the impact of race and gender on Antoinete's identity in wide sargasso sea
Soumaya Bouacida
Postcolonial Studies
The Impact of Race and Gender on Antoinette’s Identity Rhys depicts Antoinette’s struggle to establish a stable reality and her desire to break out of her displaced role as ‘the other’. Antoinette’s feelings of alienation and rejection are intensified by her experience as a Creole woman. The undefined race is seen as a major dilemma in Antoinette’s life. She is torn between two races and exiled from both, having no place to belong. The blacks call her ‘white cockroach’ and the whites refer to her as ‘white nigger’. Antoinette is not white enough for the Europeans and not black enough for the natives. Antoinette is a descendant of English slave owners. This fact increases the tensions between her family and the islanders. Antoinette strives to find a true identity, but unfortunately she fails. Her identity is fragmented because of her race and gender
Madam Sarup argues that identity is shaped by simultaneous operations of social dynamics such as race, class, nation and gender. She affirms that identity is determined through two different ways: the outside and inside. The outside of our identity is how others see us. The inside of our identity has to do with our vision of ourselves. (14) Identity is not a flat description of our personality, but it takes into consideration different perspectives of ‘the self’ in order to construct a coherent image. Hall states that cultural identity should proceed from the past to understand its present formation. He defines cultural identity as a state of being as well as of becoming. It is not fixed in history but rather it is a subject to transformation, fluid change and constant development under certain circumstances. Hall says that we should recognize the other side ‘the differences and hybridity’ as a part of our cultural identity because the common history can unify people across their differences but
Postcolonial Studies
The Impact of Race and Gender on Antoinette’s Identity Rhys depicts Antoinette’s struggle to establish a stable reality and her desire to break out of her displaced role as ‘the other’. Antoinette’s feelings of alienation and rejection are intensified by her experience as a Creole woman. The undefined race is seen as a major dilemma in Antoinette’s life. She is torn between two races and exiled from both, having no place to belong. The blacks call her ‘white cockroach’ and the whites refer to her as ‘white nigger’. Antoinette is not white enough for the Europeans and not black enough for the natives. Antoinette is a descendant of English slave owners. This fact increases the tensions between her family and the islanders. Antoinette strives to find a true identity, but unfortunately she fails. Her identity is fragmented because of her race and gender
Madam Sarup argues that identity is shaped by simultaneous operations of social dynamics such as race, class, nation and gender. She affirms that identity is determined through two different ways: the outside and inside. The outside of our identity is how others see us. The inside of our identity has to do with our vision of ourselves. (14) Identity is not a flat description of our personality, but it takes into consideration different perspectives of ‘the self’ in order to construct a coherent image. Hall states that cultural identity should proceed from the past to understand its present formation. He defines cultural identity as a state of being as well as of becoming. It is not fixed in history but rather it is a subject to transformation, fluid change and constant development under certain circumstances. Hall says that we should recognize the other side ‘the differences and hybridity’ as a part of our cultural identity because the common history can unify people across their differences but
Cited: -Benjamin, M. A Question of Identity: Women, science and literature. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993 -Bhabha, Homi K -Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. New York: Routledge, 1998. -McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. Ed. Judith L. Raiskin. New York: Norton, 1999. Sarup, M. Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World. Ed. Raja, T. Forword Brooker,P.Edinburg: Edinburg UP, 1996. -Fayad, Mona. “Unquiet Ghosts: The Struggle for Representation in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.” A Norton Critical Edition: Wide Sargasso Sea. Ed. Judith L. Raiskin. New York: Norton, 1999. 225-240. -Drake, Sandra. “Race and Caribbean Culture as Thematics of Liberation in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.” A Norton Critical Edition: Wide Sargasso Sea. Ed. Judith L. Raiskin. New York: Norton, 1999. 193-206 -Hall, Stuart -Hodge, Bob, and Vijay, Mishra. “What is Postcolonialism?” New Literary History 36. (2005): 375-402 -Spivak, Gayatri.Charavorty. “Wide Sargasso Sea and a Critique of Imperialism in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.” A Norton Critical Edition: Wide Sargasso Sea. Ed. Judith L. Raiskin. New York: Norton, 1999.240- 249.