P-205 Assignment

 P-205 Assignment

New Historicism

Name- Kishan Jadav

Paper- Cultural Studies

Roll no-10

Enrollment no-3069206420200008

Email id- jadavkishan55555@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-III)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Introduction :

New Historicism is all about paying close attention to the historical context of the literary works. After all , play, poems, novels in general are products of a specific time and place. New Historicism is an approach to literary criticism and literary theory based on the premise that a literary work should be considered a product of time , place and historical circumstances of its composition rather than as an isolated work of art or text. New historians aim simultaneously to understand the work through its historical context and to understand culture as well as to history and cultural history through literature.

What is New Historicism?  

“A method based on the parallel reading of literary and non-literary texts, usually of the same time period.” New Historicism is a school of literary theory which combines critical theory into easier forms of practice for academic literary theorists of the 1990s. New historicists ask, 'How has the event been interpreted?' and 'What do the interpretations tell us about the interpreters?’. So New Historicism resists the notion that "...history is a series of events that have a linear, causal relationship: event A caused event B; event B caused event C; and so on(Tyson). New Historicist are Stephen Greenblatt, J.W. Lever, Jonathan Dollimore, H.Aram Veeser.

New Historicism is a literary theory based on the idea that literature should be studied and intrepreted within the context of both the history of the author and the history of the critic. Based on the literary criticism of Stephen Greenblatt and influenced by the philosophy of Michel Foucault, New Historicism acknowledges not only that a work of literature is influenced by its author's times and circumstances, but that the critic's response to that work is also influenced by his environment, beliefs, and prejudices.

A New Historicist looks at literature in a wider historical context, examining both how the writer's times affected the work and how the work reflects the writer's times, in turn recognizing that current cultural contexts color that critic's conclusions

Stephen Greenblatt :

Stephen Greenblatt first developed his work in 1980. Afterwards it goes on spreading during the same decade. He wrote in his book “Will of the World”, Context is replaced by “co-text”, that is an interrelated non- literary text from the same time period.

Michel Foucault & New Historicism :

New Historicism is always anti-establishment, on the side of liberal ideas and personal freedoms. Believe in Michel Foucault’s idea of an all-seeing—panoptic— surveillance State. The panoptic state brings power through rational practices, circulating ideology through the body-politic. The State is seen as a monolithic structure and change is nearly impossible.

What new historicists do 

1. They juxtapose literary and non-literary texts, reading the former in the light of the latter. 

2. They try thereby to 'defamiliarize' the canonical literary text, detaching it from the accumulated weight of previous literary scholarship and seeing it as if new. 

3. They focus attention (within both text and co-text) on issues of State power and how it is maintained, on patriarchal structures and their perpetuation, and on the process of colonisation, with its accompanying 'mind-set'. 

4. They make use, in doing so, of aspects of the post-structuralist outlook, especially Derrida's notion that every facet of reality is textualised, and Foucault's idea of social structures as determined by dominant 'discursive practices'.

Example: Re-reading of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (Laputa), Andrew Marvel’s To his Coy Mistress. 

Second they want to study how a work of literary work comments on and relates to its context. New historicism is a super influential theoretical school. The fact of the matter is that the new historicist transformed the way that literary criticism was done. They made it legit for literary critics to talk about politics ,class and power and to take an interdisciplinary approach to study of literature. New historicist aim to do two things: first they want to study how a work of literature reflects its sociocultural context.

Self –fashioning :

Self fashioning is a term coined by Greenblatt. Who made it up to described the way that renaissance authors like William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlow created identities for themselves according to the social ,cultural and political code of their time Early new historicist like Stephen green and Catherine Gallaher were inspired by three theorist : Michel Foucault ,Clifford Geertz and Raymond William.

Cultural as a text :

 Cultural is like a book New historicists think of culture as text and literary text are little text within this big text that is culture .Everything is text. 

Non Canonical :

New historicist like to study non canonical work alongside canonical work saying That distinction between “high” literature and “low” literature is just plain…useless.

Cultural Poetics :

Stephen Green blatt ,prefers to use “cultural poetics” to describe , instead of “new historicism "but it pretty much means the same thing, except instead of emphasizing that it is a new way to look for the historical sides of text. 

Representation :

The new historicist’s job is to see how literary representations reflect aspects of the social life of their time and also how they comment on or critique them.

History :

According to the new historicism history isn't just a list of facts that we compile. There are many different versions of history so many different ways to show up in art or literature. 

Materialism :

The new historicists take material conditions very seriously because they think that these conditions are really important in how literary works are produced and consumed by the audience .They described history and culture as material.

New Historicism & Shakespeare :

:

Shakespeare’s play “Merchant of Venice” Question always raised... The play shows Shakespeare to be anti-Semitic? For example, when studying Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, one always comes to the question of whether the play shows Shakespeare to be anti-Semitic. The New Historicist recognizes that this isn't a simple yes-or-no answer that can be teased out by studying the text. This work must be judged in the context in which it was written; in turn, cultural history can be revealed by studying the work — especially, say New Historicists, by studying the use and dispersion of power and the marginalization of social classes within the work. Studying the history reveals more about the text; studying the text reveals more about the history.According to Historicists: Work must be judged in the context in which it was written. Studying the history reveals more about the text; studying the text reveals more about the history.

Advantages of New Historicism :

Written in a far more accessible way than post-structuralist theory. It presents its data and draws its conclusions in a less dense way. Material is often fascinating and distinctive. New territory(subject). Political edge is always sharp, avoids problems of straight Marxist criticism.

Difference between Old & New Historicism :

Old Historicism :

 Hierarchical A historical movement: creates a historical framework in which to place the text. “The word of the past replaces the world of the past.  

New Historicism :

Parallel Reading A historicist movement. Interested in history as represented and recorded in written documents—history as text. The aim is not to represent the past as it really was, but to present a new reality by re- situating it.

Foucault’s archeological concept of history as archive, informs yet another tendency of the New Historicists, in that they consider history as fictionalised and as a “co-text” while traditional historians consider history as facts and as the background to the text, which is the foreground. Foucault observes that history is characterised by gaps and fissures contemporary historicists highlight the discontinuities and conflicts of history, rather than write in a coherent manner. He does not, like traditional historians, write history as a unified, continuous story. 

Conclusion :

New Historicism, then, underscores the impermanence of literary criticism. Current literary criticism is affected by and reveals the beliefs of our times in the same way that literature reflects and is reflected by its own historical contexts. New Historicism acknowledges and embraces the idea that, as times change, so will our understanding of great literature.Thus New Historicism applies the poststructuralist idea that reality is constructed and multiple, and the Foucauldian idea of the role of power in creating knowledge.

Citation :

Hickling, Matt. "New Historicism". RG, 2018, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324707317_New_Historicism. Accessed 24 Oct 2021.

Pallardy, Richard. "Stephen Greenblatt". Encyclopedia Britannica, 3 Nov. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Stephen-Greenblatt. Accessed 24 October 2021.

P-204 Assignment

 P-204 Assignment

Queer theory

Name- Kishan Jadav

Paper- Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies

Roll no-10

Enrollment no-3069206420200008

Email id- jadavkishan55555@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-III)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

 

Introduction :

Queer theory is often used to designate the combined area of gay and lesbian studies, together with the theoretical and critical writings about all modes of variance—such as cross-dressing, bisexuality, and transsexuality— from society’s normative model of sexual identity, orientation, and activities.Queer theory is often used to designate the combined area of gay and lesbian studies, together with the theoretical and critical writings about all modes of variance—such as cross-dressing, bisexuality, and transsexuality— from society’s normative model of sexual identity, orientation, and activities.So you can say the, Queer theory is a term that emerged in the late 1980s for a body of criticism on issues of gender, sexuality, and subjectivity that came out of gay and lesbian scholarship in such fields as literary criticism, politics, sociology, and history. Queer theory rejects essentialism in favor of social construction; it breaks down binary oppositions such as “gay” or “straight”; while it follows those postmodernists who declared the death of the self, it simultaneously attempts to rehabilitate a subjectivity that allows for sexual and political agency. Some of the most significant authors associated with queer theory include Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, Michael Warner, and Wayne Koestenbaum."

      - From the Encyclopedia of Postmodernism, in Credo Reference

 The term “queer” was originally derogatory, used to stigmatize male and female same-sex love as deviant and unnatural; since the early 1990s, however, it has been adopted by gays and lesbians themselves as a noninvidious term to identify a way of life and an area for scholarly inquiry. See Teresa de Lauretis, Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities, 1991; and Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction, 1996. M. H. Abrams & Geoffrey Galt Harpham .

The basics of queer theory :

“Queer theory’s origins are in LGBT studies – which focus on sexuality and gender. It soon distanced itself from those approaches due to disagreements with the stable identities that LGBT studies suggest. Queer theory emphasizes the fluid and humanly performed nature of sexuality – or better, sexualities. It questions socially established norms and dualistic categories with a special focus on challenging sexual (heterosexual/homosexual), gender (male/female), class (rich/poor), racial (white/non-white) classifications. It goes beyond these so-called ‘binaries’ to contest general political (private/public) as well as international binary orders (democratic/ authoritarian). 

 -According to Markus Theil 

These are viewed as over-generalising theoretical constructs that produce an either/or mode of analysis that hides more than it clarifies and is unable to detect nuanced differences and contradictions. But queer theory also analyses and critiques societal and political norms in particular as they relate to the experience of sexuality and gender. These are not viewed as private affairs. Just as feminists perceive of gender as a socially constructed public and political affair, so queer theorists argue with regards to sexuality and gender expression.

Queer theory looks at:

• According to Pushpinder Kaur.
• The general construction of sexuality in discourses of medicine, law or religion. 
•  Popular representation of the gay or the lesbian.
•  The public understanding of alternate sexualities. 
•  The ‘hidden history’ of homosexual writing and representation. 
•  The institutional (religion, family, medicine, law) structures that undergird popular representations of homosexuality. 
• The link between sexuality-based oppression and other discriminatory forms such as patriarchy and racism. 
• The geography of sexuality, with specific reference to ghettoization of gays and homosexuals.

Queer theory perceives sexuality and gender as social constructs that shape the way sexual orientation and gender identity are displayed in public – and thereby often reduced to black-and-white issues that can be manipulated or distorted. With regard to more classical IR topics, it critically assesses the assumption that all societies find themselves at different points along a linear path of political and economic development or adhere to a universal set of norms. Hence it embraces ambiguity, failure and conflict as a counterpoint to a dominant progressive thinking evident in many foreign or development policies. As a scholarly undertaking, queer theory research constitutes of ‘any form of research positioned within conceptual frameworks that highlight the instability of taken-for-granted meanings and resulting power relations’ .

Connection between queer theory and cinema :

Cinema is a powerful medium to catalyze social change. Like other art forms cinema is both a part of social reality and also a medium of portraying it. Films have subtle influence on society’s way of thinking Cinema has undoubtedly contributed a lot to the queer movement in India. Sexual minority consists of all those people who fall under the categories of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgenders. 

Here some Examples :

1. Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga :

Rajkumar Rao and Sonam Kapoor play the lead in this one. As for the story, Rao falls in love with Kapoor who tells him about her sexual orientation and that she's in love with another girl. Rao, a struggling actor, then decides to help her unite with her love as she faces extreme opposition from her family and the society for her choice. The film is a light watch with multiple comic blasts and has an energising cast including Anil Kapoor. 

2. film Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan by Hitesh Kewalya.

This movie is about two gay person who love each other. After so long, finally Bollywood movies try to capture this kind of movie. The homosexual relationship between Aman and Kartik is very romantically portrayed with the kissing in the train to holding each other’s back no matter what. At times, people may try to assign the binaries of being feminine and masculine to any of the two. But again the stereotyping is kept at bay with both characters displaying both the traits in their action.

Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan: Milestone In Queer Cinema

In this movie we found one marriage scene and there at finally Tripathi family knows about their son’s homosexuality. Movie depicted the conflict well and how the family tries to stop them. 

 Homophobia :-

In this movie their is symbol of Kali Gobi which represent the term homophobia (dislike of or prejudice against gay people). 

ड्रीम गर्ल के बाद शुभ मंगल ज्यादा सावधान में लड़की नहीं लड़के संग इश्क करेंगे आयुष्मान खुराना, देखिए फिल्म का मजेदार टीजर 

 Kali Gobi is the homophobia that resides in people’s heart, and they think they are right in enforcing it on others. But in the end, it is a rotten vegetable, not safe to be eaten. It has to be burnt from our systems with acceptance. Nobody can control how and what others may feel, and it is no one’s business to control who should be loved by whom.

3. Sadak 

Third gender played a significant role in Hindi cinema. Films like ‘Tamanna’, ‘Shabnam Mausi’, ‘Daayra’, ‘Darmiyaan’,‘Welcome to Sajjanpur’ attempted to take a serious take on third gender. For the first time in the history of Hindi cinema, filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt casted actor Sadashiv Amrapurkar as ‘Maharani’, a eunuch who was the lead villain of the movie Sadak.The actor’s performance fetched him a Filmfare award but the role did little to improve the image of eunuchs in the society. The movie depicted her as an evil brothel owner who tortures and traffics young women. In a film where the trans character got so much screentime, there was a constant reiteration of the harmful myths associated with the trans community, ultimately creating a stereotype in Indian mainstream culture.

4. Dear Dad 

 The most recent example being Aravind Swami in the film Dear Dad, where he comes out as a homosexual in front of his son and how he explains his side of the story. For an actor who’s made a comeback to Bollywood after a decade, the choice to pick the role and essay it with sincerity, was a welcome surprise for audiences. Even if the film hasn’t succeeded on the whole, the fact that the actor, known for his ‘masculine charm’, not worrying about his image is itself a welcome gesture.

Conclusion :

The development of queer theory in IR suggests that more rigorous questions of the impact of LGBT issues in international politics have begun to be successfully answered. It highlights the valuable contribution to analysing IR through until now unrecognised perspectives on sexual and gender expression. Queer theory has also proven to be theoretically inclusive in ways that LGBT and feminist scholarship sometimes has not. A question that remains is whether queer theorists can recognise – and perhaps transcend – their own racial, class and Western-centric orientations. Such broadening would also make it easier to find common cause with other affected minorities – not least to move from a purely critical or deconstructive mode to a more transformative and productive one. Precisely because queer theory is able to transcend the focus on sexuality and gender through general analytical principles, it lends itself to interrogating a wide range of IR phenomena. In a time when IR is often accused of being parochial, queer theory is a necessary corrective to powerful myths and narratives of international orders.

Citation :

Bhattacharya, Ananya. "Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga Movie Review: Sonam Kapoor powers excellent lesbian love story." India Today 01 February 2019.

Chatterjee, Rituparna. "100 Years of Indian Cinema: Homosexuality in films." News 18 27 February 2013.

Das, Poulomi. "What Kapoor & Sons Teaches Bollywood About Coming Out of the Closet." Arre 18 March 2018.

Dhaliwal, Nirpal. "Dostana is a straight victory for gay comedy." The Guardian 3 December 2008.

J., Nupur. "Queer Voice Shines In “Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan”." Youth Ki Awaaz 3 May 2020.

Kaur, Pushpinder. "Gender, Sexuality and (Be) longing: The Representation of Queer (LGBT) in Hindi." Amity Journal of Media & Communication Studies (2017): 9.

Nadadhur, Srivathsan. "Films for an inclusive society." The Hindu 12 September 2016.

Thiel, Markus. "Introducing Queer Theory in International Relations." 7 January 2018.

Tickoo, Sakshi. "Bollywood films that portrayed the LGBTQIA+ community realistically." City Spider 03 June 2021. 

P-203 Assignment

  P-203 Assignment

Racism in Wide Sargasso Sea

Name- Kishan Jadav

Paper- The Postcolonial Studies

Roll no-10

Enrollment no-3069206420200008

Email id- jadavkishan55555@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-III)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Introductio :

The racism in Wide Sargasso Sea is used as a way of offering a partial explanation for Bertha's subsequent descent into madness. Bertha's madness can be attributed to a number of factors but racism is undoubtedly one of the most important. As a white Creole, Bertha isn't fully accepted by colonial white society nor by the indigenous Black population. This leads to a crisis of personal identity that almost certainly contributes to her subsequent decline into insanity. what is Racism?

What is Racism?

The dogma in which a certain race of people feel superiority from another race based solely on physical differences.Racism includes picking on people who are from a different country too. Racism is felt by lots of different groups.For example, Jewish people have been persecuted - this is called anti-SemitismThe UK is full of people who follow lots of different faiths and religions. Most of the time they all get along and people are free to live the way they want to.However, some groups are targeted because of their beliefs, and because of events that people blame them for - even if this is incorrect.For example, Islamophobia is when Muslims are the victims of attacks just because of their religion.

Racism is mainly thought of as a illogical doctrine in which not only values and physical appearance are discriminated and generalized but intelligence and culture as well. Racism has been part of every society since the beginning of agriculture, and maybe even before.

Science :-

Science hasnt worked much on really disproving the theories that racism has proposed. In some cases, science has even helped racist ideals, such as the case of physiognomy. One of the most frequently asked questions about racism is if certain races have a higher IQ level than others. Science has proven that in some cases this is true, but only because of education levels. For example, in a WW1 test given to draftees, known as the Alpha and Beta tests, African Americans from the cities scored higher than whites from rural areas.

 IQ scores :-

The IQ test, however, was not a viable measure. Tested many subjects that were important for white communities, but not important for blacks. Only test certain cultural settings.

The Bell Curve :-

Herrnstein and Murray. Shows different IQ levels from around the world. Racist book, lead to racist points of view in many Americans, because both authors were very important people in the United States.

Genes :-

Blacks have genes that are better suited for running. Better in sports. Genes can define that people from certain races are better than others from another race. can be most simply understood as someone behaving differently to another person based on the colour of their skin or culture. Some people are picked on because they look different or speak a different language. Some people wear certain styles of clothing because of their religion and may get bullied because of this.

Race and Gender issues in Wide Sargasso Sea :-

Wide Sargasso Sea is a novel written by Jean Rhys is a novel that is written with special purpose as to describe the earlier life of Bertha Mason of Jane Eyre, whose original name is Antoinette in the novel. It shows her life from the very beginning of her life, how she is married to Rochester and how her psyche gets worse and worse. The entire process is described here and the reasons responsible for that are also described at lengths. 

The title of the novel is very important. The Sargasso Sea is a large area where there is a huge attention of seaweeds (sea plants) in the North Atlantic Sea. Just like these weeds, the characters here also are tangled in the web of emotions and ideas- they seem to be drowning each other. Thus, the title of the novel is actually the showcase of what it actually is.

Race and Gender Issues :

Antoinette was a Creole girl and Rochester was an English white man. So there is clearly a difference between them in terms of race and gender as well. The novelist shows us that Antoinette is a weak character mainly because of her being female and black. Rhys finds herself caught up in two different cultures and is not sure about her own identity that she reflects in her heroine. Like Rhys, Antoinette is a sensitive and lonely young Creole girl whgrows up with neither her mother’s love nor her peers’ companionship. In a school as a young woman, Antoinette becomes increasingly lost in thought and isolated, showing the early signs of her inherited emotional vulnerability. Moreover, Antoinette’s passion contributes to her melancholy and implied madness. Her arranged marriage to an unsympathetic and controlling English gentleman worsen her condition and pushes her to fits of violence. Eventually her husband brings her to England and locks her in his attic, assigning a servant woman to watch over her. Fearful, Antoinette awakes from a vivid dream and sets out to burn down the house.

"She never blinks at all it seems to me. Long, sad, dark alien eyes. Creole of pure English descent she may be, but they are not English or European either” (40).

Rochester further ostracizes himself from Antoinette by pointing out the significant differences between their cultures. By describing Antoinette’s eyes as alien, Rochester reveals the discomfort he feels when he is around her. He notes that she might be descended from pure English blood but she will never be completely English. This quote highlights how internal racism can lead to further division within communities.

Antoinette as a miserable woman character :-

Rhys often wrote about women, in various stages of their lives, living hand to mouth in London or Paris. The women are always on the economic edge, needing money, receiving cash and clothes from men, drinking, sitting in cafes, and endlessly walking. The books are very spare, bare, unsentimental, and wonderful. Here, in this novel, no outside narration, no other point of view interrupts Jean’s vision, and Antoinette seems to offer a model of progress for all women. 

Antoinette’s story is intertwined with the cultural and familial history. Narration in Wide Sargasso Sea is divided between the Creole woman, Antoinette, and the English man, Rochester, but Rhys seems careful to include voices other than the two central narrators, which helps offer insight into the narrator’s often partiality vision.

Rhys’ unsure Self-Identity reflected in Antoinette :

Rhys here describes her heroine with the unsure identity as she also is suffering of. Once in an interview, the reporter asks the questions about her identity, the conversation was like following: Reporter, “Do you consider yourself a West Indian?” She hesitates and answers, “It was such a long time ago when I left.” Reporter, “So you don’t think of yourself as a West Indian writer? Again she nodded, but said nothing. The Reporter asks again, “What about English? Do you consider yourself as an English writer?”, “No! I’m not, I’m not! I’m not even English.” She shouts. Rhys finds herself caught up in two different cultures and is not sure about her own identity that she reflects in her heroine. Like Rhys, Antoinette is a sensitive and lonely young Creole girl who grows up with neither her mother’s love nor her peers’ companionship. In a school as a young woman, Antoinette becomes increasingly lost in thought and isolated, showing the early signs of her inherited emotional vulnerability. 

Rochester as a new type of Colonizer :

Rochester as a new type of Colonizer We all know that the British had colonized many countries and the Caribbean is one of them. But here the character of Rochester is shown as a different and new type of Colonizer who had colonized a Creole Antoinette. So, here we findvan oppressor who neither respects Creoles nor the black ones. Rochester's dominated identity is reflected in Antoinette’s capture and his domination over her.

By the end of Part 2 of the novel, where he is leaving Caribbean and going to England with Antoinette, he utters that : 

“ I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain….she had left me thirsty..”

These lines mean that he does not love the Caribbean people and their lifestyle and therefore he is willing to go to England and to satisfy the thirst that he had. 

Is Rochester responsible for Antoinette's Madness?

Many Critics believe that Antoinette’s husband Rochester is responsible for Antoinette's madness. Rochester is the nameless creator and, as a white man, his authority and freedom allow him to present identity to others . For instance, he decides to rename his wife, calling her Bertha in an attempt to distance her from her crazy mother, who full name was Antoinette.

He continues to fragment her identity, he creates the new name of Marionetta, a cruel joke that reflects Antoinette's doll-like flexibility. He ultimately refashions Antoinette into a wild madwoman and treats her as a ghost. By refusing his companion and her local traditions, he over- stressed his own English rule over the Caribbean land and citizens. Thus , it is clear that Rochester is the one who caused the madness of Antoinette.

Conclusion :

It is debated that Antoinette is insane prior to her marriage with Rochester and it is not Rochester who has caused the madness but here we would like to argu that even though Antoinette is a bit of a lost personality, she would not have became totally mad if her husband could have take a bit care of her. Thus, it is clear that Rochester is the one who caused the madness of Antoinette.

Citation :

Rhys, Jean, Wide Sargasso Sea, Deutsch Andre UK, Norton, US, 1966 

Rhys, Jean. 1969 Wide Sargasso Sea, Harmondsworth. Spivak, Gayatri 

Chakravorty. 1988

Racism in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, https://ijsi.in/pdf-viewer/?id=755.

The Spivak Reader. London: Routledge... 1985

 “Jean Rhys.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Rhys.

"Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism." Critical Inquiry, 12.1 24361. 

Jstor.Web.<http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1343469?uid-3739192&uid-2

129&ui

d=2&uid=70&uid-4&sid=21103404664593.SwieSwietlik, Malgorzata. 2005

P-202 Assignment

P-202 Assignment

Critical Analysis of  Treatment is given to the Untouchables in  “One Eyed” by Meena Kandasamy.

Name- Kishan Jadav

Paper- Indian English Literature-Post Independence

Roll no-10

Enrollment no-3069206420200008

Email id- jadavkishan55555@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-III)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Introduction :

“Dalit Literature is not a literary movement in ordinary sense of the term. It is, like Black literature, a product of an identity as well as constitutive of that identity” points out Shashi Bhushan Uphadhayay. In 1950s and 1960s, Dalit writing saw the emergence of literature with the publication of Sathe‟s “Fakira” and “Savala Mang” and Shankarrao Karat‟s “Manuskichi Huk” (The Cry of Humanity)and “Bara Balutedar”(The Twelve Balutedar). All these writers revolted against the old notions based on Manusmriti or the part of old Brahmin society. It was at its zenith during the time of Ambedkar but it declined and reached its anticlimax in 1970s. More dalit persons began to improve the situation of Dalit through their writings with great zeal after their higher studies abroad and their return to India. Their aim was not to bring the lowness of the dalit society but to highlight the real picture of the plight of the dalits.They brought a close and real imagery as obviously true in the case with Mulk Raj Anand‟s “Untouchable” and “Coolie”. Poems, short stories, novels and autobiographies written by Dalit writers provided useful insights on the question of Dalit identity. Dalit poetry is an effort to employ symbolic images based on the experience breaking many old poetic conventions of literature. They bring in historic references and myths from a dalit point of view.Dalit literatureThe primary motive of Dalit literature is the liberation of dalits. 

Though Dalit writers have had their hands in short stories, novels and drama, the richness lies in poetry with the crying theme of “new past, new future”. The first collection of dalit poems by dalits entitledv“Akar” was published in 1967. The most notable among dalit poets are Narayan Surve, J.V.Parvar, Nimbalkar, Arun Kamble, Prakash Jadhav etc., among men and Mina Gajbhiye, Hira Bhanshode, Jyoti Lanjewar, Mallika Amar Shiekh, Anuradha Gurav, Meena Kandasamy etc., among women. A dalit poem is unique in the sense that it builds its structural pattern out of Dalit sensibility. It is, thus a poetry of protest, voicing its opposition to all that is orthodox, traditional and conventional. Persecution, Love for India, Subversion of history and myth are the recurrent themes of Dalit poetry. Dalit poetry may be said to centre around man. Eleanor Zelliot expresses about the poems of women Dalit writers as “their voices are strong and varied, echoing other dalit themes but adding new images, new perspectives and new languages”.

Meena Kandasamy’s poem “One-Eyed”

Meena Kandasamy’s poem “One-Eyed” was published in Ms.  The poem talks about Dhanam, a little girl who feels very thirsty, touches the pot and drank a glass of water from the pot to quench her thirst with her “clumsy hand”. 

Key words: dalit literature, dalits, out-castes, under-privileged, indian society.

 The learned teacher in the school slapped on the  little  girl’s cheek especially for breaking the rules.  The  concept  of  untouchability is practised mainly against the lower caste as well as the lower section people.  They are the worst sufferers.  As they do not have the political and economic power to fight against the upper class people’s supremacy, they mutely accept subjugation.  They do not have the voice to express their  conditions  and  portray  themselves  before  the  world.  Even  the  inanimate  objects surrounding her feel the pitied condition of the girl:  

“the pot sees just another noisy child the glass sees an eager and clumsy hand the water sees a parched throat slaking thirst” (One-Eyed) 

 Even the pot, glass and water take pity upon the girl.  These inanimate objects feel for her and they allow themselves to quench her thirst.  In reality, the Dalits are not allowed mingle with the public and they are not allowed to touch vessels, or any other items used by the upper caste.  They  have to  use separate  vessels,  pots,  glasses,  etc.  Dhanam  in the  poem  is a submissive girl.  She does not even react to the upper class supremacy. But she sees a kind of world which is torn into two.  

The poet pathetically concludes the poem as:

“dhanam sees a world torn in half. her left eye, lid open but light slapped away, the price for a taste of that touchable water” (One-Eyed)  

Water is a natural resource and it never gulps but sacrifices itself to all creatures in the world.  But some human beings divide water for the upper caste and water for the lower caste.  It is  very nonsensical to think deeply about the classification and caste system which still prevails in some places.  Meena Kandasamy has concentrated on the pessimistic image of her land,  gives  an  insight  into  rural  India  and  mentions  the  atrocities  committed  on  the untouchables.  The children of the low castes were denied the right to drink water with the other; Dhanam was slapped severely when she drank.  What is the price for tasting that untouchable water?  It  is nothing but  a slap  and for  that particular  reason her one-eye  is damaged.  She sees the torn world but not a complete one.  In her eyes, the world seems to be partial one and it shows partiality to a particular group.   Meena Kandasamy reveals that the weight of social pressure operates to confirm in each case their extreme subordination despite whatever personal effort may be applied towards upward mobility on the  part of  the untouchables  or towards  autonomy on  the part  of the woman. In an interview with Sampsonia Way Magazine, Meena Kandasamy remarks, “My poetry is naked, my poetry is in tears, my poetry screams in anger, my poetry writhes in pain. My poetry smells of blood, my poetry salutes sacrifice. My poetry speaks like my people; my poetry speaks for my people.

Conclusion :

Meena Kandasamy voices for the unvoiced especially for the Dalits. Human beings are 

born equal in dignity and rights. But basic rights such as right to live, right to protest, right to 

express oneself, right to live safely from violence and torture, etc are being denied to the 

marginalized communities. They continue to endure the evils of bonded labour system with 

their poverty and literacy. The Government of India plans and introduces welfare schemes in 

paper but could not uproot it completely in effective practice. The benefits of the schemes are 

pocketed by the politicians and bureaucrats. The concepts of equality, fraternity, liberty, and 

democracy in Indian context seem to be illusory for these unfortunate layers of the society. 

Even the inanimate objects have life and see this world as one, but the treatment of the Dalits 

are dissimilar.

Citation :

Gupta, Deepak. "Maharashtra Water Crisis: Dalit Man Digs A Well In 40 Days After His Wife Humiliated For Water". India News, Breaking News | India.Com, 2021, https://www.india.com/news/india/maharashtra-water-crisis-dalit-man-digs-a-well-in-40-days-after-his-wife-humiliated-for-water-1168309/.

Kandasamy.Co.Uk, 2021, https://www.kandasamy.co.uk/about.

Languageinindia.Com, 2021, http://languageinindia.com/sep2019/mkuliterature2019/rathi.pdf.

Paper- 201 Assignment

 Paper- 201 Assignment

Karana ,The Subltern character

Name-Kishan Jadav

Paper- Indian English Literature-Pre Independence

Roll no-10

Enrollment no-3069206420200008

Email id- jadavkishan55555@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-III)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

 

Introduction :

The word ‘Subaltern’ stands for ‘of inferior rank’ or status. Subordinate, hence, of rank, power, authority and action. In other words, it refers to the subordination of class, caste, gender, race, language and culture. It also indicates to those groups in society who are subject to the domination of the ruling classes.In general, subaltern classes include peasants, workers and other groups who have been denied access to ‘hegemonic’ power. The terms subaltern and subaltern studies entered the vocabulary of post-colonial studies through the works of the Subaltern Studies Group of historians.

Concept of Subaltern :

Subaltern means Someone with a low ranking in a social, political and other hierarchy or it can also mean someone who has been Marginalised. “Basically it is a technical term Based on deconstruction. Depict through the cast, race, class, age etc..“Subaltern cannot speak” Postcolonialism is the study of the after effects of colonialism and imperialism.” The major conflict is about whether the nation’s have actually come out of the colonial influence or not.

Emergence theory of Subaltern Antonio Gramsci :

Italian Marxist, best known for his elaboration of the concept of 'hegemony'. A founder of the Italian communist party (in 1921), he was imprisoned by the Fascists in 1926, and spent the remainder of his life under arrest. While in prison, and despite poor health, he continued to study and write. The Prison Notebooks (1929— 1935), published only after the fall of Fascism, represent the core of his considerable contribution to Marxist theory. (Edgar) subaltern, meaning “of inferior rank”, is a term adopted by Antonio Gramsci to refer to those working class people in Soviet Union who are subject to the hegemony of the ruling classes. Subaltern classes may include peasants, workers and other group denied access to hegemonic power.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak theory of Subaltern :

Emergence theory of Subaltern Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Born-1942) is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. She is a University Professor at Columbia University. She is the co- founder of Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. She is considered as one of the most influential postcolonial intellectuals.The concept of the “subaltern” gained increased prominence and currency with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s article Can the Subaltern Speak?(1985) According to Spivak, the subaltern cannot speak. She opines that the subaltern does not have a voice. It was a commentary on the work of the Subaltern Studies Group, questioning and exposing their patronizing attitude.

Spivak in her assay Can the subaltern speak? Writes…. The Subaltern cannot speak. There is no virtue in global laundry lists with woman a pious.Representation has not withered away. The female intellectual has a circumscribe task which she must not disown with a flourish.This is however not to say that physical act of speaking is impossible from within the subaltern position. Post Colonial literature persistently generated an enormous literature, especially by literary critics, feminists, art of critics, social reformists, political scientists and political economists.

Subaltern Studies :-

Subaltern Studies initiated its remarkable work in England from the end of 1970s, during discussions on subaltern themes among a small group of English and Indian historians led to a plan to launch a new journal in India. Oxford University Press in New Delhi agreed to publish three volumes of essays titled ‘Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society.’ From 1982 edited by Ranajit Guha.  The first and foremost leader of this literary movement was Ranajit Guha who had written on peasant uprisings in India. Much of the collective's early work dealt with the politics of peasants who had been involved in the mass movements that ultimately led to India's independence.  The member of the subaltern studies group were Shahid Amin, David Arnold, Partha Chatterjee, David Hardiman, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gyanendra Pandey.

Karan as subaltern :-

Originally he was known as a “Sutaputra” major character in the Hindu Epic. Like Ekalavya, Dronacharya denied to taught him Parshurama taught him but when he comes to know that he is not Brahmin At that time Parshurama curse to forgot everything because he was Kshatriya. It is said that whatever is not described in the Mahabharata does not exist, even the Ramayana and all the Puraanas are summarized in this epic. The greatest of all Puraanas, the Srimad Bhagavata Maha Puraana are present there in Mahabharata. There are so many characters in the great epic Mahabharata but Karna comes across as the most evocative one. One cannot but be awed by his towering personality and sheer strength of character, and at the same time help to identify oneself with the moments of frailty in his tragic life. It is the realistic mix of nuances that makes Karna such a credible and lifelike character. The intriguing story of a hero who despite being born to royalty was brought up lovingly by a lowly charioteer and his wife, his whole life was one great struggle against cruel destiny and all the odds placed in his way by the inequities of his time. In the process, he blazed a new trail glory, emerging as the greatest epitome of Purushakaara (Manly Effort), with tremendous achievements both as a man and also as a warrior... The more we research about the epic more convinced we became about Karna the unsung hero of Mahabharata who never gets his due. Most of us understand the Mahabharata as the story of a great war- revolving around the Pandavas, how they suffered at the hands of their cousins, and how they were protected at every stage by Shri Krishna. But we always ignore the fact that the eldest Pandava was Karna who could never got his due. How unfortunate and tragic it is that he actually had to be associated with the very enemies of the Pandavas and how he himself bore this burden and still continued to behave as an exemplary hero, committed to fulfilling his pledged duty. He will perhaps always be remembered more as a loyal friend of Duryodhana and less as the eldest Pandava or the eldest son of Kunti. The story of Karna begins with the misfortune of his secret birth and unfolds itself amidst the unremitting gloom of injustice and insult. At every stage in his life he had to endure immense hardships and yet never did he deter from the path of righteousness. But then, he gets no credit for his greatness, particularly when he was surrounded by evil on account of his friendship with Duryodhana and company. Born out of wedlock to Kunti and Surya, the Sun God, Karna is abandoned by his mother at birth, a self made-hero whose lot was to contend with the myriad unfortunate interventions of the fate against him.

            

        The intriguing story of a hero who despite being born to royalty was cast away by his mother brought up lovingly by a lowly charioteer and his wife, his whole life was one great struggle against cruel destiny and all the odds placed in his way by the inequities of his time. On the psychological front, the stigma of his perceived lineage never left him. It required Adhiratha his father, to quote him the equally tragic story of Ekalavya to bring him out of depression into which Guru Dronacharya’s rejection for his enrolment for higher studies had pushed him. His psyche again suffered a setback when he was debarred from the tournament on the basis of his lineage, despite being the best performer of the day. Another big shock came his way in the Swayamvara of Draupadi. The biggest ambition of any warrior is to display his powers in battle. But cruel fate even denied him that privilege when he was forced to sit out of the Kurukshetra war for the first ten days. He might have looked normal from the outside but his inner personality was surely impacted by these and many other tragedies. Rejected and insulted by society at every step, he developed some flaws engendered by a defiant spirit and nurtured by association with the devil designs of Duryodhana, his benefactor prince. But those very things seem to enhance and enliven the appeal of his character.

Conclusion :-

 At every stage in his life he had to endure immense hardships and yet, never did he deter from the path of righteousness. The various sacrifices he made were only one aspect of his towering, though complex personality. Sometimes it was hard to believe to what extent he could drive himself to adhere to his principles of not sending back anybody empty-handed from his presence. His commitment to his principles generosity was so strong that he knew that he was virtually giving away his own life to Indra in the shape of his armor and earrings despite having been warned beforehand by Surya-deva, his divine father. In another instance, he broke the sandalwood panels of his own palace for charity, when he could not otherwise procure the sandalwood demanded by an old Brahmin. Before him, all of the Kaurava, as well as Pandava princes, including Arjuna, had pleaded helplessness in meeting the Brahmin’s request because of the non-availability of sandalwood in Hastinapura. The commitment to his principles was so deeply embedded in his psyche that he could not breach the same even in the thick of battle and in his worst nightmares. Overall, all thismade him a unique personality with no parallel among his contemporaries. Therefore Karna can be considered undoubtedly as the unsung hero of the Mahabharata.

Citation :

Khangai, Ravi. (2020). Recasting the Epical Character; Karna, the Subaltern hero in Dinkar's 'Rashmirathi'. VI. 486-498.

MORRIS, ROSALIND C., editor. Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea. Columbia University Press, 2010, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/morr14384.

Prakash, Gyan. “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism.” The American Historical Review, vol. 99, no. 5, [Oxford University Press, American Historical Association], 1994, pp. 1475–90, https://doi.org/10.2307/2168385.

Wide Sargasso Sea thinking activity

 Comparison between Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea

I am Kishan Jadav and I am a student of Mk Bhavnagar University, department of English. We have a study of  "Wide Sargasso Sea". So, this thinking activity is based on that particular topic.Making comparisons between two texts is quite an interesting task for students. We have to see both the texts, their narrative, style, character, theme and lots of other things also. So now you understand today's topic. And it is about the comparison between "Jane Eyre" and "Wide Sargasso Sea". So let's start,

 Reference of Latta's blog.....

First see the brief introduction of Jane Eyre. "Jane Eyre" (originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography) is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë, published under the pen name "Currer Bell". 

The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. Jane Eyre is a Bildungsroman which follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr. Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall. 

Widely considered a classic, this novel gave new truthfulness to the Victorian novel with its realistic portrayal of the inner life of a woman, noting her struggles with her natural desires and social condition. 

Now see a brief introduction of "Wide Sargasso Sea". Wide Sargasso Sea, novel by Jean Rhys, published in 1966. A well-received work of fiction, it takes its theme and main character from the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. 

The book details the life of Antoinette Mason (known in Jane Eyre as Bertha), a West Indian who marries an unnamed man in Jamaica and returns with him to his home in England. Locked in a loveless marriage and settled in an inhospitable climate, Antoinette goes mad and is frequently violent. Her husband confines her to the attic of his house at Thornfield. Only he and Grace Poole, the attendant he has hired to care for her, know of Antoinette’s existence. The reader gradually learns that Antoinette’s unnamed husband is Mr. Rochester, later to become the beloved of Jane Eyre. 

Comparison between Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea..

We have basic information now. So let's compare both the novels. Wide Sargasso Sea is both a response and a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, set in the West Indies and imagining the lives of Bertha Mason and her family. Bidisha describes how Jean Rhys’s novel portrays the racial and sexual exploitation at the heart of western civilisation and literature. 

∆Intertextuality :-

Reference of a text which is mirrored and reflected in another text, is call intertextuality. So an author influences by a text and creates a new original work of literature by using another existing text. It puts two texts in an interdependent situation so in order to produce meaning, these two texts stand in relation to one another. Intertextuality becomes one of the central ideas of cultural postmodern and contemporary literature. 

Jean Rhys writes Wide Sargasso Sea as a prequel to a nineteen century classic, Charlotte Bronte's Jean Eyre, which has always been one of the greatest novels in English Literature and most popular love stories. Rhys extrapolates events that earlier occurs in Bronte's Jean Eyre. She uses the idea of intertextuality in her novel in order to tell an alternative story of a later novel although she comes from a very different background and presents her novel in a different century in contrast to Bronte. It can be better said that 

Wide Sargasso Sea is a hypertext of Jean Eyre. 

∆Characters :-

As we all know, 'Wide Sargasso Sea' is a prequel to Jane Eyre. So we connect both the main characters with each other. 

Jean Rhys' reinterpretation of Rochester’s and Bertha’s relationship is not at all times compatible with Brontë’s Jane Eyre. As soon as her narration adds depth to Bertha’s personality and transforms her into a human being with a background and feelings, the beast in the attic is no longer a tenable concept. Therefore, Wide Sargasso Sea achieves more than a mere filling in the blank of Bertha’s history. It makes a reader who is familiar with both novels, challenge Rochester’s personality, and inevitably Jane’s judgement as his admirer. Rhys' novel is not so much a prequel to Jane Eyre, as an alternative version of the story. It focuses on the profound differences between Rochester and his wife, who has lived a life so alien to him that communication between the two proves almost impossible. It questions whether Bertha (in this novel Antoinette) carries indeed the sole responsibility for Rochester’s unhappiness. Wide Sargasso Sea suggests that he himself and various external influences contributed to the disastrous ending of their marriage which would eventually drive Bertha into madness.  

∆Themes :-

Another thing that Rhys takes from Bronte's Jane Eyre and uses it in Wide Sargasso Sea is the idea of dream which is a prevalent theme in both novels and it foreshadows the future and reflects the suppressed desires and fears of the two heroines in these two works. 

Bronte in her novel Jane Eyre uses dreams to express the repressed material in the unconscious mind of Jean as well as foreshadowing a future that finds a way to consciousness. Rhys rewrites Jean Eyre in Wide Sargasso Sea by using its theme of dream and diffuses it in every line of her novel. The two characters who are also heroines in these novels see dreams which foreshadow their future, and their lost identities that both of them repress in their unconscious, finds its way to their consciousness in their dreams. 

In the novels Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, the theme of loss can be viewed as an umbrella that encompasses the absence of independence, society or community, love, and order in the lives of the two protagonists. They deal with their hardships in diverse ways. However, they both find ways to triumph over their losses and regain their independence. 

∆Subject Matter :-

Actually Jean Rhys composes Wide Sargasso Sea as a creative response to Jean Eyre by using one of the postmodern devices, intertextuality. Jean Rhys isn't satisfied with this tragic ending that happens to Bertha and she is not agreeing with the presentation of Bertha Mason, while reading Bronte's novel Jane Eyre. She decides to write a story of Bertha's life. 

So she takes the character of Mr. Rochester's first wife, Bertha Who has a secondary role and a minor character in Bronte's novel and makes her major character in her novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, while she creates a backstory for this major character named her Antoinette also she is sometimes called Bertha by other characters through the course of novel. 

Now this question comes to the reader's mind: how can one know that Antoinette and her husband in Wide Sargasso Sea are the same characters in Jane Eyre who are known as Bertha and Rochester? 

Through reading the novel Wide Sargasso Sea, it can be seen several times that Antoinette is called Bertha, without any pre-information about this name. So if the reader refers to Bronte's novel Jane Eyre, it can be seen that it has a character named Bertha who is imprisoned by her husband Rochester. 

Bronte starts her novel with Jane's life, from her childhood till her maturity, and it is better to say that she writes about the story of Jane. So Rhys takes one of the minor characters of Bronte's novel who named Bertha as the heroine of her novel and gives her another name Antoinette. She starts to write about her life in the form that Bronte did earlier in Jane Eyre, by starting from Antoinette's childhood until her growth to a woman. 

∆Women :-

The women in both novels endure a loss of personal freedom, both mental, and physical. Jane Eyre, in her blind infatuation with Mr. Rochester, allows her emotions to enslave her. She realizes her obsession when she states, 

"My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for his creature: of whom I had made an idol".

(Bronte 241)

By design, Rochester seduces Antoinette and deliberately makes her depend on him. 

Christophine, Antoinette’s servant, in a conversation with Rochester accusingly contends 

“you make love to her till she drunk with it, no rum could make her drunk like that, till she can’t do without it. It’s she can’t see the sun any more. Only you she see. But all you want is to break her up.”

(Rhys 153)

After becoming totally enslaved by her feelings for him, Rochester adds insult to injury by physically abusing Antoinette. Her complete and total love for Mr. Rochester, who is passionless and devoid of any empathy, causes her to lose her mind. 

Jane and Antoinette’s uninhibited desire to please those whom they love becomes detrimental to their peace of mind. Jane does everything she can to please St. John, her cousin, which ends with her completely paying no heed to her own thoughts and feelings.  

Jane similarly leaves Rochester when she finds out about his deceit. When Antoinette realizes Rochester does not love her, she scorns him. Although the two women are fundamentally different people, they face many similar challenges throughout their lives. Jane and Antoinette respond to each type of loss they experience differently, and these choices ultimately demonstrate Jane’s inner strength and Antoinette’s inherent vulnerability, resulting in two very different endings, one happy and the other tragic. 

∆Cultural Differences :- 

The title of Jean Rhys’s last novel is a powerful metaphor for the main problem its protagonists face. An oval shaped area of the North Atlantic, the Sargasso Sea lies between the Azores and the West Indies, 

“dividing and uniting Europe and the Caribbean”. 

(Sternlicht, 104) 

Wide Sargasso Sea clearly focuses on the dividing qualities of the waters and the disparity of its opposite shores. The manifold differences become more and more apparent in the run of Rochester’s and Antoinette’s relationship. 

∆Patriarchy and colonialism :- 

Charlotte Bronte’s famous Victorian novel, Jane Eyre, tells the story of a young plain governess who possesses intelligence, self-confidence, a will of her own, and moral righteousness. Bronte is consistently in her novel concerned with male and female equality, and love which created the pairing of these equals. In Jane Eyre, an apparently hopeless and horrible maniac character is locked in the attic by her husband Rochester. The character is Bertha Mason, Rochester’s West-Indian-born wife. Bertha in the novel is portrayed as an intrusion and a barrier to Jane’s marriage. On first reading, it seems that the character Bertha, so unsympathetically portrayed, is merely used to add to the dramatic tension of the novel. Some critics, however, such as Gilbert and Cubar see a deeper role for the character suggesting in The Madwoman in the Attic that Bertha characterized Jane’s ungoverned passion and rage. She is like the young Jane in the Red Room, early in the novel, locked in solitary confinement, and thus presenting a monstrous equivalent to Jane’s dark self. This is an interesting perspective from which one might view the character, Bertha. 

However, it is also possible to re-consider Bertha’s role from the fresh perspective of patriarchy and colonial society. Kucich says in Jane Eyre and Imperialism that “Jane Eyre represents British Colonialist issues more strikingly than most other 19th century domestic novels”. Every woman in a patriarchal society must meet and overcome oppression. Being not only a woman but also a West-Indian, that is a white Creole, Bertha experienced both women’s oppression and racial prejudice. 

Bertha Mason in the attic served as a warning to other rebelling women against the patriarchy social restraints. Her situation indicated that all women must accept the social restraints in Bronte’s Jane Eyre. However in more recent times, Jean Rhys, a white Creole herself, wrote the story Wide Sargasso Sea from the point of view of Bertha’s view. The story is in many ways a re-evaluation of Jane Eyre. Jean Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea to show how Bronte’s novel excluded the parallel plight of the Creole woman, Bertha Mason. Consequently, Jean Rhys gave a strong voice to Bertha Mason in the story. Bertha is not Bertha in Jane Eyre but Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea. She is no longer a horrible mad woman in the dark attic, instead, she is a very lively Creole girl with her own spirits, thoughts and love. 

Through her portrayal of the relationship between Rochester and Antoinette, Jean Rhys made the implications of patriarchy and colonialism much clearer in Wide Sargasso Sea. The story of Bertha Mason was reconstructed through a perspective of feminism. Wide Sargasso Sea broke the authority of patriarchy and colonialism. Rochester in Wide Sargasso Sea was a villain who was totally opposite to the revering image of Rochester Bronte had portrayed in Jane Eyre. Jennings stated that 

“Bertha is a victim of her husband’s and her society’s double standards as much as and more than Jane”. 

∆Gothic Elements :- 

Another thing which connects wide Sargasso Sea to Jean Eyre is the use of Gothic features. Rhys is inspired by Bronte and powerfully makes use of Gothic elements in her novel, which are prevalent in Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre was published in the middle of nineteen century, before the time of Jane Eyre, in the early nineteen century, Gothic novels were in fashion. So Bronte was influenced by Gothic novels while she was writing Jane Eyre and she uses Gothic Features in her novel. 

All these elements of Gothicism are used in Jane Eyre to create a sense of spooky, horror and psychological suspense in the reader's mind. Rhys, inspired by Bronte's novel, also wants to create this feeling of suspense and frightening in the reader, and she takes gothic elements from Jane Eyre and brings them to Wide Sargasso Sea. Not only Rhys echoes the elements of Gothicism but also she builds them up in her novel. The atmosphere of Wide Sargasso Sea is full of superstitious Caribbean beliefs of Christophine about obeah and magic which gives the reader an idea of the supernatural and this is shown in the novel when Antoinette wants a love potion from Christophine. 

∆Feminism and Postcolonialism :- 

In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys uses the Brontë novel as a pre-text for relocating and reinscribing, to use Bhabha’s terms, Antoinette/Bertha in a story of her own. The narrative is divided into three parts: the first, which covers Antoinette’s childhood and youth up to her marriage to Rochester, is told by the protagonist herself; in the second Rochester describes his arrival in the West Indies, his marriage and the disastrous relationship with Antoinette; the third and final part is again narrated by the protagonist, from her confinement on the third floor of Thornfield Hall. 

By giving voice to both Antoinette and Rochester, Rhys mobilizes two different and opposed subjectivities, thus enacting a dramatic conflict both on the level of male-female relations and on that between the colonizer and the colonized. But this conflict is not as clear-cut as it may at first appear. As Rochester himself remarks about his arranged marriage, 

“I have not bought her, she has bought me, or so she thinks” 

(RHYS, 1966: 59)

In the luxuriant ambience of the West Indies, where the narrative begins, both characters display an unsettling ambivalence. Even though Rochester upholds the masculinist and colonialist discourse of power and domination, as he has after all succeeded in marrying a beautiful rich heiress from the colonies, he is affected by the new and strangely complex environment in more ways than one. Developing a fever immediately after his arrival, the illness makes it even more difficult for him to understand the local social behavior, especially that of the former slaves. 

Antoinette is still more ambivalent, both in racial and in social terms. The daughter of a white father and a Creole mother, she is part of a decaying colonial aristocracy, now threatened by a black majority of freed slaves. The power scheme in West Indian society is, thus, more complex than the opposition colonizer/colonized would allow. As Graham Huggan remarks, Antoinette’s status as a Creole “is not only a mark of personal/social instability, but also a model for the destabilization of a set of binary constructs (white/black, insider/outsider, and so forth) which provides a spurious rationalization in Wide Sargasso Sea for the self-privileging practices of colonial power” 

(HUGGAN, 1994: 657). 

So we can say that both Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea represent the voice of women in any historical period of protesting patriarchy and oppression. No matter whether in the 19th century or in the 20th century, women continue their search for independence and equality with men. Bertha Mason is a typical representation of women as victims of both patriarchy and colonialism. 

Through rethinking Bertha Mason in these two novels, we can understand that there is not only one way to interpret one literary work. It is our ways of seeing and knowing literary work that make things different. Feminist criticism is a topical contemporary literature theory. However, it is also just one way to look at literature. As readers, we should learn to use a range of literature theory to look more deeply into literature works and learn to read critically.