THE CREOLIZATION OF THE SELF: FROM JANE EYRE TO WIDE SARGASSO SEA
THE CREOLIZATION OF THE SELF: FROM JANE EYRE TO WIDE SARGASSO SEA

Summary/Abstract: Rewriting of, and intertextuality with, earlier works of literature are typical Postmodernist modes of creating new texts, and identities. The re-imagining of the colonial Other as the postcolonial Self is a device used for voicing the silenced speech of the oppressed. In Jane Eyre, the Creole woman’s voice is missing from the text and the space is filled by the voices of Edward Rochester and Jane Eyre, distorting her identity; however, she is allowed to speak up in the postmodern prequel of this novel. Creolization represents the process of recognizing one’s identity as Creole, as an inappropriate signifier of colonial discourse and a re-imagining and re-creation of the self in a postcolonial context in which it may be heard above the communicational noise imposed by colonial discourse as the dominant mode of expression. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette’s words, “There is always the other side,” are a response by the author Jean Rhys, who, while employing her background as a West Indian, Creole and colonial subject, tried to correct an omission and a misreading of Creole women. The rewriting of Bertha Mason in the figure of Antoinette was an attempt to give her the voice of “the other side”, of being caught between the English colonial identity and the Jamaican native. In the context of colonial mimicry, Rhys emulates the earlier text of European descent, but creates the Creole identity anew, giving voice to the muted female idiom. The “parallel history of victimization” of the Postmodern rewriting of Jane Eyre, achieved a transformation of the colonial Other into a postcolonial Self through the creolization of the self. The empowered Creole woman assumes her identity as an inappropriate signifier of colonial discourse, re-imagining the self in a postcolonial context in which it may be heard.

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