Evaluation of Fragmentation and Paranoia in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea… Open English and...
Transcript of Evaluation of Fragmentation and Paranoia in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea… Open English and...
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 1
Research article
Evaluation of Fragmentation and Paranoia in Jean
Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea: A Postmodern Outlook
Eyvazi, Mojgan. Assistant professor, English Department, Payame Noor University. Tehran. Iran.
E-mail: [email protected]
Pourebrahim, Shirin. Assistant professor, English Department, Payame Noor University. Tehran. Iran.
E-mail: [email protected]
Sahebazamni, Nasim. M.A. Student of English literature. Payame Noor University. Tehran. Iran.
E-mail: [email protected]
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Abstract
This study tends to shed lights on two concepts of postmodernism, fragmentation and paranoia which are the two
most important characteristics of postmodernism in Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel was written in 1966 by Dominica
born British author Jean Rhys. This case study shows how postmodern concepts can be traced in a novel so that one
could interpret the novel in another way. Rhys very effectively uses fragmentation through temporal distortion,
characterization, the art of narration and structure in order to unify her non-linear narrative and open a way for
readers to see a whole picture of what the main characters are actually like. She also uses paranoid characters in her
novel and depicts that the result can be different if one can have different feelings toward the paranoiac behaviors in
the postmodern era. So Rhys by using these features in her novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, has paved the path to give it a
postmodern scrutiny.
Keywords: Fragmentation, Paranoia, Postmodernism, Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
______________________________________________________________________________
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 2
Introduction
Postmodernism refers to a historical period that began in the 1940s, a style of literature, philosophy, art, and
architecture, or the situation of Western society in a late capitalist or post capitalist age. According to Abrams
The term postmodernism is often applied to the literature and art after Word War II (1939-45), when the
effects on Western morale of the first World War were greatly exacerbated by the experience of Nazi
totalitarianism and mass examination, the treat of total destruction by the atomic bomb, the progressive
devastation of the natural environment, and the ominous fact of over population. (203)
The phenomenon of postmodernism cannot be enunciated in purely temporal words. It somehow shackles most of
the obvious epistemological points in various scientific spots. In postmodernism, unlike modernism, we are not
dealing with any scientific rules, but it is the absolute incredulity toward metanarrative, which became popular
mostly after the Second World War. It postulates without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been
done. In postmodernism you cannot find any certainties in any section of the universe and everything has been
brought into question. The postmodernity tends towards elaboration, eclecticism, ornamentation and inclusiveness.
It dismisses the existence of an absolute reality and is deeply suspicious of the concept of human progress. Malpas
said that: “Postmodernity is a social formation that takes root in the last years of the nineteen century, puts forth its
first shoot amid the social, economic and military conflicts that scarred the first half of the twentieth, and comes into
its own about the middle of that century as it replaces the modern as the dominant form of cultural and social
organization” (34). Postmodernism is "post" because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks
the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for
everybody, a characteristic of the so-called "modern" mind. The paradox of the postmodern position is that, in
placing all principles under the scrutiny of its skepticism, it must realize that even its own principles are not beyond
questioning. McHale believes that it can not make the sense to define postmodernism by saying that modern means
pertaining to the present and postmodern means pertaining to the future. He continues that post is not means like
what it said in the dictionary; it is function as a kind of intensifier. He added that postmodernism doesn‟t means post
modern. Postmodernism follows from modernism rather than it follows after modernism, and it is so important to
know this that postmodern comes after modernist movement, and it does not come after present (5).
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 3
Farah Yeganeh remarks that postmodernism changes the people's way of life in the second of twentieth
century. It is a reaction to the widespread style of modernism. It can be said postmodernism is the abandonment of
modernism quest for artistic coherence in the fragmented world and an attack on Enlightenment values and truth
claims. She added that postmodernism is not a single style or school, but it is used for multitude of styles or schools.
It is come into being as a reaction to modernism. Following the devastation of fascism and World War II, many
intellectuals and artists in Europe became distrustful of modernism. Postmodernism is more fragmented,
decentralized and impermanent than modernism. Postmodernist authors and also designers have revived styles of old
art movements, so by this fact, they introduced mixed up forms and figurative ornaments that brought complexity in
their works. Postmodern art unlike modernist art which emphasized individual expression, stresses collective and
shared expression through cooperative and a mixture of borrowed styles (675-76). So, the term postmodern literature
is a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature and relying heavily on fragmentation,
temporal distortion, paranoia, intertextuality, irony, playfulness, blackhumour paradox, allusions and references,
technoculture and hyperreality, fabulation, metafiction, magic realism, intertextuality, pastiche and parody.
Discussion
This study tends to shed lights on two concepts of postmodernism, fragmentation and paranoia in Wide Sargasso
Sea, a novel was written in 1966 by Dominica born British author Jean Rhys. She was born Ella Gwendolen Rees
Williams, on August 24, 1890, in Rseau Windward Isle of Dominica, one of the former English colonies in the
Caribbean. She would become known throughout the literary world as Jean Rhys. Her father William Potts Rees
Williams was a Welsh-born doctor while her mother Minna Lockart was a native white West Indian. As a white girl
in a black community, perhaps most notably she felt intellectually and socially isolated (Pizzichini 7-8). According
to Pizzichini she becomes popular nearly at the end of her life after the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea which was
awarded the W.H. Smith literary prize of ₤1000 and a bursury on December and this leads her toward many
interviews (290). The story of Wide Sargasso Sea is about Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole heiress, from the time
of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage to an unnamed Englishman (he is not named by the author)
who soon renames her, declares her mad and then requires her to relocate to England. She is caught in an oppressive
patriarchal society where she belongs neither to the white Europeans nor the black Jamaicans.
1. The Use of Fragmentation in Wide Sargasso Sea
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 4
Fragmentation is an important aspect of postmodern literature. In postmodern works fragmentation signifies the
breaking rather than building up of information, to form a structure that would convey a hidden message rather than
the obvious message to its audience. Hutcheon remarks the term postmodernism describe a literary movement which
charachterized by “discontinuity, disruption, dislocation, decentring, indeterminacy, and antitotalization”
(3).Throughout the entire work various elements, concerning plot, characters, themes, imagery and factual
references are fragmented and dispersed .In general, there is an interrupted sequence of events, character
development and action in the work. In order to talk about fragmentation, when John Hawkes began to write,
assumes that “the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme” ( qtd in Sim 126). Sim says that:
Certainly many subsequent authors have done their best to sledgehammer these four literary cornerstones
into oblivion. Either plot is pounded into small slabs of event and circumstance, characters disintegrate into
a bundle of twitching desires, settings are little more than transitory backdrops, or themes become so
attenuated that it is often comically inaccurate to say that certain novels are 'about' such-and-such. (126)
He also continues that the postmodernist writer prefers to deal with the other ways of structuring narratives
as opposes the traditional stories that are associated with the completion and wholeness (127).So the writer uses
fragmentation in his novel to prove this, by breaking up the text into short fragments or sections, separated by space,
titles, numbers or symbols and also by uses of nonlinear timeline. Fragmentation also can occur in language,
sentence structure or grammar.
In the novel Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys very effectively uses postmodernism fragmentation through
temporal distortion, characterization, the art of narration and structure in order to unify her non-linear narrative. It
can be truly present the fact that “Jean Rhys‟s novels present an intriguing case study for thinking about the statues
and meaning of fragmentation” (Linett 437). Indeed, Wide Sargasso Sea narrative relies upon dream-like visions,
fragmented impressions, incomplete sentences, and multiple first-person voices to create an unsettling overall sense
of disorientation in the reader.
Wide Sargasso Sea has an unconventional structure. It is written in the trisect form. Instead of the usual
chapter divisions, it is arranged into three parts of unequal length. These parts are divided into sections, that
sometimes indicated by an asterisk. Jean Rhys didn't write in a logical and organized way. She seems to have written
in short and unconnected sections, on scraps of paper. It has several settings; Jamaica, the Windward Islands
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 5
(Dominica), and England during the 1830's. Rhys does not spend a lot of time describing any of these settings; she
just changes the tone of her writing accordingly. The three parts follow a chronological order from Antoinette's
childhood to her imprisonment at Thornfield Hall. However, within this broad chronological arrangement Jean Rhys
Breaking up the chronological order by using flashbacks, premonitions of the future and by restructuring time and
its significance, and also the ambiguous ending of Wide Sargasso Sea deliberately leaves open the question of what
happens to Antoinette.
In these three parts the narrator changes every now and then. It has two main first person narrators who give
their own point of view on the events of the story. Wide Sargasso Sea is told by different narrators: mainly
Antoinette, the un-named Antoinette‟s husband Rochester and Grace Poole, her guardian and nurse. Also, the voices
of other individuals and groups contribute to the narrative by Fragments of songs, dialogues and reported
speech.This shift in narrative voice, along with forward and backward movements through time and space, is quite
different from the linear narrative novel on which the characters are based. This mixture of competing and often
contradictory voices has meant that Wide Sargasso Sea has been called a many-voiced novel. Jean Rhys builds up
her story from these multiple fragmented perspectives and events. In the Parts narrated by Antoinette, Rhys uses the
device of fragmentation more than the second part. Through these fragmented memories of the narrator, the reader
confronted disjointed flow of interior thoughts and sense impressions. Rhys gives this feeling to the reader by using
the device of stream of consciousness to express the fragmented memories of main characters. She represents
intermixing child‟s cognition by memories of an older narrative through this kind of fragmentation. For example in
part one when an only friend of Antoinette, Tia betrays Antoinette by stealing her money and clothes and she has to
wear her friend‟s shabby clothes. From this memory she describes her mothers feeling about her and she expresses
her voice through the novel.
All that evening my mother didn‟t speak to me or look at me and I thought, „She is ashamed of me,
what Tia said is true.‟
I went to bed early and slept at once. I dreamed that I was walking in the forest. Not alone. Someone
who hated me was with me, out of sight. …I woke crying. The covering sheet was on the floor and my
mother was looking down at me.
„Did you have a nightmare?‟
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 6
„Yes, a bad dream.‟
She sighed and covered me up. „You were making such a noise. I must go to Pierre, you‟ve frightened
him.‟
I lay thinking, „I am safe. There is the corner of the bedroom door and the friendly furniture. There is
the tree of life in the garden and the wall green with moss. The barrier of the cliffs and the high
mountains. And the barrier of the sea. I am safe. I am safe from the strangers.‟(24)
Rhys's main character, Antoinette goes back and forth in her own life span, and also she pays random visits to
all events in between. Antoinette‟s life is presented as a series of episodes from past, present and also foreshadowing
future. This mirrors the structure of the novel which has a beginning, middle and end by so many fragmented events.
By these fragmented memories Antoinette is allowed to voice her own experience and so to restore the balance. The
novel channels its way against the traditional linear progression by jumping through time and space to highlight the
mysterious aspect of novel. Rhys uses the art of fragmentation to delineate the sublime, passionate and supernatural
elements of the novel and this make the narration so complicated. Such as Antoinette describes her miserable
situation and life, by sudden opening of the narrative after the night of the fire that the servants burn their house, she
wakes from a six-week long fever and finds herself in Spanish Town, under Aunt Cora‟s care. This narrative
suggests she has been in an empty and timeless confusion.
„I SAW MY PLAIT, tied with red ribbon, when I got up,‟ I said. „In the chest of drawers. I thought it
was a snake.‟
„Your hair had to be cut. You‟ve been very ill, my darling,‟ said Ant Cora. „But you are safe with me
now. We are all safe as I told you we would be. You must stay in bed though. Why are you wandering
about the room? …‟ (41)
Part one is narrated by Antoinette and takes place in Coulibri, Jamaica. In this part Antoinette remembers her
childhood and adolescence up to the moment when her marriage to Rochester is arranged by Mr. Mason. It begins
by Antoinette‟s vague and fragmentary memories, which focus on glimpses of tropical landscape with telling events
from her childhood after the death of her father, Alexander Cosway, descriptions of her mother, and examples of her
childhood isolation. Racial tensions and the disapproval of the white Jamaican ladies pervade these memories. Rhys
moves Antoinette rapidly, having her remember a mere fragment of his life by jumping over every important event
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 7
that happened in her life. By fragmenting Antoinette‟s life like this, Rhys is able to bring the events that comprise
his life closer together. Antoinette‟s starts to describe her memories by telling to the reader the fact that she and her
family do not fit the white people in Spanish town and she continue by remembering more events to approve this to
them. She refer to their servant‟s, Christophine, belief that, the Jamaican ladies do not approve of her mother,
because she comes from Martinique and too beautiful. Then she refers to another event about their neighbor, who
was the only friend of her mother, Annette, swim out to the sea and never return to them. This constant
fragmentation of Antoinette life serves, ironically, to unify Antoinette character for the reader.
THEY SAY WHEN TROUBLE comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in
their ranks. …
Another day I heard her talking to Mr. Luttrell our neighbor and her only friend. „Of course they have their
own misfortunes. Still waiting for this compensation the English promised when the Emancipation Act was
passed. Some will wait for a long time.‟
…One calm evening he shot his dog, swam out to sea and was gone for always. (15)
Although the language is quite simple, the people, situations and events are presented without explanation.
Obviously, Antoinette's story is as full of gaps, silences and secrets as others on these islands. There are gaps in
what she knows and understands but, importantly, there are gaps in what she chooses to disclose. Rhys uses the way
of showing gaps with fragmentation in people understanding in a postmodern era. However, the missing information
can be inferred through fragments of dialogue and gossip repeated and overheard by Antoinette‟s description of the
events of her childhood. Antoinette has very fragmented memory and information about her past and the people
around her. She was a lonely child and through the time when she grows up she feels lonelier in the society where
she leaves. For example she remembers one day, she finds her mother's horse lying dead under a tree. Godfrey, a
servant, confirms that the animal has been poisoned and after it, in the next paragraph she talks about the memory of
Pierre, her disabled younger brother that a doctor from Spanish Town comes to check on him. Just after this
paragraph she describes their garden as she says:
Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible – the tree of life grew there. But it had
gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell….
twice a year the octopus orchid flower – then not an inch of a tentacle showed. It was a bell-shaped
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 8
mass of white, mauve, deep purples, wonderful to sea. The scent was very sweet and strong. I never
went near it. (17)
So as the above example every paragraph in part one is about a single fragmented memory of Antoinette, which
happened in her childhood. Another example of this is when; Antoinette remembers feeling a very ominous
atmosphere at Coulibri and goes into her brother's room. As she watches him asleep, she muses on Mr. Mason's
plans to cure the little boy. In this section her thoughts move from Pierre's current happiness asleep, to thoughts of
the future, to his need to sleep, then the sound of the creaking bamboos. The pace of the storytelling slows at this
point and so provides a strong dramatic contrast to the violent events to come.
I went into Pierre‟s room which was next to mine, the last one in the house. The bamboos were outside
his window. You could almost touch them. He still had a crib and he slept more and more, nearly all
the time. He was o thin that I could lift him easily. Mr. Mason had promised to take him to England
later on, there he would be cured, made like other people. „And how will you like that‟ I thought, as I
kissed him. „How will you like being made exactly like other people?‟…It was then I heard the
bamboos creak again and a sound like whispering. (33)
In part two Jean Rhys also gives Rochester his own voice. His experiences and relationships offers directly
to the readers. By constructing Rochester through his own first person narration, Jean Rhys ensures that readers feel
closer to his experience and have more understanding. His narrative is full of fragmentation and stream of
consciousness. Rhys uses these fragmentations to represent the effects of emotional and cultural dislocation. For
example, Rochester's experience of the landscape around Granbois is marked on the one hand by rational
investigation through walking or reading and on the other by musing or reverie induced by the mingled effects of
climate, landscape and his feelings. “The road climbed upward. On one side the wall of green, on the other a steep
drop to ravine below…There was a soft warm wind blowing but I understood why the porter had called it a wild
place. Not only wild but menacing” (63). Or when Rochester is riding to Granbois, he composes a letter in his head.
In the letter, which he may never send, he makes his resentments against his family plain. “… Dear Father. The
thirty thousand pounds have been paid to me without question or condition. No provision made for her (that must be
seen to). I have a modest competence now. I will never be a disgrace to you or to my dear brother the son you
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 9
love…” (63). Yet, later in the same section, as he sits in his dressing-room alone he re-reads a letter he seems to
have actually written and composes a postscript.
Dear Father, we have arrived from Jamaica after an uncomfortable few days. This little estate in the
Windward Islands is part of the family property and Antoinette is much attached to it. She wishes to
get here as soon as possible. All is well and has gone according to your plans and wishes. I dealt of
course with Richard Mason. His Father died soon after I left for the West Indies as you probably know.
He is a good fellow, hospitable and friendly; he seemed to become attached to me and trusted me
completely…. (68-69)
The language of them is fragmented although the first is more fragmented the sentences shorter and the tone
aggrieved. In the written version the tone is neutral and the information at variance with Rochester‟s sense of
cultural displacement. Rochester himself concludes that the effect of the place and people leaves gaps in his memory
that he cannot account for.
Rochester's emotional and cultural confusions reach their climax in the last pages of part two. This is the
point in the novel at which Jean Rhys makes the most extensive use of stream of consciousness with fragmented
narration techniques. The purpose of this use of fragmented narration is to show Rochester's interior life. Jean Rhys
is particularly concerned to reveal the pressures on him as an English man in a position of dominance in this new
environment. These pressures, as she shows, damage him and prevent a full response to his experience.
Part three opens with a short section in italics told by a new narrator, Grace Poole. “ He inherited everything,
but he was a wealthy man before that. Some people are fortunate, they said, and there were hints about the woman
he brought back to England with him…” (159).This part is shorter than the first two parts. Although the first two
parts are narrated by the first person narrator, this part is not exactly a first person narration. It avoids any sense of
an overseeing third person narrator by consisting of direct speech from Grace and then an account of her thoughts.
After Grace's narrative the type reverts from italic to roman and another voice is heard, Antoinette's. Her first person
narration in this section represent by fragmented thoughts, fragmentation narrative and employs stream of
consciousness via an interior monologue, the flow of perceptions, thoughts and memories in her head at this time.
Fragmented characters also can be seen in Wide Sargasso Sea. Beside the three main narratives for
overcoming the limitations of first person narration, Jean Rhys makes use of a range of other techniques for allowing
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 10
other characters to give their point of view on the action of the novel, such as Antoinette's mother, Annette. Readers
have to construct her character and experiences from her speeches in dialogue reported by Antoinette and memories
of her mother as she describes her in the opening of the novel “She was my father‟s second wife, far too young for
him they thought, and, worse still, a Martinique girl.” (15), from information given to Rochester by Daniel Cosway,
… When Madam his wife die the reprobate marry again quik, to a young girl from Martinique – it’s too
much for him. … This young Mrs Cosway is worthless and spoilt, she can’t lift a hand for herself and soon
the madness that is in her, and in all these white Creols, come out. … She marry again to the rich
Englishman Mr Mason, … The madness gets worse and she has to be shut away for she try to kill her
husband – madness not being all either.(87-88)
and also from Gossips and the comments of servants or other members of the family reported by Antoinette. For
example in Annette and Mr Mason‟s wedding with Antoinette hears guests gossiping about her mother . “ …Why
should he marray a widow without a penny to her name and Coulibry a wreck of a place? … the other one said, „ but
Annette is such a pretty woman. And what a dancer. Remind me of that song “ light as cotton blossom on something
breeze”, or is it air? I forgot‟ ” (26).
So the picture of Annette for readers is a fragmentary one and drawn from contradictory sources. Like
Annette, Christophine's character is also fragmented. Her character is introduced to the reader by gossips and
fragments of dialogue retold by Antoinette. Antoinette retold the memory of her past that one day she asks her
mother about Christophine: “So I asked about Christophine. Was she very old? Had she always been with us?
„She was your father‟s wedding present to me – one of his presents. He thought I would be pleased with a
Martinique girl. I don‟t know how old she was when they brought her to Jamaica, quite young. I don‟t know how
old she is now…‟ ” (19).
Rhys uses time fragmentation in order to make readers imagine the life of people in the postmodern through
reading the novel it conveys that she often switches tenses within her narrative. She overlaps past present and future
and this creates a certain timeless vision within the novel. The novel jumps from one period of time to the next, from
one encounter to another; it offers glimpses into the lives of the characters. By going back and forth in Antoinette‟s
life, tenses also changes accordingly in timeline and this shifting time from present to past making Antoinette‟s
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 11
character seem disembodied, so the reader is able to see a whole picture of what the main characters are actually
like.
Rhys also uses fragmentation of time to keep the past life of Antoinette fresh in the reader's mind. Due to the
fragmentation of time wide Sargasso Sea covers uses all tenses; past, present and future through the three parts. This
view of all time existing allow the reader to know about every important events in the life of an out casted person in
a postmodern world. In the first part when Antoinette goes back to her past the reader goes with him. The reader is
able to get a first hand account of her childhood memories and events and at the same time to gain a distance from it.
Rhys gives the reader the memories of both main characters (Antoinette and her husband). The reader is able to live
through Antoinette‟s childhood and also her life in the present and her marriage from her husband‟s point of view.
The fragmentation of Antoinette‟s life in her childhood, her marriage and also the fragmentation of Rochester
memories of their marriage enables the intellectual response and unification of emotional of the reader. The reader is
able to return again and again to Antoinette„s childhood, by having the story of her read as a series of fragmented
episodes. The savage act of people and brutality that occurs to and around Antoinette is not allowed to be buried in
the past. For example the people around Antoinette call him “white cockroach” even after her marriage their servant
Amelie calls her as this. This leads back to one of the main reason why Rhys uses fragmented time in her novel.
Rhys gives the reader horrific details, but saves the actual account of situation until the reader is firmly entrenched
in the narrative. Rhys continues her fragmentation of time through the novel by having Antoinette steps out of time
with her dreams. In the novel Antoinette has three dreams that they are different manifestation of the same dream,
that they provide foresight into her future life. Her first dream takes place in her childhood, when her playmate Tia
cheats her by stealing her three pennies and clothes. “I dreamed that I was walking in the forest. Not alone. Someone
who hated me was with me, out of sight. I could hear heavy footsteps coming closer and though I struggled and
screamed, I could not move. I woke crying” (24). In the same way, through the novel Rhys takes the reader out of
any particular time frame and forces him to view the novel as a whole rather than pieces of events.
Wide Sargasso Sea consists of sections, each one of which contains a message. These clumps are not in any
particular order and are not read individually but simultaneously. Rhys breaks apart Antoinette‟s life and then pieces
it together again in sequential order so that the read will be able to view her life all at once rather than day by day. It
is important for the reader to see Antoinette's whole life so that there are no illusions of a happy ending. The reader
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 12
must read through the narrative knowing that the main character will suffer, torture and at the end she is locked up in
a room without coming up with any answers. In the postmodern fashion, Rhys does not give any solutions to the
problems that arise in the novel.
The use of fragmentation in Wide Sargasso Sea is something more than simply dividing the novel into sections.
Rhys uses fragmentation to illustrate the events that happen in Antoinette‟s life and also to clarify her character for
the reader. These elements interweave in order to give uniformity to the novel that, at first glance, seems to be
fragmented. All these fragmentations work to spread out to the novel and force it to be viewed as a whole.
2. Paranoid Characters in Wide Sargasso Sea
Paranoia is a prominent feature of society that has received a fair amount of attention in critical theory. It has been
regarded as a mental illness in the medical field. So what exactly does “paranoia” mean? What kind of mental illness
does it describe? In medical literature it commonly characterized by excessive distrust in a system or even distrust in
the self or others that it combined with the idea that always other people want to hurt them. They will interpret every
event a hostile action against themselves. Finally, paranoia is considered by the medical world to be a mental
disease.
When it comes to the field of literature, there are many scholars who defined paranoia that their definitions
are actually not all that different from those who explain paranoia in medical terms. Postmodern texts often reflect
paranoia by depicting an antagonism towards immobility and stasis. It is a belief that there's an ordering system
behind the chaos of the world. It is extremely dependent upon the subject, so paranoia often straddles the line
between delusion and brilliant insight. Paranoid thinking includes persecutory beliefs because the person believes
they are in danger or is threatened by something or someone. Postmodern literature reflects paranoid states in
various ways of which the followings are mentioned: being distrustful to fixity, being circumscribed to people,
places or identity, charging society of conspiracy against the people and multiplying the self-constructed plots to
prevent the scheming of others (Sim 130), and Carl Freedman in his essay “Towards a Theory of Paranoia” remarks:
The paranoiac is the most rigorous of metaphysicians. The typical paranoid outlook is thoroughgoing,
internally logical, never trivializing, and capable of explaining the multitude of observed phenomena
as aspects of a symmetrical and expressive totality. No particular of empirical reality is so contingent
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 13
or heterogeneous that the paranoiac cannot, by a straightforward process of point-for-point
correspondence, interpret its meaning within the framework of his or her own grand system. (16)
Thus in one condition paranoid person emphasizes on incorporating every happening into his or her own system of
beliefs. A paranoid person always looking for a connection between everything is subjected to an extensive
hermeneutic investigation and random occurrence or people‟s actions and himself. The paranoid person doesn‟t
accept that anything happens by chance or randomly. This trait calls hostility, which is one of the characteristic of
paranoia. Paranoid individual interprets all happening as a malicious action against himself. As John Farrell
mentions that, nothing is accidental for a paranoid person and for him the world just approves its intentional
deceptiveness and malice, it never shows its hostility openly. Affability makes him doubtful and suspicious; hostility
makes him sure about the truth of his delusions even if they fright him. (2) He also states:
He feels unappreciated, resisted, embattles, oppresses. It may be his livelihood that is threatened or his
life, the possession of a love object or the recognition of his genius. The enemies may be local, a
family member or a colleague; they may be chosen from among minority groups that are frequently the
targets of social resentment; they may be supernatural beings or creatures from another planet, or
earthly powers like states or multinational corporations.(2)
Paranoiac world is black and white, and the paranoid person always predisposes to see the world against him and
thus his world is rigid one and highly schematic, where everyone and everything has its own place. Such paranoia in
which an individual is entrapped in his or her vision of conspiracy of the unknown forces, system, society or
structures against him can be seen in Jean Rhys‟s postmodern novel, Wide Sargasso Sea. The major characters in
this novel are influence by their vision of conspiracy of the unknown, indefinite forces against them.
Antoinette is one of the paranoid characters in Wide Sargasso Sea. From the beginning of the novel when she
talks about her childhood Rhys shows the reader that Antoinette interprets all action against her. Rhys wants to show
that she has had paranoia since her childhood. In part one when Antoinette describes her childhood she mentions
that one day she followed by a young black girl who sings “ „White cockroach, go away, go away. Nobody want
you. Go away‟ ” (Rhys 20), this insult lodge in Antoinette‟s mind and reappear in her adult life. She says that “I
never looked at any strange negro” (20). This belief shows that she sees the people and also all society against her.
She becomes paranoid about being watched, tracked and also followed. Hostility grows in her heart as she become
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 14
older, and it makes her doubtful and suspicious against the individuals around her. She feels persecute and seeking
refuge in natures fold, curling up against the velvety moss wall of the family's garden and trying to disappear from
the cruel world of human beings.
The idea of hermeneutics lays at the base of paranoia which was already considered by Freud and Lacan, i.e.
Lacan‟s theory of the mirror stage in which an infant first establishes that it is an entity separate from the rest of the
world and starts defining the boundaries of itself, a process that can only happen through hermeneutics. The child
does not only apply it to him/herself in order to define the boundaries of the self, but it then also starts making
connections between different entities which is a paranoid action in essence. Obviously, the hermeneutic approach
leads to a subjective image not to an objective one, a personal interpretation, thus making it is a decisively paranoid
process. Lacan‟s symbolic order actually serves as another example of how paranoia and individual paranoids exists
in the society. So there is in this theory of the Symbolic Order a hint of paranoia since the conventions we have
created are sensed to be monitored and maintained by an entity that we can call it Other. The Symbolic Order is the
set of values and conventions that the researcher and readers as a society have agreed upon in order to make
communication possible and meaningful. Jerry Flieger in his essay “Postmodern Perspective: The Paranoid Eye”
explains: “ For the paranoid, events and causes are not what they seem to be to rational people; for, as Lacan points
out, "normal" people function by making a pact with the Symbolic order, the order which guarantees that
experienced reality is meaningful, caught in the intersubjective web of the Other” (90).
Antoinette‟s childhood fear and also hostility hunts her forest dream. Antoinette describes that in her
childhood one evening when she arrived at house, she surprised to find visitors, two young ladies and a gentleman,
that Christrophine told her they are relatives of Mr. Luttrell and their new neighbors, she also cause them trouble.
Antoinette does not have a good feeling about them. That night she sees a dream that shows her fear. Her paranoid
reaction shows itself through her forest dream. She does not accept that anything happens by chance. “I dreamed
that I was walking in the forest. Not alone. Someone who hated me was with me, out of sight. I could hear heavy
footsteps coming closer …” (Rhys 24). Her forest dream and the heavy footsteps that she hears behind herself
represent her paranoid characteristic that shows the approach of the big Other (new English colonials), who have
come to the islands to make their wealth and to reap the rewards from the old slave owners' misfortunes.
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 15
Antoinette is paranoid about being watched and followed. She always feels such eyes upon her. These
paranoid behaviors cause people around her viewing her as a ferocious lunatic. Even in her third dream she feels that
some one following and chasing her, also when Antoinette watches herself in horror, as she dreams that she looks at
herself in the mirror and sees not herself but a ghost. “That was the third time I had my dream, … it seemed to me
that someone was following me, someone was chasing me, laughing … I went to the hall again with the tall candle
in my hand. It was then that I saw her – the ghost” (168-169) Antoinette‟s Paranoid thinking includes persecutory
beliefs because she believes she is in danger or is threatened by something or someone.
Paranoia in Wide Sargasso Sea is linked intricately with madness. Antoinette, beside her paranoia, is a mad
girl. Madness is Antoinette‟s inheritance, according to her brother Daniel, her father was mad as was her mother,
Annette. Her inherent condition is aggravated as she feels displaced, rejected and outcast with no one to love her
even her husband, because of her upbringing and environment. It is significant that people specially woman like
Antoinette and also her mother are the most susceptible to paranoia and madness by living as a creole in such an
environment in postmodern era. As she become older, this condition exacerbate day by day. Her mother does not
pay attention to her even in Antoinette‟s childhood. After her mother‟s marriage, Antoinette‟s and her mother‟s
paranoid intense.
Their creole position is one thing that aggravates their paranoid. Sim remarks that a panic of identity happens
when the outside power imprisons an individual. In paranoia situation the protagonist of postmodern novel in certain
circumstances suspect with some justification that she or he is trapped at the center of an intrigue (130). When
Antoinette and her family stay in Coulibri Antoinette is feeling unsettled and apprehensive about people and
servants there, her mother Annette, feels hated at the Estate and pleads with her husband to move. Her mother‟s
husband couldn‟t understand their fear and apprehension, because he wasn‟t a creole and he never experience living
in such an environment. By contrast Antoinette and her mother sense rage and danger all around, they have a very
instinctive awareness of the rising animosity among the servants as Antoinette feels that the sky and sea were on
fire. She has an unsettling premonition of evil, and she can‟t trust people and the events anymore, at the same time
she feels abused and abandoned mistreated by everyone. She couldn‟t accept that these feeling and happening are
randomized. She has believed in conspiracy of people around her as she wished she had a big dog and protect her
from every person and event. “I wished I had a big Cuban dog to lie by my bed and protect me, I wished I had not
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 16
heard a noise by the bamboo clump, …” (Rhys 34), so she quickly becomes solitary and paranoid prone to vivid
outburst.
After the house is deflagrated by servants, Antoinette‟s paranoia and her mother‟s madness exacerbate and
become worse. Coco, Annette‟s beloved parrot and the only possession that she attempts to rescue from the fire, falls
to a fiery death. It is unable to speak very well, when he does speak, it uses a French patois that aligns it with main
characters paranoia. His repeated question, “Qui est là? Qui est là?” (38), which translated to “Who is there?”
underscores the paranoia, the problem of identity and also persecution that both Antoinette and her mother have. The
parrot repeatedly declares its own name by responding to itself I am Coco (“Ché Coco, Ché Coco” (38)) and fixes his
own identity. It recites a mantra which is like an incantation, works as a protection for it, and this highlight the
paranoia of Antoinette and her mother in this novel. Both of them believe that they are imprisoned in a trap which is a
center of intrigue for them. On that fiery night when Antoinette sees the flaming parrot that burns alive, remembered
it is bad luck to kill a parrot or even watch a parrot die. She shrinks in horror when this superstition comes to her
mind. Paranoid thinking includes persecutory beliefs because the person believes they are in danger or is threatened
by something or someone. So another aspect of Antoinette‟s paranoia reveals itself through a moment that she
becomes anxious of a belief which is just a superstitious. Antoinette as a paranoid person relates every happening
against herself, that she is in threated and also in danger by something or something. One night when Antoinette
sleeps with her husband, she tells a story which happened for her in the past about rats to him that it manifests her
hostility and also her fear of being watched and followed. Constantly she interpret every happening as a self made
plot that others conspiring against her.
It was so hot that my night chemise was sticking to me but I went to sleep all the same. And then
suddenly I was awake. I saw two enormous rats, as big as cats, on the still staring at me.‟… That was
the strange thing. I stared at them and they did not move. I could see my self in the looking-glass the
other side of the room, in my white chemise with a frill round the neck, staring at those rats and the
rats quite still, staring at me.‟ (75)
Like Antoinette, her husband, Rochester also suffers from paranoia. He suspects that everyone in their house
including his father, Richard Mason and his own young wife are laughing at him. He incorporates every happening
or people‟s reaction into his own system of beliefs and he sees the world highly schematic one, in his view all
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 17
people around him include servants and also Christrophine are against him. So this nagging suspicion that he stands
on the outside of a well kept conspiracy drives Rochester to self-contempt, hatred and an irrational need to regain
control. His paranoid thinking emerges as soon as he embarks on Granbois and he tries to disregard his paranoia by
thinking about his good fortune and wealthy wife. When he arrives at Granbois, he has a bad feeling about
everything even about the house; he finds it awkward and shabby. He always feels that others are looking upon him
with ridicule, sympathy and pity. He sees overwhelmed by the environment and with the presence of servants he
feels uncomfortable especially with the presence of Christophine. At the very beginning when Antoinette introduces
him to the servants and Antoinette‟s old nurse, Christophine, Rochester feels distrust about them. This feeling of
being watched shows his paranoid fears and also mirrors Antoinette‟s paranoid fears in the first part.
Rochester‟s paranoid behavior aggravates when he receives a letter from Daniel Cosway, the bastard son of
Alexander Cosway. The letter informs him about Antoinette‟s depraved background. He becomes more and more
distrustful of his wife; later that he begins to think his father and his brother and also Richard Mason have
deliberately tricked him into marrying Antoinette, who is a lunatic girl from a mad woman according to Daniel
Cosway. Rochester feels that the world is against him so he begins to view Antoinette and Christophine as his
enemies. His hostility toward them provokes by this distrust, and as a paranoid individual in postmodern era, he
feels confused and alone like Antoinette. The landscape of their place and forest as he stumbles forward on a path
represent his interior world. He does not recognize or understand his feeling of being watched every where and on
all sides. His feeling of loneliness and strange alienated increased in the day when he walks in the forest, he
encounters a girl who screams in front of him and runs away. He confirms suspicion which is Daniel‟s suggestion;
he could not trust Antoinette anymore. Finally by visiting Daniel, his paranoia becomes worse. Daniel tells him, not
to trust this family anymore. He informs him that Christophine as a master of obeah magic is the most deceitful of
all. From the other side, Antoinette feels sign of betrayal from Rochester as she sees England as a cold place. So she
asks Christophine to make a love potion in order to increase their love. One morning when Rochester wakes up he
feels sick and vomit, he continues vomit rest of the day. By his paranoid thinking he believes he has been poisoned.
From that time, Rochester can‟t control himself. He turns his anger on Antoinette; he seeks to assert his power by
becoming a tyrant toward her, a cruel ruler who can kill her with his words alone. The worst thing that he does to
comfort himself as a paranoid man, he symbolically enacts her death and covering Antoinette with a torn sheet like
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 18
covering a dead person. “I drew the sheet over her gently as if I covered a dead girl” (125). At the end of the novel
he does the last cruel thing to her that leaves her alone and imprisons her in an attic.
Rhys shows these two main characters in her novel as two paranoid people to represent that being paranoid
in postmodern world can have negative and also positive effects on the people‟s life. It can see how Antoinette and
her mother‟s paranoia throw this novel have a clear protective purpose. By this mistrust and paranoid hostility,
Antoinette senses the evil that awaits her. For example within the crowing of cock, she sees the sign of betrayal.
Apparently throw her forest hunting dreams; these premonitions suggest that her paranoia acts as a protective thing
for her. By this evil that hunts her actions and surrounding, although nothing can protect Antoinette from her
downfall, her paranoia can prolong it. Unlike Antoinette who is immediately recognizes the animal is a sign of
betrayal when it is crowing and uses her paranoia, Rochester fails to intuit danger around him. He does not look for
symbol in natural landscape around him. Besides her paranoia Antoinette always look for comfort and wisdom in
her life. Although both Antoinette and Rochester seem to be constantly lookout for plots and conspiracy of society
and individuals against them, Antoinette uses this paranoia as a complimentary and a way to ameliorate her life and
her situation. Unlike her, Rochester uses it as a source demolition and destruction of every thing especially his life.
When Rochester trusts Daniel and suspects everyone conspire against him and scheming a plot specially his wife
and Christophine, he goes one step further toward his dangerous and destructive paranoid behavior. He could not
trust her wife any more and tries to make her puppeteer by becoming godlike tyrant toward her. His paranoid
hostility and distrust cause him to betray his wife and at last imprisoning her alone in an attic. All of these
happenings with Rochester‟s paranoia lead to the destruction of their life in this novel.
Within these two main paranoid characters in this novel and their different reactions toward their paranoid
feelings, Rhys shows that in postmodern world nevertheless paranoia is a fringe and disastrous element, it can be
fundamental in the society. To be aware of every individual and every unexpected happening in postmodern era it is
good to be paranoid. Rhys presents a vision of postmodern world and the thing in it which makes people paranoid
and mad. He also shows that how this world can be if a paranoid individual do nothing to stop the happenings that
are ongoing. He wants to confirm through this novel that if people of postmodern era use paranoia properly, it
actually can redeem them from postmodern condition and bad happening which awaits them in their life. He proves
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 19
that if one can use paranoia in a best way to keep up what is happening it can never act as a source destruction of
self and others.
Conclusion
This study is an attempt to conceptualize the two important postmodern elements; fragmentation and paranoia in
Jean Rhys‟s Wide Sargasso Sea, proving that Wide Sargasso Sea is a postmodern novel. In order to unify the non-
linear narrative Rhys uses fragmentation through temporal distortion, characterization, the art of narration and
structure in her novel, Wide Sargasso Sea. It is divided into three parts of unequal length, in which parts are divided
into sections and every section consists of a message.
Rhys goes further from the traditional narration by jumping through time and space. The novel overlaps past,
preset and future which create a certain timeless vision within the novel, so the narration jumps from one period of
time to the next, from one encounter to another; it highlights the most important events and glimpses into the life of
a creole and out casted woman, Antoinette for the reader. The characters in the novel always switches tense in their
narratives and by this time fragmentation Rhys wants to keep the past life of Antoinette, fresh for the reader. By the
uses of different kind of fragmentation, Rhys gives uniformity to the novel and illustrates the events in Antoinette‟s
life who was a creole woman. Rhys clarify the events for the reader while makes the reader imagine people's life
especially of an out casted woman in a postmodern era.
Rhys also uses paranoid characters who are Antoinette and Rochester in Wide Sargasso Sea and both of them
have different reaction their paranoid feelings. Through this uses of paranoid characters Rhys indicates that paranoia
can be fundamental beside its disastrous nature. Indirectly she proves that if postmodern individual uses paranoia
properly can be redeemed from the disaster events which are ongoing, and it can never act as a source of destruction
of self and others.
References
[1] Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Ninth Ed. Tehran: Rahnama, 1387.Print.
[2] Farrell, John. Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau. New York: Cornel University, 2006. Print.
[3] Flieger, Jerry Aline. "Postmodern Perspective: The Paranoid Eye." New Literary History 28:1 (1997): 87-109.
Jstor. Web. 23 May 2014.
Canadian Open English and Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20
Available online at http://crpub.com/Journals.php Open Access
Copyright © crpub.com, all rights reserved. 20
[4] Freedman, Carl. “Towards a Theory of Paranoia: The Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick." Science Fiction Studies
11:1 (1984): 15-24. Jstor. Web. 15 May 2014.
[5] Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetic of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York and London: Routledge,
1988. Print.
[6] Linett, Maren. ““ New Words, New Everything”: Fragmentation and trauma in Jean Rhys” Twentieth Century
Literature 51:4 (2005): 437-66. Jstor. Web. 29 April 2014.
[7] Malpas, Simon. The Postmodern. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.
[8] McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. London and New York: Methuen, 1987. Print.
[9] Pizzichini, Lilian. The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys. New York and London: Norton & Company Ltd, 2009.
Print.
[10] Rhys. Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. London: Penguin Books, 1968. Print.
[11] Sim, Stuart, ed. The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Print.
[12] Yeganeh, Farah. Literary schools. Tehran: Rahnama, 1388. Print.