The Othering of Women by the Otherised: Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea as the Voice of the Voiceless

Abstract

Some works of art are a kind of term analysing products. By reading or examining them we can have an idea about the era they were created in. In this context, Jean Rhys, in her masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea, gives very detailed information about Creole women’s life and mishaps they lived. Indeed, we can read this novel as a premise of Charlotte Brontee’s Jane Eyre. There is a Creole character named as Bertha Mason, namely the woman in the attic. Jean Rhys, as a Creole herself, looks for the reasons of imprisonment of Bertha Mason to the attic. Although she is a white woman she is condemned to the attic in her husband Mr. Rochester’s house. Of course the time Bertha Mason lived in, the puritanic life style was dominant, yet there is not any link between her imprisonment and it. Bertha, as a Creole, could not gain admission in English society due to not being full-blooded white. Because of this, she is neither English nor slave. Because of being a post-colonial work, reader can see the clash between ‘black and white negros’. Here, ‘the white niggers’ are Creoles who had slaves and lands lang syne. We can analyse Wide Sargasso Sea from many perspectives, yet to me the most important one is the othering of others by otherised people. The othering layer is Creoles and specifically women, the otherised are blacks, and the others in this study are also blacks but then men. I will not discriminate between black or white men. In this study I will examine the othering of women in English society eventhough the Kingdom is governed by a Queen in that time. I will touch the reasons that compel women to stay at home and, if they are not full-blooded white, to the attics like a mad person. And also, I will try to scrutinize the causes of maddening of woman in that era.