evaluation of fragmentation and paranoia in jean rhys’s wide sargasso sea… open english and...

Canadian Open English and Literature Journal

Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2014, pp. 1- 20

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Research article

Evaluation of Fragmentation and Paranoia in Jean

Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea: A Postmodern Outlook

Eyvazi, Mojgan. Assistant professor, English Department, Payame Noor University. Tehran. Iran.

E-mail: [email protected]

Pourebrahim, Shirin. Assistant professor, English Department, Payame Noor University. Tehran. Iran.


Sahebazamni, Nasim. M.A. Student of English literature. Payame Noor University. Tehran. Iran.


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

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Abstract

This study tends to shed lights on two concepts of postmodernism, fragmentation and paranoia which are the two

most important characteristics of postmodernism in Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel was written in 1966 by Dominica

born British author Jean Rhys. This case study shows how postmodern concepts can be traced in a novel so that one

could interpret the novel in another way. Rhys very effectively uses fragmentation through temporal distortion,

characterization, the art of narration and structure in order to unify her non-linear narrative and open a way for

readers to see a whole picture of what the main characters are actually like. She also uses paranoid characters in her

novel and depicts that the result can be different if one can have different feelings toward the paranoiac behaviors in

the postmodern era. So Rhys by using these features in her novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, has paved the path to give it a

postmodern scrutiny.

Keywords: Fragmentation, Paranoia, Postmodernism, Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys

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Introduction

Postmodernism refers to a historical period that began in the 1940s, a style of literature, philosophy, art, and

architecture, or the situation of Western society in a late capitalist or post capitalist age. According to Abrams

The term postmodernism is often applied to the literature and art after Word War II (1939-45), when the

effects on Western morale of the first World War were greatly exacerbated by the experience of Nazi

totalitarianism and mass examination, the treat of total destruction by the atomic bomb, the progressive

devastation of the natural environment, and the ominous fact of over population. (203)

The phenomenon of postmodernism cannot be enunciated in purely temporal words. It somehow shackles most of

the obvious epistemological points in various scientific spots. In postmodernism, unlike modernism, we are not

dealing with any scientific rules, but it is the absolute incredulity toward metanarrative, which became popular

mostly after the Second World War. It postulates without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been

done. In postmodernism you cannot find any certainties in any section of the universe and everything has been

brought into question. The postmodernity tends towards elaboration, eclecticism, ornamentation and inclusiveness.

It dismisses the existence of an absolute reality and is deeply suspicious of the concept of human progress. Malpas

said that: “Postmodernity is a social formation that takes root in the last years of the nineteen century, puts forth its

first shoot amid the social, economic and military conflicts that scarred the first half of the twentieth, and comes into

its own about the middle of that century as it replaces the modern as the dominant form of cultural and social

organization” (34). Postmodernism is "post" because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks

the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for

everybody, a characteristic of the so-called "modern" mind. The paradox of the postmodern position is that, in

placing all principles under the scrutiny of its skepticism, it must realize that even its own principles are not beyond

questioning. McHale believes that it can not make the sense to define postmodernism by saying that modern means

pertaining to the present and postmodern means pertaining to the future. He continues that post is not means like

what it said in the dictionary; it is function as a kind of intensifier. He added that postmodernism doesn‟t means post

modern. Postmodernism follows from modernism rather than it follows after modernism, and it is so important to

know this that postmodern comes after modernist movement, and it does not come after present (5).





Farah Yeganeh remarks that postmodernism changes the people's way of life in the second of twentieth

century. It is a reaction to the widespread style of modernism. It can be said postmodernism is the abandonment of

modernism quest for artistic coherence in the fragmented world and an attack on Enlightenment values and truth

claims. She added that postmodernism is not a single style or school, but it is used for multitude of styles or schools.

It is come into being as a reaction to modernism. Following the devastation of fascism and World War II, many

intellectuals and artists in Europe became distrustful of modernism. Postmodernism is more fragmented,

decentralized and impermanent than modernism. Postmodernist authors and also designers have revived styles of old

art movements, so by this fact, they introduced mixed up forms and figurative ornaments that brought complexity in

their works. Postmodern art unlike modernist art which emphasized individual expression, stresses collective and

shared expression through cooperative and a mixture of borrowed styles (675-76). So, the term postmodern literature

is a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature and relying heavily on fragmentation,

temporal distortion, paranoia, intertextuality, irony, playfulness, blackhumour paradox, allusions and references,

technoculture and hyperreality, fabulation, metafiction, magic realism, intertextuality, pastiche and parody.

Discussion

This study tends to shed lights on two concepts of postmodernism, fragmentation and paranoia in Wide Sargasso

Sea, a novel was written in 1966 by Dominica born British author Jean Rhys. She was born Ella Gwendolen Rees

Williams, on August 24, 1890, in Rseau Windward Isle of Dominica, one of the former English colonies in the

Caribbean. She would become known throughout the literary world as Jean Rhys. Her father William Potts Rees

Williams was a Welsh-born doctor while her mother Minna Lockart was a native white West Indian. As a white girl

in a black community, perhaps most notably she felt intellectually and socially isolated (Pizzichini 7-8). According

to Pizzichini she becomes popular nearly at the end of her life after the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea which was

awarded the W.H. Smith literary prize of ₤1000 and a bursury on December and this leads her toward many

interviews (290). The story of Wide Sargasso Sea is about Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole heiress, from the time

of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage to an unnamed Englishman (he is not named by the author)

who soon renames her, declares her mad and then requires her to relocate to England. She is caught in an oppressive

patriarchal society where she belongs neither to the white Europeans nor the black Jamaicans.

1. The Use of Fragmentation in Wide Sargasso Sea





Fragmentation is an important aspect of postmodern literature. In postmodern works fragmentation signifies the

breaking rather than building up of information, to form a structure that would convey a hidden message rather than

the obvious message to its audience. Hutcheon remarks the term postmodernism describe a literary movement which

charachterized by “discontinuity, disruption, dislocation, decentring, indeterminacy, and antitotalization”

(3).Throughout the entire work various elements, concerning plot, characters, themes, imagery and factual

references are fragmented and dispersed .In general, there is an interrupted sequence of events, character

development and action in the work. In order to talk about fragmentation, when John Hawkes began to write,

assumes that “the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme” ( qtd in Sim 126). Sim says that:

Certainly many subsequent authors have done their best to sledgehammer these four literary cornerstones

into oblivion. Either plot is pounded into small slabs of event and circumstance, characters disintegrate into

a bundle of twitching desires, settings are little more than transitory backdrops, or themes become so

attenuated that it is often comically inaccurate to say that certain novels are 'about' such-and-such. (126)

He also continues that the postmodernist writer prefers to deal with the other ways of structuring narratives

as opposes the traditional stories that are associated with the completion and wholeness (127).So the writer uses

fragmentation in his novel to prove this, by breaking up the text into short fragments or sections, separated by space,

titles, numbers or symbols and also by uses of nonlinear timeline. Fragmentation also can occur in language,

sentence structure or grammar.

In the novel Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys very effectively uses postmodernism fragmentation through

temporal distortion, characterization, the art of narration and structure in order to unify her non-linear narrative. It

can be truly present the fact that “Jean Rhys‟s novels present an intriguing case study for thinking about the statues

and meaning of fragmentation” (Linett 437). Indeed, Wide Sargasso Sea narrative relies upon dream-like visions,

fragmented impressions, incomplete sentences, and multiple first-person voices to create an unsettling overall sense

of disorientation in the reader.

Wide Sargasso Sea has an unconventional structure. It is written in the trisect form. Instead of the usual

chapter divisions, it is arranged into three parts of unequal length. These parts are divided into sections, that

sometimes indicated by an asterisk. Jean Rhys didn't write in a logical and organized way. She seems to have written

in short and unconnected sections, on scraps of paper. It has several settings; Jamaica, the Windward Islands





(Dominica), and England during the 1830's. Rhys does not spend a lot of time describing any of these settings; she

just changes the tone of her writing accordingly. The three parts follow a chronological order from Antoinette's

childhood to her imprisonment at Thornfield Hall. However, within this broad chronological arrangement Jean Rhys

Breaking up the chronological order by using flashbacks, premonitions of the future and by restructuring time and

its significance, and also the ambiguous ending of Wide Sargasso Sea deliberately leaves open the question of what

happens to Antoinette.

In these three parts the narrator changes every now and then. It has two main first person narrators who give

their own point of view on the events of the story. Wide Sargasso Sea is told by different narrators: mainly

Antoinette, the un-named Antoinette‟s husband Rochester and Grace Poole, her guardian and nurse. Also, the voices

of other individuals and groups contribute to the narrative by Fragments of songs, dialogues and reported

speech.This shift in narrative voice, along with forward and backward movements through time and space, is quite

different from the linear narrative novel on which the characters are based. This mixture of competing and often

contradictory voices has meant that Wide Sargasso Sea has been called a many-voiced novel. Jean Rhys builds up

her story from these multiple fragmented perspectives and events. In the Parts narrated by Antoinette, Rhys uses the

device of fragmentation more than the second part. Through these fragmented memories of the narrator, the reader

confronted disjointed flow of interior thoughts and sense impressions. Rhys gives this feeling to the reader by using

the device of stream of consciousness to express the fragmented memories of main characters. She represents

intermixing child‟s cognition by memories of an older narrative through this kind of fragmentation. For example in

part one when an only friend of Antoinette, Tia betrays Antoinette by stealing her money and clothes and she has to

wear her friend‟s shabby clothes. From this memory she describes her mothers feeling about her and she expresses

her voice through the novel.

All that evening my mother didn‟t speak to me or look at me and I thought, „She is ashamed of me,

what Tia said is true.‟

I went to bed early and slept at once. I dreamed that I was walking in the forest. Not alone. Someone

who hated me was with me, out of sight. …I woke crying. The covering sheet was on the floor and my

mother was looking down at me.

„Did you have a nightmare?‟





„Yes, a bad dream.‟

She sighed and covered me up. „You were making such a noise. I must go to Pierre, you‟ve frightened

him.‟

I lay thinking, „I am safe. There is the corner of the bedroom door and the friendly furniture. There is

the tree of life in the garden and the wall green with moss. The barrier of the cliffs and the high

mountains. And the barrier of the sea. I am safe. I am safe from the strangers.‟(24)

Rhys's main character, Antoinette goes back and forth in her own life span, and also she pays random visits to

all events in between. Antoinette‟s life is presented as a series of episodes from past, present and also foreshadowing

future. This mirrors the structure of the novel which has a beginning, middle and end by so many fragmented events.

By these fragmented memories Antoinette is allowed to voice her own experience and so to restore the balance. The

novel channels its way against the traditional linear progression by jumping through time and space to highlight the

mysterious aspect of novel. Rhys uses the art of fragmentation to delineate the sublime, passionate and supernatural

elements of the novel and this make the narration so complicated. Such as Antoinette describes her miserable

situation and life, by sudden opening of the narrative after the night of the fire that the servants burn their house, she

wakes from a six-week long fever and finds herself in Spanish Town, under Aunt Cora‟s care. This narrative

suggests she has been in an empty and timeless confusion.

„I SAW MY PLAIT, tied with red ribbon, when I got up,‟ I said. „In the chest of drawers. I thought it

was a snake.‟

„Your hair had to be cut. You‟ve been very ill, my darling,‟ said Ant Cora. „But you are safe with me

now. We are all safe as I told you we would be. You must stay in bed though. Why are you wandering

about the room? …‟ (41)

Part one is narrated by Antoinette and takes place in Coulibri, Jamaica. In this part Antoinette remembers her

childhood and adolescence up to the moment when her marriage to Rochester is arranged by Mr. Mason. It begins

by Antoinette‟s vague and fragmentary memories, which focus on glimpses of tropical landscape with telling events

from her childhood after the death of her father, Alexander Cosway, descriptions of her mother, and examples of her

childhood isolation. Racial tensions and the disapproval of the white Jamaican ladies pervade these memories. Rhys

moves Antoinette rapidly, having her remember a mere fragment of his life by jumping over every important event

http://www.123helpme.com/search.asp?text=visits

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coulibri&action=edit&redlink=1





that happened in her life. By fragmenting Antoinette‟s life like this, Rhys is able to bring the events that comprise

his life closer together. Antoinette‟s starts to describe her memories by telling to the reader the fact that she and her

family do not fit the white people in Spanish town and she continue by remembering more events to approve this to

them. She refer to their servant‟s, Christophine, belief that, the Jamaican ladies do not approve of her mother,

because she comes from Martinique and too beautiful. Then she refers to another event about their neighbor, who

was the only friend of her mother, Annette, swim out to the sea and never return to them. This constant

fragmentation of Antoinette life serves, ironically, to unify Antoinette character for the reader.

THEY SAY WHEN TROUBLE comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in

their ranks. …

Another day I heard her talking to Mr. Luttrell our neighbor and her only friend. „Of course they have their

own misfortunes. Still waiting for this compensation the English promised when the Emancipation Act was

passed. Some will wait for a long time.‟

…One calm evening he shot his dog, swam out to sea and was gone for always. (15)

Although the language is quite simple, the people, situations and events are presented without explanation.

Obviously, Antoinette's story is as full of gaps, silences and secrets as others on these islands. There are gaps in

what she knows and understands but, importantly, there are gaps in what she chooses to disclose. Rhys uses the way

of showing gaps with fragmentation in people understanding in a postmodern era. However, the missing information

can be inferred through fragments of dialogue and gossip repeated and overheard by Antoinette‟s description of the

events of her childhood. Antoinette has very fragmented memory and information about her past and the people

around her. She was a lonely child and through the time when she grows up she feels lonelier in the society where

she leaves. For example she remembers one day, she finds her mother's horse lying dead under a tree. Godfrey, a

servant, confirms that the animal has been poisoned and after it, in the next paragraph she talks about the memory of

Pierre, her disabled younger brother that a doctor from Spanish Town comes to check on him. Just after this

paragraph she describes their garden as she says:

Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible – the tree of life grew there. But it had

gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell….

twice a year the octopus orchid flower – then not an inch of a tentacle showed. It was a bell-shaped





mass of white, mauve, deep purples, wonderful to sea. The scent was very sweet and strong. I never

went near it. (17)

So as the above example every paragraph in part one is about a single fragmented memory of Antoinette, which

happened in her childhood. Another example of this is when; Antoinette remembers feeling a very ominous

atmosphere at Coulibri and goes into her brother's room. As she watches him asleep, she muses on Mr. Mason's

plans to cure the little boy. In this section her thoughts move from Pierre's current happiness asleep, to thoughts of

the future, to his need to sleep, then the sound of the creaking bamboos. The pace of the storytelling slows at this

point and so provides a strong dramatic contrast to the violent events to come.

I went into Pierre‟s room which was next to mine, the last one in the house. The bamboos were outside

his window. You could almost touch them. He still had a crib and he slept more and more, nearly all

the time. He was o thin that I could lift him easily. Mr. Mason had promised to take him to England

later on, there he would be cured, made like other people. „And how will you like that‟ I thought, as I

kissed him. „How will you like being made exactly like other people?‟…It was then I heard the

bamboos creak again and a sound like whispering. (33)

In part two Jean Rhys also gives Rochester his own voice. His experiences and relationships offers directly

to the readers. By constructing Rochester through his own first person narration, Jean Rhys ensures that readers feel

closer to his experience and have more understanding. His narrative is full of fragmentation and stream of

consciousness. Rhys uses these fragmentations to represent the effects of emotional and cultural dislocation. For

example, Rochester's experience of the landscape around Granbois is marked on the one hand by rational

investigation through walking or reading and on the other by musing or reverie induced by the mingled effects of

climate, landscape and his feelings. “The road climbed upward. On one side the wall of green, on the other a steep

drop to ravine below…There was a soft warm wind blowing but I understood why the porter had called it a wild

place. Not only wild but menacing” (63). Or when Rochester is riding to Granbois, he composes a letter in his head.

In the letter, which he may never send, he makes his resentments against his family plain. “… Dear Father. The

thirty thousand pounds have been paid to me without question or condition. No provision made for her (that must be

seen to). I have a modest competence now. I will never be a disgrace to you or to my dear brother the son you





love…” (63). Yet, later in the same section, as he sits in his dressing-room alone he re-reads a letter he seems to

have actually written and composes a postscript.

Dear Father, we have arrived from Jamaica after an uncomfortable few days. This little estate in the

Windward Islands is part of the family property and Antoinette is much attached to it. She wishes to

get here as soon as possible. All is well and has gone according to your plans and wishes. I dealt of

course with Richard Mason. His Father died soon after I left for the West Indies as you probably know.

He is a good fellow, hospitable and friendly; he seemed to become attached to me and trusted me

completely…. (68-69)

The language of them is fragmented although the first is more fragmented the sentences shorter and the tone

aggrieved. In the written version the tone is neutral and the information at variance with Rochester‟s sense of

cultural displacement. Rochester himself concludes that the effect of the place and people leaves gaps in his memory

that he cannot account for.

Rochester's emotional and cultural confusions reach their climax in the last pages of part two. This is the

point in the novel at which Jean Rhys makes the most extensive use of stream of consciousness with fragmented

narration techniques. The purpose of this use of fragmented narration is to show Rochester's interior life. Jean Rhys

is particularly concerned to reveal the pressures on him as an English man in a position of dominance in this new

environment. These pressures, as she shows, damage him and prevent a full response to his experience.

Part three opens with a short section in italics told by a new narrator, Grace Poole. “ He inherited everything,

but he was a wealthy man before that. Some people are fortunate, they said, and there were hints about the woman

he brought back to England with him…” (159).This part is shorter than the first two parts. Although the first two

parts are narrated by the first person narrator, this part is not exactly a first person narration. It avoids any sense of

an overseeing third person narrator by consisting of direct speech from Grace and then an account of her thoughts.

After Grace's narrative the type reverts from italic to roman and another voice is heard, Antoinette's. Her first person

narration in this section represent by fragmented thoughts, fragmentation narrative and employs stream of

consciousness via an interior monologue, the flow of perceptions, thoughts and memories in her head at this time.

Fragmented characters also can be seen in Wide Sargasso Sea. Beside the three main narratives for

overcoming the limitations of first person narration, Jean Rhys makes use of a range of other techniques for allowing





other characters to give their point of view on the action of the novel, such as Antoinette's mother, Annette. Readers

have to construct her character and experiences from her speeches in dialogue reported by Antoinette and memories

of her mother as she describes her in the opening of the novel “She was my father‟s second wife, far too young for

him they thought, and, worse still, a Martinique girl.” (15), from information given to Rochester by Daniel Cosway,

… When Madam his wife die the reprobate marry again quik, to a young girl from Martinique – it’s too

much for him. … This young Mrs Cosway is worthless and spoilt, she can’t lift a hand for herself and soon

the madness that is in her, and in all these white Creols, come out. … She marry again to the rich

Englishman Mr Mason, … The madness gets worse and she has to be shut away for she try to kill her

husband – madness not being all either.(87-88)

and also from Gossips and the comments of servants or other members of the family reported by Antoinette. For

example in Annette and Mr Mason‟s wedding with Antoinette hears guests gossiping about her mother . “ …Why

should he marray a widow without a penny to her name and Coulibry a wreck of a place? … the other one said, „ but

Annette is such a pretty woman. And what a dancer. Remind me of that song “ light as cotton blossom on something

breeze”, or is it air? I forgot‟ ” (26).

So the picture of Annette for readers is a fragmentary one and drawn from contradictory sources. Like

Annette, Christophine's character is also fragmented. Her character is introduced to the reader by gossips and

fragments of dialogue retold by Antoinette. Antoinette retold the memory of her past that one day she asks her

mother about Christophine: “So I asked about Christophine. Was she very old? Had she always been with us?

„She was your father‟s wedding present to me – one of his presents. He thought I would be pleased with a

Martinique girl. I don‟t know how old she was when they brought her to Jamaica, quite young. I don‟t know how

old she is now…‟ ” (19).

Rhys uses time fragmentation in order to make readers imagine the life of people in the postmodern through

reading the novel it conveys that she often switches tenses within her narrative. She overlaps past present and future

and this creates a certain timeless vision within the novel. The novel jumps from one period of time to the next, from

one encounter to another; it offers glimpses into the lives of the characters. By going back and forth in Antoinette‟s

life, tenses also changes accordingly in timeline and this shifting time from present to past making Antoinette‟s





character seem disembodied, so the reader is able to see a whole picture of what the main characters are actually

like.

Rhys also uses fragmentation of time to keep the past life of Antoinette fresh in the reader's mind. Due to the

fragmentation of time wide Sargasso Sea covers uses all tenses; past, present and future through the three parts. This

view of all time existing allow the reader to know about every important events in the life of an out casted person in

a postmodern world. In the first part when Antoinette goes back to her past the reader goes with him. The reader is

able to get a first hand account of her childhood memories and events and at the same time to gain a distance from it.

Rhys gives the reader the memories of both main characters (Antoinette and her husband). The reader is able to live

through Antoinette‟s childhood and also her life in the present and her marriage from her husband‟s point of view.

The fragmentation of Antoinette‟s life in her childhood, her marriage and also the fragmentation of Rochester

memories of their marriage enables the intellectual response and unification of emotional of the reader. The reader is

able to return again and again to Antoinette„s childhood, by having the story of her read as a series of fragmented

episodes. The savage act of people and brutality that occurs to and around Antoinette is not allowed to be buried in

the past. For example the people around Antoinette call him “white cockroach” even after her marriage their servant

Amelie calls her as this. This leads back to one of the main reason why Rhys uses fragmented time in her novel.

Rhys gives the reader horrific details, but saves the actual account of situation until the reader is firmly entrenched

in the narrative. Rhys continues her fragmentation of time through the novel by having Antoinette steps out of time

with her dreams. In the novel Antoinette has three dreams that they are different manifestation of the same dream,

that they provide foresight into her future life. Her first dream takes place in her childhood, when her playmate Tia

cheats her by stealing her three pennies and clothes. “I dreamed that I was walking in the forest. Not alone. Someone

who hated me was with me, out of sight. I could hear heavy footsteps coming closer and though I struggled and

screamed, I could not move. I woke crying” (24). In the same way, through the novel Rhys takes the reader out of

any particular time frame and forces him to view the novel as a whole rather than pieces of events.

Wide Sargasso Sea consists of sections, each one of which contains a message. These clumps are not in any

particular order and are not read individually but simultaneously. Rhys breaks apart Antoinette‟s life and then pieces

it together again in sequential order so that the read will be able to view her life all at once rather than day by day. It

is important for the reader to see Antoinette's whole life so that there are no illusions of a happy ending. The reader





must read through the narrative knowing that the main character will suffer, torture and at the end she is locked up in

a room without coming up with any answers. In the postmodern fashion, Rhys does not give any solutions to the

problems that arise in the novel.

The use of fragmentation in Wide Sargasso Sea is something more than simply dividing the novel into sections.

Rhys uses fragmentation to illustrate the events that happen in Antoinette‟s life and also to clarify her character for

the reader. These elements interweave in order to give uniformity to the novel that, at first glance, seems to be

fragmented. All these fragmentations work to spread out to the novel and force it to be viewed as a whole.

2. Paranoid Characters in Wide Sargasso Sea

Paranoia is a prominent feature of society that has received a fair amount of attention in critical theory. It has been

regarded as a mental illness in the medical field. So what exactly does “paranoia” mean? What kind of mental illness

does it describe? In medical literature it commonly characterized by excessive distrust in a system or even distrust in

the self or others that it combined with the idea that always other people want to hurt them. They will interpret every

event a hostile action against themselves. Finally, paranoia is considered by the medical world to be a mental

disease.

When it comes to the field of literature, there are many scholars who defined paranoia that their definitions

are actually not all that different from those who explain paranoia in medical terms. Postmodern texts often reflect

paranoia by depicting an antagonism towards immobility and stasis. It is a belief that there's an ordering system

behind the chaos of the world. It is extremely dependent upon the subject, so paranoia often straddles the line

between delusion and brilliant insight. Paranoid thinking includes persecutory beliefs because the person believes

they are in danger or is threatened by something or someone. Postmodern literature reflects paranoid states in

various ways of which the followings are mentioned: being distrustful to fixity, being circumscribed to people,

places or identity, charging society of conspiracy against the people and multiplying the self-constructed plots to

prevent the scheming of others (Sim 130), and Carl Freedman in his essay “Towards a Theory of Paranoia” remarks:

The paranoiac is the most rigorous of metaphysicians. The typical paranoid outlook is thoroughgoing,

internally logical, never trivializing, and capable of explaining the multitude of observed phenomena

as aspects of a symmetrical and expressive totality. No particular of empirical reality is so contingent





or heterogeneous that the paranoiac cannot, by a straightforward process of point-for-point

correspondence, interpret its meaning within the framework of his or her own grand system. (16)

Thus in one condition paranoid person emphasizes on incorporating every happening into his or her own system of

beliefs. A paranoid person always looking for a connection between everything is subjected to an extensive

hermeneutic investigation and random occurrence or people‟s actions and himself. The paranoid person doesn‟t

accept that anything happens by chance or randomly. This trait calls hostility, which is one of the characteristic of

paranoia. Paranoid individual interprets all happening as a malicious action against himself. As John Farrell

mentions that, nothing is accidental for a paranoid person and for him the world just approves its intentional

deceptiveness and malice, it never shows its hostility openly. Affability makes him doubtful and suspicious; hostility

makes him sure about the truth of his delusions even if they fright him. (2) He also states:

He feels unappreciated, resisted, embattles, oppresses. It may be his livelihood that is threatened or his

life, the possession of a love object or the recognition of his genius. The enemies may be local, a

family member or a colleague; they may be chosen from among minority groups that are frequently the

targets of social resentment; they may be supernatural beings or creatures from another planet, or

earthly powers like states or multinational corporations.(2)

Paranoiac world is black and white, and the paranoid person always predisposes to see the world against him and

thus his world is rigid one and highly schematic, where everyone and everything has its own place. Such paranoia in

which an individual is entrapped in his or her vision of conspiracy of the unknown forces, system, society or

structures against him can be seen in Jean Rhys‟s postmodern novel, Wide Sargasso Sea. The major characters in

this novel are influence by their vision of conspiracy of the unknown, indefinite forces against them.

Antoinette is one of the paranoid characters in Wide Sargasso Sea. From the beginning of the novel when she

talks about her childhood Rhys shows the reader that Antoinette interprets all action against her. Rhys wants to show

that she has had paranoia since her childhood. In part one when Antoinette describes her childhood she mentions

that one day she followed by a young black girl who sings “ „White cockroach, go away, go away. Nobody want

you. Go away‟ ” (Rhys 20), this insult lodge in Antoinette‟s mind and reappear in her adult life. She says that “I

never looked at any strange negro” (20). This belief shows that she sees the people and also all society against her.

She becomes paranoid about being watched, tracked and also followed. Hostility grows in her heart as she become





older, and it makes her doubtful and suspicious against the individuals around her. She feels persecute and seeking

refuge in natures fold, curling up against the velvety moss wall of the family's garden and trying to disappear from

the cruel world of human beings.

The idea of hermeneutics lays at the base of paranoia which was already considered by Freud and Lacan, i.e.

Lacan‟s theory of the mirror stage in which an infant first establishes that it is an entity separate from the rest of the

world and starts defining the boundaries of itself, a process that can only happen through hermeneutics. The child

does not only apply it to him/herself in order to define the boundaries of the self, but it then also starts making

connections between different entities which is a paranoid action in essence. Obviously, the hermeneutic approach

leads to a subjective image not to an objective one, a personal interpretation, thus making it is a decisively paranoid

process. Lacan‟s symbolic order actually serves as another example of how paranoia and individual paranoids exists

in the society. So there is in this theory of the Symbolic Order a hint of paranoia since the conventions we have

created are sensed to be monitored and maintained by an entity that we can call it Other. The Symbolic Order is the

set of values and conventions that the researcher and readers as a society have agreed upon in order to make

communication possible and meaningful. Jerry Flieger in his essay “Postmodern Perspective: The Paranoid Eye”

explains: “ For the paranoid, events and causes are not what they seem to be to rational people; for, as Lacan points

out, "normal" people function by making a pact with the Symbolic order, the order which guarantees that

experienced reality is meaningful, caught in the intersubjective web of the Other” (90).

Antoinette‟s childhood fear and also hostility hunts her forest dream. Antoinette describes that in her

childhood one evening when she arrived at house, she surprised to find visitors, two young ladies and a gentleman,

that Christrophine told her they are relatives of Mr. Luttrell and their new neighbors, she also cause them trouble.

Antoinette does not have a good feeling about them. That night she sees a dream that shows her fear. Her paranoid

reaction shows itself through her forest dream. She does not accept that anything happens by chance. “I dreamed

that I was walking in the forest. Not alone. Someone who hated me was with me, out of sight. I could hear heavy

footsteps coming closer …” (Rhys 24). Her forest dream and the heavy footsteps that she hears behind herself

represent her paranoid characteristic that shows the approach of the big Other (new English colonials), who have

come to the islands to make their wealth and to reap the rewards from the old slave owners' misfortunes.





Antoinette is paranoid about being watched and followed. She always feels such eyes upon her. These

paranoid behaviors cause people around her viewing her as a ferocious lunatic. Even in her third dream she feels that

some one following and chasing her, also when Antoinette watches herself in horror, as she dreams that she looks at

herself in the mirror and sees not herself but a ghost. “That was the third time I had my dream, … it seemed to me

that someone was following me, someone was chasing me, laughing … I went to the hall again with the tall candle

in my hand. It was then that I saw her – the ghost” (168-169) Antoinette‟s Paranoid thinking includes persecutory

beliefs because she believes she is in danger or is threatened by something or someone.

Paranoia in Wide Sargasso Sea is linked intricately with madness. Antoinette, beside her paranoia, is a mad

girl. Madness is Antoinette‟s inheritance, according to her brother Daniel, her father was mad as was her mother,

Annette. Her inherent condition is aggravated as she feels displaced, rejected and outcast with no one to love her

even her husband, because of her upbringing and environment. It is significant that people specially woman like

Antoinette and also her mother are the most susceptible to paranoia and madness by living as a creole in such an

environment in postmodern era. As she become older, this condition exacerbate day by day. Her mother does not

pay attention to her even in Antoinette‟s childhood. After her mother‟s marriage, Antoinette‟s and her mother‟s

paranoid intense.

Their creole position is one thing that aggravates their paranoid. Sim remarks that a panic of identity happens

when the outside power imprisons an individual. In paranoia situation the protagonist of postmodern novel in certain

circumstances suspect with some justification that she or he is trapped at the center of an intrigue (130). When

Antoinette and her family stay in Coulibri Antoinette is feeling unsettled and apprehensive about people and

servants there, her mother Annette, feels hated at the Estate and pleads with her husband to move. Her mother‟s

husband couldn‟t understand their fear and apprehension, because he wasn‟t a creole and he never experience living

in such an environment. By contrast Antoinette and her mother sense rage and danger all around, they have a very

instinctive awareness of the rising animosity among the servants as Antoinette feels that the sky and sea were on

fire. She has an unsettling premonition of evil, and she can‟t trust people and the events anymore, at the same time

she feels abused and abandoned mistreated by everyone. She couldn‟t accept that these feeling and happening are

randomized. She has believed in conspiracy of people around her as she wished she had a big dog and protect her

from every person and event. “I wished I had a big Cuban dog to lie by my bed and protect me, I wished I had not





heard a noise by the bamboo clump, …” (Rhys 34), so she quickly becomes solitary and paranoid prone to vivid

outburst.

After the house is deflagrated by servants, Antoinette‟s paranoia and her mother‟s madness exacerbate and

become worse. Coco, Annette‟s beloved parrot and the only possession that she attempts to rescue from the fire, falls

to a fiery death. It is unable to speak very well, when he does speak, it uses a French patois that aligns it with main

characters paranoia. His repeated question, “Qui est là? Qui est là?” (38), which translated to “Who is there?”

underscores the paranoia, the problem of identity and also persecution that both Antoinette and her mother have. The

parrot repeatedly declares its own name by responding to itself I am Coco (“Ché Coco, Ché Coco” (38)) and fixes his

own identity. It recites a mantra which is like an incantation, works as a protection for it, and this highlight the

paranoia of Antoinette and her mother in this novel. Both of them believe that they are imprisoned in a trap which is a

center of intrigue for them. On that fiery night when Antoinette sees the flaming parrot that burns alive, remembered

it is bad luck to kill a parrot or even watch a parrot die. She shrinks in horror when this superstition comes to her

mind. Paranoid thinking includes persecutory beliefs because the person believes they are in danger or is threatened

by something or someone. So another aspect of Antoinette‟s paranoia reveals itself through a moment that she

becomes anxious of a belief which is just a superstitious. Antoinette as a paranoid person relates every happening

against herself, that she is in threated and also in danger by something or something. One night when Antoinette

sleeps with her husband, she tells a story which happened for her in the past about rats to him that it manifests her

hostility and also her fear of being watched and followed. Constantly she interpret every happening as a self made

plot that others conspiring against her.

It was so hot that my night chemise was sticking to me but I went to sleep all the same. And then

suddenly I was awake. I saw two enormous rats, as big as cats, on the still staring at me.‟… That was

the strange thing. I stared at them and they did not move. I could see my self in the looking-glass the

other side of the room, in my white chemise with a frill round the neck, staring at those rats and the

rats quite still, staring at me.‟ (75)

Like Antoinette, her husband, Rochester also suffers from paranoia. He suspects that everyone in their house

including his father, Richard Mason and his own young wife are laughing at him. He incorporates every happening

or people‟s reaction into his own system of beliefs and he sees the world highly schematic one, in his view all





people around him include servants and also Christrophine are against him. So this nagging suspicion that he stands

on the outside of a well kept conspiracy drives Rochester to self-contempt, hatred and an irrational need to regain

control. His paranoid thinking emerges as soon as he embarks on Granbois and he tries to disregard his paranoia by

thinking about his good fortune and wealthy wife. When he arrives at Granbois, he has a bad feeling about

everything even about the house; he finds it awkward and shabby. He always feels that others are looking upon him

with ridicule, sympathy and pity. He sees overwhelmed by the environment and with the presence of servants he

feels uncomfortable especially with the presence of Christophine. At the very beginning when Antoinette introduces

him to the servants and Antoinette‟s old nurse, Christophine, Rochester feels distrust about them. This feeling of

being watched shows his paranoid fears and also mirrors Antoinette‟s paranoid fears in the first part.

Rochester‟s paranoid behavior aggravates when he receives a letter from Daniel Cosway, the bastard son of

Alexander Cosway. The letter informs him about Antoinette‟s depraved background. He becomes more and more

distrustful of his wife; later that he begins to think his father and his brother and also Richard Mason have

deliberately tricked him into marrying Antoinette, who is a lunatic girl from a mad woman according to Daniel

Cosway. Rochester feels that the world is against him so he begins to view Antoinette and Christophine as his

enemies. His hostility toward them provokes by this distrust, and as a paranoid individual in postmodern era, he

feels confused and alone like Antoinette. The landscape of their place and forest as he stumbles forward on a path

represent his interior world. He does not recognize or understand his feeling of being watched every where and on

all sides. His feeling of loneliness and strange alienated increased in the day when he walks in the forest, he

encounters a girl who screams in front of him and runs away. He confirms suspicion which is Daniel‟s suggestion;

he could not trust Antoinette anymore. Finally by visiting Daniel, his paranoia becomes worse. Daniel tells him, not

to trust this family anymore. He informs him that Christophine as a master of obeah magic is the most deceitful of

all. From the other side, Antoinette feels sign of betrayal from Rochester as she sees England as a cold place. So she

asks Christophine to make a love potion in order to increase their love. One morning when Rochester wakes up he

feels sick and vomit, he continues vomit rest of the day. By his paranoid thinking he believes he has been poisoned.

From that time, Rochester can‟t control himself. He turns his anger on Antoinette; he seeks to assert his power by

becoming a tyrant toward her, a cruel ruler who can kill her with his words alone. The worst thing that he does to

comfort himself as a paranoid man, he symbolically enacts her death and covering Antoinette with a torn sheet like





covering a dead person. “I drew the sheet over her gently as if I covered a dead girl” (125). At the end of the novel

he does the last cruel thing to her that leaves her alone and imprisons her in an attic.

Rhys shows these two main characters in her novel as two paranoid people to represent that being paranoid

in postmodern world can have negative and also positive effects on the people‟s life. It can see how Antoinette and

her mother‟s paranoia throw this novel have a clear protective purpose. By this mistrust and paranoid hostility,

Antoinette senses the evil that awaits her. For example within the crowing of cock, she sees the sign of betrayal.

Apparently throw her forest hunting dreams; these premonitions suggest that her paranoia acts as a protective thing

for her. By this evil that hunts her actions and surrounding, although nothing can protect Antoinette from her

downfall, her paranoia can prolong it. Unlike Antoinette who is immediately recognizes the animal is a sign of

betrayal when it is crowing and uses her paranoia, Rochester fails to intuit danger around him. He does not look for

symbol in natural landscape around him. Besides her paranoia Antoinette always look for comfort and wisdom in

her life. Although both Antoinette and Rochester seem to be constantly lookout for plots and conspiracy of society

and individuals against them, Antoinette uses this paranoia as a complimentary and a way to ameliorate her life and

her situation. Unlike her, Rochester uses it as a source demolition and destruction of every thing especially his life.

When Rochester trusts Daniel and suspects everyone conspire against him and scheming a plot specially his wife

and Christophine, he goes one step further toward his dangerous and destructive paranoid behavior. He could not

trust her wife any more and tries to make her puppeteer by becoming godlike tyrant toward her. His paranoid

hostility and distrust cause him to betray his wife and at last imprisoning her alone in an attic. All of these

happenings with Rochester‟s paranoia lead to the destruction of their life in this novel.

Within these two main paranoid characters in this novel and their different reactions toward their paranoid

feelings, Rhys shows that in postmodern world nevertheless paranoia is a fringe and disastrous element, it can be

fundamental in the society. To be aware of every individual and every unexpected happening in postmodern era it is

good to be paranoid. Rhys presents a vision of postmodern world and the thing in it which makes people paranoid

and mad. He also shows that how this world can be if a paranoid individual do nothing to stop the happenings that

are ongoing. He wants to confirm through this novel that if people of postmodern era use paranoia properly, it

actually can redeem them from postmodern condition and bad happening which awaits them in their life. He proves





that if one can use paranoia in a best way to keep up what is happening it can never act as a source destruction of

self and others.

Conclusion

This study is an attempt to conceptualize the two important postmodern elements; fragmentation and paranoia in

Jean Rhys‟s Wide Sargasso Sea, proving that Wide Sargasso Sea is a postmodern novel. In order to unify the non-

linear narrative Rhys uses fragmentation through temporal distortion, characterization, the art of narration and

structure in her novel, Wide Sargasso Sea. It is divided into three parts of unequal length, in which parts are divided

into sections and every section consists of a message.

Rhys goes further from the traditional narration by jumping through time and space. The novel overlaps past,

preset and future which create a certain timeless vision within the novel, so the narration jumps from one period of

time to the next, from one encounter to another; it highlights the most important events and glimpses into the life of

a creole and out casted woman, Antoinette for the reader. The characters in the novel always switches tense in their

narratives and by this time fragmentation Rhys wants to keep the past life of Antoinette, fresh for the reader. By the

uses of different kind of fragmentation, Rhys gives uniformity to the novel and illustrates the events in Antoinette‟s

life who was a creole woman. Rhys clarify the events for the reader while makes the reader imagine people's life

especially of an out casted woman in a postmodern era.

Rhys also uses paranoid characters who are Antoinette and Rochester in Wide Sargasso Sea and both of them

have different reaction their paranoid feelings. Through this uses of paranoid characters Rhys indicates that paranoia

can be fundamental beside its disastrous nature. Indirectly she proves that if postmodern individual uses paranoia

properly can be redeemed from the disaster events which are ongoing, and it can never act as a source of destruction

of self and others.

References

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Jstor. Web. 23 May 2014.





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1988. Print.

[6] Linett, Maren. ““ New Words, New Everything”: Fragmentation and trauma in Jean Rhys” Twentieth Century

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[7] Malpas, Simon. The Postmodern. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.

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