Multiculturalism in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and E. M. Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread

Abstract

The aim of this article is to compare and contrast how multiculturalism is handled in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and E. M. Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread regard-ing the lifestyles of the characters, language, intermar-riage, management of freedom, the cultural practices in the West Indies, and Monteriano Italy, within the tumul-tuous time of the twentieth century. In multicultural societies, Forster elucidates cross-binaries questing hu-manistic views whereas Rhys focuses on subversion of the post-slavery era. In both novels, the characters’ prejudic-es, values run counter to the practices of social integra-tion such as intermarriages, immigration. The culturally diverse societies undergo the dominant culture’s en-forced practices to integrate minorities into their own culture in the twentieth century. Thus, this article ex-plores the denial of prejudice, the denial of cultural integration under the umbrella term multiculturalism in these two novels.