From Jane Eyre to Wide Sargasso Sea:Resistance and a Quest for Identity

• Main Authors: Shuchuan Chen, 陳淑娟
• Other Authors: Kunliang Chuang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2000
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/47132906527212638005

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語研究所 === 88 === As postcolonial theory is widely spread and developed, the so-called canon produced under the umbrella of imperialism must now be reconsidered and the embedded Eurocentric ideologies should be divulged. In Jane Eyre, the Creole woman from Jamaica is described as mad and irrational while she is denied any sites of enunciation to speak for herself. In this thesis I would like to argue that Wide Sargasso Sea, with its protest against the (mis)representation of Bertha, recontextualizes the silenced history of Bertha in the West Indies. While the silence in Jane Eyre is treated as the background against which European superiority is spotlighted, the voice of Bertha/Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea serves as the foreground intervening the Eurocentrism-based construction of Bertha’s dehumanized image in Jane Eyre. What’s more, by delineating the complex power relationship in the West Indies, Wide Sargasso Sea discloses the heterogeneity of the colonized, not the homogeneity manifested in Orientalist texts. The thesis consists of three chapters. Before Chapter One, Introduction brings up the issue of “truth” by adopting Nietzsche’s insight and provides an overview of the following chapters. Chapter One investigates the Eurocentrism and the Orientalist representation of Bertha in Jane Eyre. Chapter Two explores the resistance Wide Sargasso Sea manages through strategies both of mimicry and beyond mimicry. Chapter Three examines the differences of the colonized and the identity construction. Finally, Conclusion recapitulates the major arguments of the thesis and strengthens the significance of the passage from Jane Eyre to Wide Sargasso Sea.