Traumatic Experiences in Wide Sargasso Sea

• Main Authors: Chen Sih -ying, 陳斯穎
• Other Authors: Chen Ching-Chi
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/78493305672783237924

碩士 === 高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 97 === Rochester’s first wife Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre is a lunatic from West Indies. However, Jean Rhys in her Wide Sargasso Sea authorizes this woman a chance to speak in order to let readers grasp the story of her madness. This thesis aims at exploring that Antoinette’s reasons of madness from unceasing traumatic experiences. Her traumatic symptoms are demonstrated in her narratives, memories, nightmares and body. There are five chapters in this thesis. The first chapter is an introduction: I will give a brief introduction to expound the differences between two main characters in two novels, intertextuality between two novels and the historical backgrounds of Wide Sargasso Sea. The second chapter is the theoretical framework. I will explore some trauma theory and traumatic syndromes. The third chapter is the origination of traumas which derive from six aspects. The first one is the destruction of identity. I will employ Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage to explore the ruination of her identity. Her trying to search for identity through gaining gazes or identification from black people, mother and whites are all shattering. The second one is her husband’s maltreatment to her. The third one is abandoned by British Empire after the Emancipation Act. The fourth is other people’s unfriendly gaze. In light of Frantz Fanon, people’s unfriendly gazes to other people are violent. The fifth one is Antoinette's ambivalent position between her and black people; she oscillates between the colonizer and the colonized. The final one is her senses of unsafety which spring from incessant turbulence and conflicts after the Emancipation Act on the island when she was a child. The fourth chapter is the demonstration of Antoinette’s traumatic syndromes. These symptoms prove that Antoinette really has traumas and these traumas really cause her madness. The final chapter is a conclusion. Antoinette’s madness comes from not only her mother or her family but also the whole history. The history puts too much on her and she is only a victim of the history. She burdens the original sins, that is, the second generation of slave owners. Finally, she does not recover from her traumas. She receives continual stimulus and traumas again and again; she finally goes mad. As a consequence, she still cannot escape from Rochester’s manor in England.