IDENTITY, DISPLACEMENT AND ALIENATION IN JEAN RHYS’S WIDE SARGASSO SEA AND VOYAGE IN THE DARK

Abstract

Dominican writer Jean Rhys (1890-1979), after remaining in the dark for several years, re-emerged in the literary arena with the publishing of Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966 which is both a fine example of the postcolonial literature and postmodern rewriting through which it can also be concerned as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. After the abolition of colonialism, new literatures from the former colonies emerged, which challenged and questioned the identity of the colonized imposed by the colonizer, and also the identity of the colonial powers. Literature of this kind or namely the postcolonial literature thus, aims to subvert the imperial literatures which are on the “centre” to make the voice of the colonized heard from the “periphery”. Both Wide Sargasso Sea and Voyage in the Dark analysed in this paper are striking examples of the postcolonial literature in deconstructing the colonial image. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyse how the issue of identity is approached in Jean Rhys’s postcolonial texts Wide Sargasso Sea and Voyage in the Dark through the study of characters’ race, displacement, exile, alienation, and othering.

Keywords

• Jean Rhys
• Postcolonial novel
• Alienation
• Identity

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