Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea: Identity in postcolonial analyses and literature

Abstract

Colonial literature established lopsided cultural hierarchies by portraying the West as civilized, rational, and morally superior to the colonized who were represented as violent, irrational, and culturally inferior to the former. Rigid dividing lines created by such hegemonic discourse made essential the construction of identities amidst racial and gendered power structures. Dominant western narratives reinforced exclusion and power imbalances by silencing, stereotyping, and relegating minorities to marginal roles. This study draws on Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of subaltern silencing (1988) to examine how hegemonic discourse operates in Charlotte Bronte representation of Bertha Mason as a racialized and violent Other in her 1847 novel Jane Eyre. It also analyzes how the narrative authority is manipulated to construct an imperial reading of Bertha as an irrational and uncivilized character. Further, the study explores how Jean Rhys reconfigures this representation by restoring historical, racial, and gendered context to Bertha reimagined as Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). It examines the role of narrative revision and postcolonial feminist critique in the novel to expose the play of race and gender in the formation of fractured identities shaped by colonial history. The study concludes with a critical reflection on the possibilities and limitations of postcolonial resistance, questioning whether narrative rewriting can fully dismantle hegemonic discourse or whether it remains structurally linked to the canon it seeks to challenge.