‘The Attic of My Grandmother's Subconscious’: ‘Whiteness’, ‘Illegitimacy’ and Migration in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and Honor Ford-Smith's ‘Grandma's Estate’

Abstract

This article explores ‘whiteness’, ‘illegitimacy’ and migration in Jean Rhys's novel Wide Sargasso Sea and Honor Ford-Smith's short story ‘Grandma's Estate’. Each writer responds to Charlotte Bronte's construction of the ‘mad Creole woman’ in order to writer her own, more complex account of race and class in the Caribbean. The article argues that Rhys and Ford-Smith represent ‘outside’ children in their respective texts as a way of showing how ‘whiteness’ underpinned colour/class hierarchies in the colonial Caribbean.