IN WHAT WAYS DOES RHYS'WIDE SARGASSO SEA WRITE BACK TO BRONTE''S JANE EYRE WITHIN A POSTCOLONIAL FRAMEWORK?

In what ways does Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea write back to Bronte's Jane Eyre within a postcolonial framework?

In what ways does Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea write back to Bronte's Jane Eyre within a postcolonial framework?

Wide Sargasso Sea written by Jean Rhys shows a similarity of Jane Eyre written by Charlotte Brontë. There are a lot parallelisms in the Wide Sargasso Sea that shows that Jane Eyre was a direct source for its writing. The reason behind Rhys rewriting was to show the intimate voice of the madwoman that was in Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester's first wife.

Rhys explains in the letters to her friends the many ways in which she had tried to make it parallel to Brontë Jane Eyre. Rhys believed that the "madwoman" needed a voice. She believed that it was important for her to speak and make people understand how she became a "madwoman". "She's necessary to the plot ...she must be on stage. She must be plausible with a past, the reason why Mr. Rochester treats her so abominable and feels justified, the reason why he thinks she is mad and why of course she goes mad, even the reason why she tries to set everything on fire, and eventually succeeds"(Rhys 136). She writes to Francis Wyndham explaining the process in which she needs to take to make the book speak the truth about the Madwoman. Rhys makes a direct notation in one letter stating "This is to tell you something about the novel I am trying to write provisional title "The First Mrs. Rochester". I mean, of course, the madwoman in "Jane Eyre"' (Rhys 135). She battles for the title stating, "'The First Mrs. Rochester' is not right. Nor of course is 'Creole'" (136). Rhys explains the only way to write it was to get back to Creole ways and examine it from that prospective. Jane Eyre gave her the focus she needed to make sure that the madwoman was represented correctly and accurately. Rhys states "how to reconcile the two and fix dates I do not know - yet. But, I will"(143).

Even though she had a direct source for information, she found it very hard for the story to flow.

There are many examples of parallelism in Wide Sargasso Sea showing signs of Brontë Jane Eyre. It is these parallelism ...