The Sargasso Sea is a relatively still sea, lying within the south-west zone of the North Atlantic Ocean, at the centre of a swirl of warm ocean currents. Metaphorically, for Jean Rhys, it represented

an area of calm, within the wide division between England and the West Indies. Within such an area, a sense of stability, permanence and identity may be attained, despite the powerful, whirling currents

which surround it. But outside of this 'sea', one may be destabilised, drawn away by these outside forces, into the vast expanse of 'ocean' between the West Indies and Europe. Outside of these metaphorical and geographical oceanic areas, one may become the victim of these currents, subject to their vagaries and fluctuations, no longer able to personally define, with any certainty, where one is

culturally or geographically located.

For Jean Rhys, Jane Eyre depicted representations of a Creole woman and West Indian history which she knew to be inaccurate. 'Bertha Mason is mad; and she came from a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations. Her mother

When emancipation and consequent lack of forced-labour caused the estates' collapse, the opportunity for further exploitation presented itself: A repetition of the colonial exploitation of the blacks, this

ERWIN, Lee: 'Like a Looking Glass': History and Narrative in Wide Sargasso Sea in Novel, Winter 1989

Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea as a historical-novel. She was able to incorporate elements of detailed factual history of Dominica: including slavery, colonialism and external conflicts over proprietorship; as well as how these issues related to her fictional characters. Although not strictly autobiographical, Rhys uses cultural and topographical descriptions to both illustrate her own experiences in Dominica in the early, formative years of her life and to authenticate what she says. She sets her fiction in a time

imperceptible, except in that it emphasises the plight of the Creole planter, rather than that of the emancipated slave.

inflation' of the features, 'the lips were swelled and dark'; described as a demon, witch, vampire, beast and hyena1. But nowhere in the novel does Bronte allow 'the madwoman in the attic' to have a

HAVELY, Cicely Palser: Wide Sargasso Sea: Real and Imagined Islands BBC TV, 1998.

RHYS, Jean: Wide Sargasso Sea London: Penguin, 1997.

specifically in terms of miscegenation and "contamination"'8. This reflects the Victorian preoccupation that syphilis - the precursor of madness and contracted by the sexually promiscuous - originated in Africa. The commonplace assumptions of British abolitionist writing, such as Montgomery and Wilberforce, linked slavery with pervasive sexual promiscuity. The Emancipation Act had the following consequence: 'Licentiousness, whatever it might have been before, was almost entirely banished from society: young men no longer exposed to the same temptations as before, acquired new ideas of correctness and purer tastes and habits, all of an elevating kind and favouring the development of the higher energies.'9 This unremarkable conclusion being based on the assertion that it was the licentiousness onto the

Some common words found in the essay are:
Jane Eyre, West Indian, British Victorian, Dominica Dominica, Spanish Town, Emancipation Act, Sargasso Sea, Coulibri Antoinette, Other'19 Antoinette's, Antoinette Rejected, jane eyre, sargasso sea, wide sargasso sea, wide sargasso, west indian, jean rhys, west indies, creole woman, sense identity, emancipation act, creole women, rhys jane eyre, isolated lonely vulnerable, cultural political forces,
Approximate Word count = 3358
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page double spaced)