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摘 要

《藻海无边》是简·里斯最著名的小说。它是夏洛特·勃朗特的《简·爱》的前篇。读过《简·爱》的人都不会忘记罗切斯特的疯妻子--伯莎·梅森。她阻碍了罗切斯特和简·爱的幸福。但勃朗特并未在《简·爱》中对她有太多交代。《藻海无边》向读者揭示了安托瓦内特（伯莎·梅森）的神秘一生及在殖民主义和父权社会的双重压迫下，克里奥尔女性完全丧失了人权。这篇论文旨在分析安托瓦内特悲剧命运的原因，并倡导大众保护和帮助少数民族和其他处于边缘地位的人。号召人们更加关注全世界的女性问题。

关键词：原因；安托瓦内特的悲剧命运；《藻海无边》

Contents

页码对齐；

与文中对应章节页码一致。

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Introduction of Jean Rhys 1

1.2 Introduction of Wide Sargasso Sea 1

2.The External Factors of Antoinette’s Tragic Life 2

2.1 Gender Oppression of Females in Patriarchal Society 2

2.2 Colonialism and Racial Discrimination 4

2.3Influences of Family Relationships 6

3. The Internal Factors of Antoinette’s Tragic Life 8

3.1 Weak Character 8

3.2 Lack of Self-identity 9

4. Conclusion 9

Works Cited 11

1. Introduction

1.1 Introduction of Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys (24 August 1890-14 May 1979) is a female writer with high reputation. She is born in a Creole family in Roseau, Dominica. Her publishes many famous novels, such as The Left Bank and Other Stories, Postures, After Leaving Mr.Mackenzie, Voyage in the Dark, Quartet etc. She receives education in Roseau and is nurtured by Caribbean culture. She learns English and French in a convent. At the age of 16, she goes to Britain and enters a school for girls in which she bears ridicule and mockery for her race identity. Then she goes to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. However, things don’t turn out the way she wants, her Creole racial identity prevents her from being a popular actress in Britain. Far away from her home, she feels quite lonely. It never rains but it pours. Her father’s death in 1910 sinks her into poverty. No doubt it grinds salt in her wound. Since then, she leads a wandering, rough and poor life. These years’ experiences stimulate her inspiration in writing. Besides her complex life experiences, her Creole lineage also greatly influences her works. She publishes her novel Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966, reaching the pinnacle of her career. She gains mushroom popularity and worldwide reputations for it. It makes a good beginning and then she publishes many novels in a row. For her outstanding achievements in literature, she is famed the world over and considered as the best novelist in the 20^th century.

1.2 Introduction of Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea is Rhys’ most representative work. With the publication of famous Jane Eyre, nearly all the readers around the world worship the confident and independent Jane Eyre. Only Rhys notices the mad white Creole woman Bertha in Jane Eyre, who has the same race identity and culture background with her. She thinks that Charlotte discriminated Creole people. So she determines to write a story about the mad Bertha to convey the real truth and introduce the Creole people to the whole world.

The novel tells the tragic life of a Creole woman called Antoinette. It consists of three parts. The first part reflects the Creole’s survival crisis by showing Antoinette’s dangerous, lonely and loveless childhood at Coulibri after the death of her real father Alexander Cosway. The second part tells the story of Rochester and Antoinette’s loveless marriage. The last part narrates the end of the story: Antoinette fires the house to revenge and jumps into the fire after being caged by Rochester in the attic for many years.

Through this novel, Rhys shows the Creole people’s hard life and the racial and sexual inequality under the dual oppression of patriarchy and colonialism.

2.The External Factors of Antoinette’s Tragic Life

Antoinette is born in a slave owner family in Jamaica in 19^th century. At that time, Jamaica is one of the English colonies. The colonialism intensifies the social contradictions. Unluckily, Antoinette’s real father dies in a social riot. Since then her family lives in straitened circumstance and utter poverty. Relatives and friends keep away from them and their slaves leave them gradually. The local black people bully and humiliate them. They are subjected to endless bullying. To improve their life, Antoinette’s mother Annette marries Mr. Mason who is an English man. Mason wants to make a fortune in Jamaica like any other English people. He marries Annette only for her estate. Several months later, their happy life ends. The local black people hate them so deeply that they burn their house trying to kill them. Antoinette’s little brother dies in the fire and this almost drives her mother mad. Then her mother is incarcerated by her stepfather. And Antoinette is sent to a convent. One year later, her stepfather arranges her to marry Rochester who is compete a stranger to her. She is cheated by them, and marries him not knowing the truth of the matter. After Rochester gets all her money, she follows the trail of her mother. Being imprisoned in Thornfield and being ill-treated for many years, she grasps the opportunity to revenge. After burning Thornfield, she jumps into the fire to ends her tragic life.

2.1 Gender Oppression of Females in Patriarchal Society

The word Patriarchy refers to despotic rule by the male householder or the sovereign in which power is principally held by adult men. It means men have absolute authority and leadership and they can control the fate of women who are concerned to be inferior to men.

In patriarchal society, the male who own properties and titles rule the society. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Mr. Mason, an English white man, marries Antoinette’s mother Annette for her estate. After losing all the property, Annette depends on her husband completely. Insidious Mason incarcerates Annette in a house with the excuse that Annette is mad. He arbitrarily arranges Antoinette’s marriage with a completely strange English man called Rochester. He promises to offer Rochester 30000 pounds as Antoinette’s dowry. By these ways, he abandons his wife and stepdaughter Antoinette. He never cares about Antoinette’s opinions. This reveals that in patriarchal society, men absolutely rule women and oppress women with ethical and moral requirements and the rules they set, but they can do anything without punishment. In a typical patriarchal society, the younger sons in a family can not inherit properties. As the second son of his family, Rochester, who has no right to succeed to his family property, requires money to remain his status and fame. On the one hand, Rochester’s father prefers to give all property to his eldest son; on the other hand, concerning about the fame of his family, he doesn’t want Rochester to be a poor wretch. He knows that Antoinette has a large sum of money as her dowry. So he fraudulently arranges this marriage for Rochester. Though Rochester despises Antoinette, he has no choice but to marry Antoinette. Poor Antoinette falls into the scheme for money. Shortly after Rochester acquires Antoinette’s property, Antoinette starts to suffer from this loveless marriage. Rochester robs everything and leaves nothing to her. Now she is worthless to him. If she dares to show angry with his husband’s contempt and oppression, it will only cause more annoyance and disgust. Antoinette can’t stand her misfortune in marriage, but what she can do is bearing her husband’s insult and obeying him. Women can’t receive real independence without financial independence. Before they marry, their lives are completely controlled by the householder of their family. After they marry, they lose their inherited property and only concerned to be their husbands’ servants. Generally speaking, women are robbed of all their rights and being treated unequally by men. Antoinette’s marriage reflects a gender oppression of females in patriarchal society.

Rochester’s father is dishonest, deceitful and insatiably avaricious, he has a prejudice against Rochester and forsakes him. Humans always use strength and power to bully the weak. He doesn’t hesitate at all to exchange fame and fortune with his son’s permanent happiness. It is Rochester’s real father who deprives of all his happiness and rights, but Rochester revenges his innocent wife Antoinette to vent his hatred, dissatisfaction and anger to his father and the whole patriarchal society. It’s clear that how rude and unreasonable it is to connive men to control and enslave women in patriarchal society.

2.2 Colonialism and Racial Discrimination

Colonialism means stronger countries invade, capture and exploit weaker countries, territories and ethnics by military, economic or political measures. The stronger countries aim to make the weaker countries or territories their colonies and rob the weaker countries’ various resources to accumulate capitals. Then they become stronger and larger, the weaker ones become weaker and smaller till disappear. The colonial period is from the 16th to the mid-20th century. Collins English Dictionary describes colonialism as “the policy and practice of a power in extending control over weaker people or areas.” The 2006 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy“ uses the term ‘colonialism’ to describe the process of European settlement and political control over the rest of the world, including Americas, Australia, and parts of Africa and Asia.”In Roger Tignor’s preface to Jürgen Osterhammel’s Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview, he settles on a three-sentence definition: “Colonialism is a relationship between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonized people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonized population, the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule.It is a set of unequal relationships between the colonial power and the colony and often between the colonists and the indigenous people.”

Antoinette is born in a slave owner family in Jamaica which is an English colony from 1655 to 1855. At that hard time, people worships money only. Superiors and inferiors are determined by money and wealth. The English people establish their ruling position for their wealth and racial discrimination policies. As the slaves of the white, the black people’s living conditions are from bad to worse. They try to fight but fail. This leads to hostility and racist violence between the white and the black. The society is swaying in the midst of a raging storm. As a special group of Jamaica, the Creole are mixed-blood and so different from the white and the black. Because they are the European descendants of the slave-owners. They are not accepted by either of them and considered as the inferior and squeezed between them. In this novel, Antoinette’s family are white Creoles. Antoinette’s happy childhood in Coulibri ends with her real father’s death in a social riot. They are obliged to go through all trails in their life. Her family lives in utter poverty in that hard time just like a ship sails through the tough seas. They earn hard bread everyday. Rats leave a sinking ship, their friends and relatives keep away from them since then. They are Creole people and their ancestry were slave and plantation owners. Hate the tree, hate the branch. The black people hate slave and plantation owners, of course they hate them too. In a money-worshiped society, the white are all mammonites. Obviously, the white people have prejudice against their race and poverty. They are isolated and alienated and survive in the crevice.

Because of Antoinette’s race, her loveless marriage adds more pains to her. As a poor wretch, Rochester is eager to money. So though he regards Antoinette as a savage indigenous people, he marries her for money. “I can’t stop thinking that she once tried to escape from me. She once said ‘No, sorry, I don’t want to marry you.’Why she finally makes a concession? For Richard’s instigation or threats ? Or my fictive honey words, oaths and false display of affection? No matter what, thanks god that she compromise.” (Rhys, 1996: 51) Antoinette hopes to live a happy life with Rochester. During their honeymoon in the island, she tries to do everything that can please him. “‘Why do you hug and kiss Christophine?’sometimes I ask her. —‘Why not? Is there anything wrong?’she replies. —‘I would rather die than hug or kiss them. I can’t do it. ’Sometimes I say.” (Rhys, 1996: 52) Many things in life go by contraries. Her sincere heart and love can’t change Rochester’s discrimination against her race. To her surprise, Rochester cheats her only for money, she doesn’t get happiness that he promises to her when he proposes. She is actually the innocent victim in this tragic marriage while Rochester is the scheming cheater. Rochester begins to suspect and hate Antoinette after her step-brother stirs up trouble behind the scene. Though he suspects what Antoinette’s brother says, he doesn’t want to seek the truth, because he doesn’t love Antoinette and despises her. He prefers to believing others’ lies to degrade his wife. Antoinette is at her wits’ end: Rochester would not want to listen however she explains. Rochester refuses to listen and disdains her racial identity. Antoinette even seeks the black people’s witchcraft and aphrodisiac for help to restore their relationship. But he therefore firmly believes that the Creole and the black people are low and dirty. Only they English whites are noble and lofty. He suspects Antoinette to be a loose woman, actually, he has an affair with the black maid. It is he who betrays their marriage. He changes his negative emotions and prejudice into insult to harm Antoinette and asserts his superior authority in this way. Their races, positions, backgrounds, cultures, families and customs are so different, these factors adding the social environment in that colonial time destine that their marriage is a tragedy.

2.3Influences of Family Relationships

2.3.1Relationships between Antoinette and Her Two Fathers

From the novel, we get to know Antoinette’s real father --Mr.Cosway. He is a concupiscent, irresponsible and alcoholic man. However, he is not only the protector and provider of his family, but also the symbol of their social status. It is his death that causes his family’s misery. The absence of real father in the process of Antoinette’s growth makes her lose the only protection from her family and she is too weak to protect herself. “ If my father is still alive, he will never stand what you have done to me…You don’t have to come back here after he breaks with you…”(Rhys, 1996: 112) She believes her real father is the only people that can save her but he dies too early to protect his daughter. This absence also influences Antoinette’s establishment of sense of identity. And the lack of paternal love makes Antoinette yearn more for her mother’s love.

Antoinette’s mother marries Mason in order to improve their life. Mason is a money-grubber. He is arrogant and insatiably avaricious. He comes to Jamaica aiming to make a fortune. He marries Antoinette’s mother for nothing but her estate. Mason sends Antoinette to a convent after incarcerating her mother. He discriminates the black and the mixed-blood, so he prohibits Antoinette meeting her relatives. While it is just the black people he discriminated burn his home and destroy his family. Though he leaves Antoinette a large amount of money as her dowry, he never concerns with her happiness. He betrays his wife Annette and wants to cast his “ burden ” Antoinette.

2.3.2Relationship between Antoinette and Her Mother Annette

In the novel, we get to know Antpinette’s mother is a beauty, but she always looks extremely grieved and hurls reproaches on herself all day because of her family and her special race. They are Creole people but she alienates her daughter Antoinette because she reminds her of her race and difficult position. Like other children, Antoinette is very eager to be loved by her mother, but she never feels her mother’s love or care for her. In the novel, Antoinette says,“ Once I made excuse to be near her when she brushed her hair, a soft black cloak to cover me, hide me, keep me safe.” (Rhys, 1996: 5) It implies that she never feels to be accepted by others including by her real mother. What she craves for is not only her mother’s love but also a sense of belonging in fact. However, her mother only cares about her little mentally handicapped brother. One of the plot in the novel describes it like this,“I hated this frown and once I touched her forehead trying to smooth it. But she pushed me away, not roughly but calmly, coldly, without a word, as if she had decided once and for all that I was useless to her. She wanted to sit with Pierre or walk where she pleased without being pestered, she wanted peace and quiet. I was old enough to look after myself ”. (Rhys, 1996: 3) How does Antoinette feel when her real mother roughly pushes her away and thinks that she is “useless”. “My mother never asked where I had been or what I had done.” (Rhys, 1996: 6) Sadly, Antoinette can do nothing but turns to Christophine for the maternal love she needs. In the end, Annette is imprisoned by Mason and no one knows how she dies. Antoinette is left alone in the complicated and evil world as the only Creole in English whites and the blacks. What she feels is only loneliness and helplessness. From the beginning to the end, she has never got maternal love or protection from her mother.

In such a family, Antoinette never gets the sense of belonging, warmth, love or protection. As well as the social environment, her mother’s alienation and indifference to her and her real father’s early death make her more confused about her self-identity.

3. The Internal Factors of Antoinette’s Tragic Life

3.1 Weak Character

From the novel, we know Antoinette has a plenty of vulnerability. The most obvious and fatal one is her weak character. When facing serious problems in her life, she always uses self-deceiving excuses to fool herself and others or escape problems instead of facing them and solving them bravely. When Rochester has an affair with her black maid Amelie in her presence, she only stays in bed and is indulged in alcohol all day to bury her pains in her mind rather than resist to protect her identity. She would rather keep herself separate from others than defend and struggle for her family and herself. She wants someone to help her and save her life rather than fight and create her life by her own hands. “I’m scared, always scared. Please help me, Christophine…”(Rhys, 1996: 70) When Rochester proposes to her, she feels that he doesn’t love her and wants to refuse, and her mother advises her not to marry an strange English man. But with Rochester’s honey words, she is made to obediently do as she is told. She swallows his lies and is infatuated and indulged in vain hopes that Rochester will love and protect her and will give her happiness as he promises to her. When a series of problems appear in their marriage, she is always encouraged by Christophine to explain to Rochester face to face to make him understand her. But she persists that it’s too late to tell the truth. “ I have tried, but he doesn’t trust me. Everything is a futile effort. It’s too late.”(Rhys, 1996:70) She is always passive to everything though something may turn good if she tries to change. This silence proves fatal to her life because it makes more and more confusion, suspicion and mistrust between Rochester and her. And so gradually causes more problems in their marriage. They separate farther and farther gradually in their tragic marriage.

Antoinette’s weakness also includes her lack of the sense of security. What she needs are love and protection actually. Not getting parents’ love, she is psychologically dependent on Christophine. Suffering endless bullying and humiliation from others, she needs Christophine’s companion in misfortune. She needs Christophine to tell her that she is safe and heals her sadness all the time. At night, she feels scared in the dark and can’t fall into sleep unless she holds the stick in her arms.“I put a candle on the chair and wait for Christophine. Because I like to see her before sleeping. But she doesn’t come, and the candle burns out. The feeling of security and peace disappear immediately.”(Rhys, 1996: 15) The stick is seen as a amulet that can protect her after her real father’s death. It seems that she will lose her life if she loses the stick. In fact, she just needs someone or something to comfort her. Life has been so tough for her. She thinks that happiness is within sight but beyond reach and so it is a luxury to her. Rochester doesn’t know her gloomy life in the past and she never wants to tell him. It has left a life-long shadow and scars in her heart and inevitably caused her weak character and melancholy temperament.

3.2 Lack of Self-identity

From the novel, we know Antoinette pursuits her self-identity all her life. In her childhood, she wants to gain her identity as a black. But finally she realize that it’s impossible to make certain of her black identity because of her family background. So she tends to be a white by marrying a pure English man Rochester. She dreams to go to England with Rochester, and she dreams that they will live happily there. She loves Rochester and long for the happy days to come so much that she does anything that can please her husband. She never knows how hard this thing is until she has done it herself. Her deep love fails to change Rochester’s discrimination to her and the whole Creole people. The outcomes run counter to her purposes all the time. She is just a weak-minded woman. Finally she gives up resistance and struggle because of her weakness and frailty. She suffers so much torture and pains only to find it’s impossible to integrate into the white or the black groups. She belongs to nowhere and finds no place to shelter herself. It’s just the morass of all the Creole people.

4. Conclusion

Wide Sargasso Sea portrays Antpinette’s tragic life and describes the disastrous history of the Creole people at that time. It reveals that it is impossible for the Creole people and other marginalized people to live well under colonialism. They can’t escape their tragic life as the colonized people. And it’s inevitable for them to disappear from the world. It tells people that in order to maintain the ethnic diversity of the world and make a more harmony and better world for human to live, more attention should be paid to ethic groups. In patriarchal society, females live under the complete control of males. They lose their basic rights and freedom. It only causes more and more social problems. Feminine problems have been noticed and pondered these years. Today, in the 21^st century, more modern females realize that they should struggle for their rights and equal positions. It’s a big step forward in human’s history. people should continue devoting themselves to protecting and helping the ethic groups and other marginalized people and remaining committed to solve the feminine problems in the world.

Works Cited

[1] Alvarez, Alfred. Jean Rhys. England: Penguin Books, 1974.

[2] A.V, Dicey. Lectures on the Relation Between Law and Public Opinion in England During the Nineteenth Century. London: Macmillan, 1905.

[3] Boehmer, Elleke. Colonial and Postcolonial Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

[4] Howells, Coral Ann .Jean Rhys. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991.

[5] Nettleford, Rex. Caribbean Culture Identity. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979.

[6] Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. London: W·W·Norton amp; Company, 1999.

[7] Richard, Davis. Assimilating Identities. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990.

[8] Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage, 1993.

[9] Spivak, Gayatri Chakravort. Three Woman’s Text and A Critique of Imperialism. 1985.

[10] 简·里斯.《藻海无边》.陈良廷 刘文澜，译.上海:上海译文出版社，1996

[11] 卢睿蓉.《﹤藻海无边﹥的象征解读》.名作赏析，05（2005）：64-68

[12] 王岳川.《拉康与后殖民女性主义》.北京：北京大学出版社，2005

[13] 夏洛特·勃朗特.《简·爱》黄源深,译.上海：上海译文出版社，1996

[14] 西蒙娜·德·波伏娃.《第二性》陶铁柱,译.北京：中国书籍出版社，1998

[15] 姚君伟.《男权大厦里的怨恨者和反击者》.当代外国文学03（1995）:107

[16] 张峰.《属下的声音——﹤藻海无边﹥中的后殖民抵抗话语》.当代外国文学，04（2009）：125-132

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