The Madwoman in the Attic: Quest for self identity in Wide Sargasso Sea

Abstract

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is a rewriting of the Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Jean Rhys has tried to give a voice to the madwoman in the attic, Bertha Mason, who is always seen as the other. However, due to her mixed ethnicity and cultural inferiority, she faces a self- identity crisis. Initially, she is Antoinette but later she is renamed Bertha by her husband to probably sound more English and thus a new identity is imposed on her. She is a victim of the binaries created by the Eurocentric values as she straddles between the superior White English community and the inferior Black community. This hybridity, otherness, in-betweenness, a lack of belonging, isolation, probably drives her mad as she is unable to come to terms with her own natural self- identity.