and human urges, since they are not confined by civilization’s taboos. In addition, it has been argued among critics that certain women should be more susceptible to their sexuality and give into their sexual drives. In a discussion by Sue Thomas, she claims that Thomas Atwood argues that there is a “generally received notion, that women in particular, in warm climates, are given to inordinate desires” (3). Considering that Antoinette lives in the Caribbean, means that she could be included in this group. The fact that Thomas says ‘inordinate desires’, suggests an unrestrained indulgence to primitive instincts among these women. Rhys applies this notion of exotic women on Antoinette and suggests that she does not consult her mind for more appropriate behavior than the primitive instincts of her body. The assumptions about exotic and primitive women to be more sexually attractive and alluring, enables Rhys to depict Antoinette’s sexuality as uncontainable and overpowering for the husband.

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Victoria Burrows, for instance, comments that the husband is in a situation where his wife “is beautiful, but she is other” (55). Hence, it could be argued that his lack of love for her is a way for him to repossess his power. By not letting himself be emotionally committed to Antoinette, he betrays her feelings of trust, safety and loyalty. In other words, he suppresses the confidence and strength that love gives people.

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on to. The madness that Cosway claimed was “in all […] white Creoles” (Rhys 58) is released. Antoinette becomes “[a] mad girl” (Rhys 111) and emotionally hollow as a ghost.

Conclusion

As has been discussed in this paper, Antoinette is a white Creole whose identity is trapped between two worlds. She represents the modernist idea that there is no such thing as a person with a unified identity. Nevertheless, Antoinette does find comfort in the landscape of the honeymoon island. As has been shown, she has such intimate associations to the landscape that she even considers the place a person. The island includes her in a culture of its own and gives her identity a home. It makes her feel like she belongs somewhere and that strengthens her psyche and gives her confidence. In comparison, the husband has a completely different experience of the honeymoon setting. All the strange and unfamiliar things in the environment becomes too much for him to process. He considers the island an enemy to have chosen Antoinette’s side, and that makes him experience a lack of control. The couple’s different perceptions of the island represent the modernist interest in relativity. However, the price of reestablishing the husband’s power is the sacrifice of Antoinette’s love, happiness and security on the island. As the discussion in this paper has shown, the husband even makes her hate the place, which means that Antoinette is completely left alone in her divided state again.

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relationship. The husband is put in a difficult situation where he is both attracted and repulsed by Antoinette’s primitive sexuality. However, his repulsion and the threat he feels against his maleness make him unable of loving Antoinette. His lack of emotional commitment reinforces her position as not being wanted by anyone. Hence, the husband finds a way to regain his control. By being unfaithful he commits the ultimate betrayal of Antoinette’s love and security. As has been shown, he suppresses both the strength of the island and the power of love. Instead he creates an equally strong hatred within Antoinette for both the landscape and the husband. Antoinette has nothing left in the world to hold on to, which means that she completely loses all attachments to her identity. Consequently, the psychological instability gets the upper hand of her she becomes mad.

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Works Cited

 

Armstrong, Tim. Modernism: A Cultural History. Cambridge: Polity, 2005.

Bell, Michael. “The Metaphysics of Modernism”. The Cambridge Companion to Modernism. Ed. Michael Levenson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. 9–32.

Burrows, Victoria. Whiteness and Trauma: The Mother-Daughter Knot in the Fiction of Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid and Toni Morrison. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Childs, Peter. Modernism. London; New York: Routledge, 2000.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. Colonialism and Cultural Identity: Crises of Tradition in the Anglophone Literature of India, Africa, and the Caribbean. New York: State University of New York Press, 2000.

Dettmar, Kevin J. H. “Modernism”. The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. David Scott Kastan. Oxford UP, 2005. Oxford Reference Online. 25 Nov. 2009.

Emery, Mary Lou. “Modernist Crosscurrents”. Wide Sargasso Sea/ Jean Rhys: Backgrounds, Criticism edited by Judith L. Raiskin. Jean Rhys. New York: Norton, 1999. 161–173. Kineke, Sheila. “’Like a Hook Fits an Eye’: Jean Rhys, Ford Madox Ford, and the Imperial

Operations of Modernist Mentoring”. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 16.2 (1997): 281–301.

Olaussen, Maria. Three Types of Feminist Criticism and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. Åbo: Institute of Women’s Studies, Åbo Akademi University, 1992.

Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. London: Penguin Books, 2001.

Rosenberg, Leah. “Caribbean Models for Modernism in the Work of Claude McKay and Jean Rhys”. Modernism/Modernity 11.2 (2004): 219–238.

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References

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