Self-identity between the Colonial and the Colonized in "Wide Sargasso Sea"

Jean Rhys's ”Wide Sargasso Sea” is an extended story of Charlotte Bronte's ”Jane Eyre”. The protagonist in ”Wide Sargasso Sea” is the mad woman isolated in an attic, burns the house and commits suicide at last in ”Jane Eyre”. Bearing this theme in mind, this paper employs Homi Bhabha's theories about hybridity and ambivalence to analyze the uncertainty of self-identity between the colonial and the colonized. This study uses Antoinette as an example by exploring her relationship with other characters to examine how she confuses herself with others. Under the pressure of social status and racial hierarchy, Antoinette is neglected by the white and black communities simultaneously. In addition, the stereotypes of the colonized and female create a fictitious reality and that reality restricts the function of language in this novel. For Antoinette particularly, the use of language not only loses its functions but produces an illusion. On the other hand, the split, conflict and contradiction between the colonial and the colonized also reflect on her marriage. With the insufficient cognition of Antoinette and Rochester, the matrimony is doomed to fail. In the opposite relationship it is unattainable to distinguish the two cultures explicitly in a binary structure and clarify which culture is superior to the other. Thus, for Antoinette, the complex interplay of herself and others produce a series of insolvable and inevitable paradoxes. And the issue o f discrimination of racial and social class is similar to some problems of Taiwan's new immigrants and foreign workers. They came to Taiwan for a better life and married the local Taiwanese to form families. However, some of them are not received as the legal citizens as the Creole woman. Antoinette. Based on the principle of social justice and ethnic equity, this is a crucial issue that Taiwan government needs to cope with effectively and figure out a solution to improve the pervasive injustice which exists in the society.

並列關鍵字

Jean Rhys ； "Wide Sargasso Sea" ； Homi Bhabha ； post-colonialism

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