“Madwoman in the Post-Colonial Era” A Study of the Female Voice in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyze the mediums and effects of voice and silence in the life of a female character of the re-written post-colonial text Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea. The analysis shows how a re-written text can give a new meaning to a character and story of a novel, where the character of Antoinette tells the untold story of Bertha in Jane Eyre. The method of investigation for this research is analytical and descriptive; the research was completed by analyzing the events, actions and the interactions of the female character, Antoinette with the other major characters in the novel in order to identify how the character of Antoinette was portrayed throughout the novel. It is understood through the study of the text, that the post-colonial novel gave the female voice much more importance than its previous counterpart. This represents the early post-colonial times during which women were starting to gain liberation but had still not completely moved on from the notions of patriarchal societies that they had grown up in.