Wide Sargasso Sea

Ellen Gwendolyn Rees Williams is the name of this Caribbean writer of Scottish family, but born in the then British colony, Dominica. He published several books in the '20s and '30s, but his consecration as a British literary figure would come in 1966 with the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea, considered by many critics as his masterpiece.

Jean Rhys literature is marked by its own life, for the fact it has never been fully accepted either as native or as a European, who suffered from alcoholism for much of his life, his travels and technical mixtures modernist sensibility characteristic of Caribbean culture in which it was inserted.

Wide Sargasso Sea was written as a sort of "prequel" to Jane Eyre, the novel by Charlotte Bronte monumental. But beyond that Rhys pays tribute to the work of his predecessor, Wide Sargasso Sea explores the character who takes and gives many nuances which could only have come from the imagination of the author.

Width history Sargasso Sea is that of Antoinette Cosway, a decadent West Indian heiress who would become the first wife of Mr. Rochester, and then go crazy and locked up in the attic of the house to the moment when the young Jane Eyre discovered it.

The book reflects typical themes of Caribbean literature as racial segregation, and the difficulties of displacement and assimilation to a new environment. Rhys's heroine also has some similarities to that of Brontë: both are independent, lively, dreamy and imaginative, have had a difficult childhood and experience the oppression of a patriarchal society. The marriage of Antoinette (Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre) is very unhappy and their transfer to England, all this added to his emotional imbalance which always leads to becoming "the madwoman in the attic

Introduction

Although the Portuguese generally controlled the African slave trade in the 15th century, slavery upon American soil began in the 1600s and officially ended in 1863, following the Civil War and the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation. African rulers, forging relationships with European traders in exchange for weaponry to expand their territories, used middlemen to navigate the African interior for human capital (often prisoners of war). European slaving ships, docked at coastal ports, purchased their cargoes of slaves and distributed them to European, West Indies, and American markets in the South to work and maintain agricultural systems; it is the account of slavery in the American South that is discussed here (Hook,1982,Pp.96-105).

What started out as a system of enforced labour soon developed a racist tone that was supported by the law and some religious doctrines; it was claimed nonwhite's persons were best suited for the fieldwork that was done in extreme heat and discomfort. Their horrific experiences have been revealed in published slave narratives and oral accounts passed down for generations. In addition to these personal accounts, academia has also examined the experience of women in slavery in America. Black women writers reveal that as well as suffering the effects of racist oppression, the enslaved woman also ...