REVISIONISM: CHALLENGING THE CANON THROUGH THE REVISIONARY NARRATIVES OF WIDE SARGASSO SEA AND FOE

Abstract

Revisionism is the exercise of revising or reforming of one’s point of view to a previously held belief or accepted viewpoint of a situation. In literature, revisionism is the retreading of a canonical text through a different point of view. Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea is one such retelling of the story of the canonical text of Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, from the viewpoint of the minor character Bertha Mason. While Jane Eyre tells the story of a simple girl, Jane Eyre, and the happy ending of her romantic narrative, this paper will study Wide Sargasso Sea as a revisionary text that picks up the minor narrative of Bertha Mason as Antoinette, a Creole heiress, making it a tragic feminist grand narrative of postcolonial response to the romantic tale of Jane Eyre. Similarly, J. M. Coetzee’s novel Foe is a revisionary text based on the canonical text Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Placing a woman in a male dominated world, the novel Foe highlights the issues of patriarchal oppression, colonial oppression, authorial tyranny, and language and power, which remain hidden in the romantic canonical narrative of Crusoe’s adventurous life and his valorous escape from the island where he was stranded for twenty eight years. This paper will trace the difference of a woman’s life and journey than a man’s in a world ruled by patriarchal laws. Moreover, this paper will establish the novel Foe as a revisionary text that retells Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe from a realistic and colonial point of view instead of a heroic tale.