Unquiet Ghosts: The Struggle for Representation in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea

Abstract

We can assume that any theory of the subject has been appropriated by the masculine. . . . When she submits to [such a] theory, woman fails to realize that she is renouncing the specificity of her own relationship to the imaginary. Subjecting herself to objectivization in discourse—by being 'female' (Irigaray 133). In these words Luce Irigaray aptly summarizes one of the basic problems that Jean Rhys attempts to grapple with in her best-known novel, Wide Sargasso Sea. The tale of Antoinette, as indicated by the critics, is the tale of a schizophrenic, a Creole whose search for identity leads to madness, or, as some would advocate, the story of a woman too weak to resist the onslaught of a strong male such as Rochester, and whose response is escape through madness. Yet such interpretations fail to take into account an important element of the text: its structure. A basic question remains. Why would a writer such as Jean Rhys, dedicated to portraying a female point of view, choose to write more than half the novel from a male perspective? In addressing this issue, it is important to bear in mind that Wide Sargasso Sea is a rewrite of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Rhys's statement as to the origin of the novel has been much quoted: She seemed such