Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

1. Wide Sargasso Sea(1966) Jean Rhys (1890-1979)

2. Spectres • 1939: Soonafter the publication of GoodMorning, Midnight, hersecondhusbandgaveher a copy of Jane Eyre (after a rowwithherhusband, sheburnt the thetypescript) • First title: Le revenant • Fire (in bothJane Eyre and WSS) • Repetition / Reiteration

3. Appropriation / Re-Vision • AdrienneRich: “WhenWe Dead Awaken: Writingas Re-Vision” • P. 25: Looking back, looking at a (canonical) text agan, re-viseit • Survival • Constraints: howwehaveimaginedourselves • Break withtradition (Isappropriation a consolidation of tradition, instead?)

4. P. 27 Gender roles • Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own(1929) • The BritishLibrary • P. 30: Myths and images of femininity • P. 35: Traditional gender roles and imagination • (Rich’s reading of Jane Eyre, especially the bondingwithotherfemalefigures)

5. Title • (middle of North Atlantic Ocean) • The Sargassumseaweed • The Sargasso Sea also plays a major role in the migration of the European eel and the American eel. The larvae of both species hatch there and go to Europe or the East Coast of North America. Later in life, they try to return to the Sargasso Sea to lay eggs.  • Stagnation / reproduction

6. “We don’t knowherstory…” • As we work, Mother St Justine • reads us stories from the lives of the • Saints, St Rose, St Barbara, St • Agnes. But we have our own Saint, • the skeleton of a girl of fourteen • under the altar of the convent • chapel. The Relics. But [34] how • did the nuns get them out here, I ask • myself? In a cabin trunk? Specially • packed for the hold? How? But here • she is, and St Innocenzia is her • name. We do not know her story, • she is not in the book. The saints • we hear about were all very • beautiful and wealthy. All were • loved by rich and handsome young • men.

7. Other side • ‘Is there another side?’ I said. • ‘There is always the other side, always!

8. Sheis the “negative, paranoidconstruction of others” • “The Creole … isnecessary to the plot…sheshrieks, howls and laughshorribly, attacksall – off stage. For me shemustbe right on stage” (Rhys) • Marginalcharacterfrom the margin to the centre • Rhys=White West Indian and an outsider (first 16 years in Dominica and returnedonly once in 1936)

9. Voice(s) • Multiplicity of voices: the ‘I’ of Bertha / Antoinette (Part 1); Alternation of anun-named voice (Rochester) and Antoinette (Part 2); Grace Poole and Antoinette (Part 3) • And echoes • The isleis full of noises (and voices)

10. Names • ‘She tell me in the middle of all • this you start calling her names. • Marionette. Some word so.’ • ‘Yes, I remember, I did.’ • (Marionette, Antoinette, • Marionetta, Antoinetta) • ‘That word mean doll, eh?

11. Rewriting • Re-readChapter 27 of Jane Eyre •  In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards.  What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.

12. Incipit They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we w e r e n o t i n t h e i r r a n k s . The Jamaican ladies had never approved of my mother, ‘because she pretty like pretty self’ Christophine said. She was my father’s second wife, far too young for him they thought, and, worse still, a Martinique girl. When I asked her why so few people came to see us, she told me that the road from Spanish Town to Coulibri Estate where we lived was very bad and that road repairing was now a thing of the past. (My father, visitors, horses, feeling safe in bed - all belonged to the past.)

13. Creole • Creole=people who descend from white European colonial settlers.  She wore a tricorne hat which became her. At least it shadowed her eyes which are too large and can be disconcerting. She never blinks at all it seems to me. Long, sad, dark alien eyes. Creole o f pure English descent she may be, but they are not English or European either. (Part 2, after the wedding, Rochester-like character’s voice)

14. EmancipationAct (1833)