Representations of White Creole Women: The Characterization of Aunt Cora in Wide Sargasso Sea

Abstract

This article explores Jean Rhys‘ characterization of white creole women through a critical reading of Aunt Cora‘s role in the novel Wide Sargasso Sea. It argues that Aunt Cora plays an important role in Antoinette‘s identity configuration, both as a point of identification and divergence. By tracing the similarities and differences between Aunt Cora and Antoinette‘s identity positions, it illustrates how Rhys‘ characters resist facile categorization as white female creoles. It also examines the importance of Aunt Cora‘s resistance to English patriarchy in relation to the stereotypical representation of the ‗mad‘ creole, showing that although Aunt Cora is silenced by male dominance, she defies being driven mad by it. In this sense, Aunt Cora‘s characterization as a sane, although muted, white creole serves to counter colonial representations of the mad West Indian creole woman as portrayed in Charlotte Brontë‘s depiction of Bertha in Jane Eyre.