No/Mad(ic) Woman: Antoinette/Bertha in Wide Sargasso Sea
1
조회
0
다운로드
0
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
Analyzing Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which creates the untold story of the mad woman, Bertha, appearing in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), this essay digs into how patriarchal power supported by binary reasoning of the Western cognitive framework ideologically defines nomadic subjectivity as madness. In her novel, Rhys assumes that Bertha is ideologically categorized as mad due to her nomadness, and she renames Bertha to Antoinette in order to wash off the disgraceful stigma of the character as a mad woman have her heard as a nomad: Rhys attempts to make an opportunity to speak of madness rather than speaking about madness so that she explores nomadness, or nomadic subjectivity, that has been repressed as madness by the Western cognitive framework. To show Antoinette’s nomadness, the essay focuses on how Antoinette drifts between the native and the white, magic and reason, and madness and no-madness. Investigating how her husband Rochester from England responds to her nomadness, the essay also features ways in which patriarchal ideology excludes and represses nomadness to keep their privilege. Rochester’s behavior in the West Indies proves that madness is an arbitrary concept changeable according to the master ideology of society. It is patriarchal violence to imprison Antoinette, a nomad, in the attic of Thornfield Hall since it is no more than securing patriarchal power. Rhys proposes a new interpretation of the ending of Jane Eyre in which Bertha sets fire to the Thornfield Hall. Whereas Bertha’s act, in Jane Eyre, is read as suicide by her madness, Antoinette’s firing, in Wide Sargasso Sea, is a necessary and righteous act to escape the prison and continue her nomadic journey. That ending makes Antoinette a fascinating no/mad(ic) woman that Rhys wants to value against Western patriarchal ideology.
Abstract
Analyzing Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which creates the untold story of the mad woman, Bertha, appearing in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), this essay digs into how patriarchal power supported by binary reasoning of the Western cognitive framework ideologically defines nomadic subjectivity as madness. In her novel, Rhys assumes that Bertha is ideologically categorized as mad due to her nomadness, and she renames Bertha to Antoinette in order to wash off the disgraceful stigma of the character as a mad woman have her heard as a nomad: Rhys attempts to make an opportunity to speak of madness rather than speaking about madness so that she explores nomadness, or nomadic subjectivity, that has been repressed as madness by the Western cognitive framework. To show Antoinette’s nomadness, the essay focuses on how Antoinette drifts between the native and the white, magic and reason, and madness and no-madness. Investigating how her husband Rochester from England responds to her nomadness, the essay also features ways in which patriarchal ideology excludes and represses nomadness to keep their privilege. Rochester’s behavior in the West Indies proves that madness is an arbitrary concept changeable according to the master ideology of society. It is patriarchal violence to imprison Antoinette, a nomad, in the attic of Thornfield Hall since it is no more than securing patriarchal power. Rhys proposes a new interpretation of the ending of Jane Eyre in which Bertha sets fire to the Thornfield Hall. Whereas Bertha’s act, in Jane Eyre, is read as suicide by her madness, Antoinette’s firing, in Wide Sargasso Sea, is a necessary and righteous act to escape the prison and continue her nomadic journey. That ending makes Antoinette a fascinating no/mad(ic) woman that Rhys wants to value against Western patriarchal ideology.
참고문헌 (19)
- Appignanesi, Lisa, "Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of the Mind Doctors from 1800 to the Present" (2008), Norton
- Braidotti, Rosi, "Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory" (1994), Columbia UP
- Bronte, Charlotte, "Jane Eyre. 1847" (2003), Penguin
- Carter, Hannah, "Fated to Be Sad", Interview with Jean Rhys. Guardian, 8, pp.5~ (1968)
- Felman, Shoshana, "Women and Madness: The Critical Phallacy, in Feminism: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism", pp.7~20 (1997), Rutgers UP
- Felman, Shoshana, "Writing and Madness" (1985), Cornell UP
- Foucault, Michel, "Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. 1964" (1988), Vintage
- Out, in Inside, "Inside", pp.Routledge, Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories
- Gilbert, Sandra, "The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination" (2000), Yale UP
- Harrison, Nancy R., "Jean Rhys and the Novel as Women’s Text" (1998), U of North Carolina P
- Howells, Coral Ann, "Jean Rhys" (1991), Martin’s
- Khalfa, Jean, "Introduction. History of Madness. By Michel Foucault", pp.13~26 (2006), Routledge
- Petley, Christer, "Slavery, Emancipation and the Creole World View of Jamaican Colonists, 1800-1834", Slavery and Abolition, 26(1), pp.93~114 (2005)
- Raiskin, Judith L., "Snow on the Cane Fields: Women’s Writing and Creole Subjectivity" (1996), U of Minnesota P
- Raiskin, Judith L., "Wide Sargasso Sea" (1982), Norton
- Showalter, Elaine, "The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830-1980" (1987), Penguin
- Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, "Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism, in The Feminist Reader: Essay in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism", pp.175~193 (1989), Basil Blackwell
- Trollope, Anthony, "The West Indies and the Spanish Main" (1859), Chapman
- Walker, Joseph S., "When Texts Collide: The Re-Visionist Power of the Margin", Colby Quarterly, 35(1), pp.35~48 (1999)