The Case of Fan Fiction Aspects in Wide Sargasso Sea Novel - Essay Sample

Introduction

The Wide Sargasso Sea is the marksmanship of a British woman writer Jean Rhys. This novel is regarded as a prequel of Jane Eyre. Despite all the criticism about Rhys's novel being a fan fiction novel to some extent I conform to Danticat's sentiment that the novel can maintain its literary stature without the Western novel. A critic, Anne Simpson said that the novel is a text that offers equivocal and mutually incompatible interpretive possibilities. As a matter of fact, Rhys's novel has been classified as a model of post-structuralism, a literary movement argues that because history and culture conditions the study of underlying structures, both are subjected to biases and misinterpretations.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

The narrative relies upon foreshadowing, vague appearances, undone sentences, and several first-person voices to portray an uneasy overall picture of a state of confusion in the reader. Possibly because of the Rhys's novel multiple interpretive probabilities, the book has invited critics and theories; both positive and negative from various domains.

Notably, Rhys made two important changes to the details of Jane Eyre as explicitly described by Bronte' more than a century earlier. First, she modified the time setting of the narrative, in Rhys's novel, Antoinette's childhood is pushed ahead by several decades. The heroine of the story is still a young girl when the story commences in 1934, a year after manumission. In Bronte's original novel, which occurs between the sixteenth and seventieth century, Bertha Mason is already a grown woman. The change of time frame gives Rhys room to stress the various themes of the book majorly racial tensions and post-colonization. By tinkering the time setting of the narrative to immediately after the manumission of the inhabitants, Rhys put to stress the theme of British imperialistic decline. The reader sees the British are trying hard to maintain their firm hold over the island while simultaneously grappling with the fact that the territory is far much different from Europe. Rochester's immense urge to control Antoinette illustrates the British attempts to maintain economic and legal influence in the area.

Bronte's novel takes place at during the actual British colonialism. To illustrate racial issues in a more direct way, Rhys changed the descendants of the madwoman as outlined in Jane Eyre, such that Antoinette/ Bertha is not a blood relative of Richard Mason. But instead his stepsister. Rochester portrayed as evil and seriously thoughtful by the initial version of Wide Sargasso Sea, he changes from a charming character into a cruel villain, opportunistic and sadistic man. He weds for money and uses women for sexual benefits. In Jane Eyre's Wide Sargasso Sea, while riding onto the page on horseback and slips on ice, his unwilling acceptance that he needs help turn from a humble sense of vulnerability to an unattractive show of surliness. The Rhys's creation of a more callous Rochester to make the contrast between the character and the one in Bronte's original novel more conspicuous to the readers.

Antoinette being portrayed as the "heroin" of the narrative will compel me to reinvent situations about her life. She makes a desirable character to reimagine and rewrite about in my fanfiction establishment. Rhys's Antoinette exudes vulnerability and the readers cannot help but empathize with her. As a young Creole woman, she is sold into marriage to Rochester and forced to move with him to England, only to be locked up in his mansion where she deteriorates mentally. As Antoinette says in the text, there are two sides to a story, Antoinette attempts to use her pounds to convince Christophine to perform a black magic ritual. At this point, I would give the character more detail and depth so as to equivocally illustrate that it is evil in all of us and that economic disparities have the power to cut the chains that hold the novella's characters' bonds. I would stress the theme of female madness aspect of the narrative. Rhys hints that female madness is positively related to patriarchy. As far as fan fiction is concerned, fiction I would emphasize that insanity if it exists, it is different for each individual. So, no one can definitively interpret the other as insane, because insanity by its very nature is variable.

Furthermore, Antoinette says in the very first page that she is yearning for a return to what she remembers as the innocent and jovial days of her girlhood. She recalls Coulibri as having a garden as large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible but complains that over time it has "gone wild". Representation of the past in Biblical terms so as to bring an impression of how far man has fallen is rather ironical because the time for which Antoinette looks forward to so desperately is the same era that a majority of the natives of the island were under British rule and were living under slavery. Therefore, there is an urge to revise the situation while rewriting the fan fiction aspect of the narrative. Away from that, throughout the story, despite Antoinette being relatively defenseless, she tries to protect herself. When she visits her mother whom she knows that indifferent and undependable, she goes to her bearing love, only to be turned down yet again. This incident is similar to the one she had with Rochester. Feminist view Rochester as Callous and cold but he is sorry that their relationship has a break down of communication. Rochester is unable to give love what he perceives as property he possesses.

According to the Heisenberg effect, when you observe something it changes its state. Therefore, the reality is relative to a person. Hence, great literature may resonate with the spirit of the age but also serve as a time-release instrument for future generations because of the message content in a way that the authors themselves cannot necessarily fathom. Authors would not be compelled to fill the gaps that exist in books like Jane Eyre if they were exceptionally awesome in the first instance. By bringing to attention plights of the marginalized, these parallel narratives characterize our equalitarian aspects of worldview. This is the essence of cultural revisionism. Even after all that time, the novel is still inspiring spin-offs that are generating their very own fan fiction derived from the novel.

Conclusion

Conclusively, representation of the past in Biblical terms so as to bring an impression of how far man has fallen is rather ironical because the time for which Antoinette looks forward to so desperately is the same era that a majority of the natives of the island were under British rule and were living under slavery. Therefore, there is an urge to revise the situation while rewriting the fan fiction aspect of the narrative. Away from that, throughout the story, despite Antoinette being relatively defenseless, she tries to protect herself. When she visits her mother whom she knows that indifferent and undependable, she goes to her bearing love, only to be turned down yet again. This incident is similar to the one she had with Rochester.

Work Cited

Literary Ladies Guide. (n.d.). Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966) | LiteraryLadiesGuide. [online] Available at: https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/book-description/wide-sargasso-sea-by-jean-rhys-1966/ [Accessed 10 Dec. 2018].

WritersDigest.com. (n.d.). 6 Tips for Reimagining Classic Fiction in Your Writing | WritersDigest.com. [online] Available at: https://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-genre/literary-fiction-by-writing-genre/tips-writing-novels-based-on-classic-fiction [Accessed 10 Dec. 2018].