Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea: An Ecocritical Reading

Ismailinejad, Zahra Sadat

doi:10.18052/www.scipress.com/ILSHS.49.146

ILSHS > ILSHS Volume 49 > Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea: An Ecocritical...

< Back to Volume

Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea: An Ecocritical Reading

Full Text PDF

Abstract:

The present paper seeks to analyze Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea in the light of the theory of ecocriticism. Ecocriticism focuses on the relationships of individuals with nature and how their interactions are portrayed in a literary work. Ecocritics consider nature as an active participant in literary works that possesses agency. Throughout history, religion and industrial developments affected nature and man’s relation to it. Religion put so much value on man that he ventured to destroy nature for his own good and industrialism estranged man from nature to the extent that now nature and culture or civilization are two different entities. Nature and wild life turn into the objects in the hand of modern culture and technology. Wide Sargasso Sea shows how agent of culture, Mr. Rochester exploits and dominates Antoinette as agent of nature since he lost his connection with nature as a native of an industrial country like England. As a woman she is more harmonious with nature as nature is her sole protector in this hostile environment and finally she united with it. As her true friend, nature sets her free and helps her to destroy patriarchy.

Info:

Periodical:

International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences (Volume 49)

Pages:

146-154

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18052/www.scipress.com/ILSHS.49.146

Citation:

Z. S. Ismailinejad, "Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea: An Ecocritical Reading", International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, Vol. 49, pp. 146-154, 2015

Online since:

March 2015

Authors:

Zahra Sadat Ismailinejad

Keywords:

Antoinette, Culture, Ecocriticism, Jean Rhys, Mr. Rochester, Nature, Wide Sargasso Sea

Export:

RIS, BibTeX, Text

Distribution:

Open Access

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

References:

Burrows, V. (2010). Whiteness and Trauma: The Mother-Daughter Knot in the Fiction of Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid, andToniMorrison. NewYork: PALGRAVE, MACMILLAN.

Chandra, N. D. R., & Das N. (2007) . Ecology, Myth, and Mystery: Contemporary PoetryIn English from Northeast India. Delhi: Sarup &Sons.

Francis, D. (2010). Fiction of Feminine Citizenship: Sexuality and the Nation in Contemporary Caribbean Literature. New York: PALGRAVE, MACMILLAN, (2010).

Garrard, G. (2004). Ecocriticism: The new critical idiom. New York: Routledge.

Glotfelty, C., & Fromm H. (1996). The ecocriticism reader: Landmarks in literary ecology. Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press.

Lasser, P. (2004). Colonial Strangers: Women Writing the End of British Empire. NewBrunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press.

Bersani, L. (2003) Pynchon, Paranoia, and literature. In H. Bloom (Ed. ). Thomas Pynchon: Bloom's Modern Critical Review (145). Philadelphia: Chelsea House.

Rigby, K. (2002) Ecocriticism. In J. Wolfreys (Ed. ). Introducing criticism at the 21 stcentury (105). Edinburg: Edinburgh University Press.

Rhys, J. (1985). The Letters of Jean Rhys. In F. Wyndham & D. Melly (Eds. ). London: Penguin.

(1982). Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: W.W. Norton& Company, Inc.

Sandilands, C. (1999). The Good-natured Feminist: Ecofeminism and the Quest for Democracy. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

Thieme, J. (2001). Postcolonial Con-Texts: Writing Back to the Canon. London& New York: Continuum. ( Received 24 February 2015; accepted 04 March 2015 ).

Show More Hide

Cited By:

This article has no citations.