The 4th essay is a response to the 1993 film “Wide Sargasso Sea” (directed by Nathaniel Parker) based on British-Jamaican writer Jean Rhys’ novel of the same name. The novel was published in 1961. You can find a full description of the film’s biography here. The film is set in post-emancipation Jamaica, but at the same time Jamaica is still a British colony. As you can see in the film, Jamaica is a multicultural society, with French and Spanish and Portuguese settlers enjoying a living in one of those “Manichean” (Fanon) places where the white/dominant settler is separated from the black native/servants by class and power. However, in between the white/black dichotomy there is the “creole.” The creole identity is at the center of the movie. Antoinette and her mother are creoles and they are victimized by a colonial society which is also shown to be a deeply patriarchal society. In Franz Fanon we read about the victimization of the black man, but in “Wide Sargasso Sea” we see that the creole woman is victimized by almost all, regardless of skin color.
The question raised by “Wide Sargasso Sea” is: How does the film show the disempowerment of the creole woman? How does Antoinette assert herself in the movie and emerge triumphant at the end? In other words, how does she become her own “person” from being Rochester’s “property”? What is the role of Christophine in this? Your response should be focusing on these questions.
Again, make sure you have a strong focus in your response paper and wherever necessary use quotations, like dialogues, from the movie.
