AN EYE ON LITERATURE

Inbetweenness, and the issues of Race, Ethnicity and Gender: A Case Study of ‘The Mimic Men, and ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’.

By
Muhammad Abdullah Faheem

Contents
Abstract
Introduction
Chapter One: the case study of ‘The Mimic Men,
Quest for the Centre

Chapter Two:
Racial and Ethnic Problems in Trinidadian Society
Memories of the Past and Cultural Differences

Chapter Three: the Case Study of Wide Sargasso Sea
General introduction to Wide Sargasso Sea
Dilemma of Creole

Chapter Four:
Gender Inequality; Feminist Perspective of Wide Sargasso Sea

Conclusion
Bibliography

(The symbol of [*] has been used to translate and define the names of places, things, sayings of some famous authores or some complex symbolic clues from history.)

Abstract

This essay aims to investigate the impact of colonialism on postcolonial societies. V.S. Naipaul and Jean Rhys analyse the effects of colonialism in their novels within regional and international political contexts. Colonial gifted issues like race, ethnicity and gender largely emerge in ‘The Mimic Men’ and ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ which I am focusing on. The above mentioned issues which present colonized people stretched between two places, and two cultures unable to hold a single one, will be discussed through the individual perspectives of both the protagonists of both literal texts. The psychological and mental inbetweenness of postcolonial citizens can be understood by discussing the issues of race and gender which is the topic of my essay. The essay mainly will depend on the comparative method. The discussion will flow in four chapters, two for each novel. The quest of Ralph Singh to find a Centre for himself and to escape from the racism and ethnic problems of Trinidad, and his attempts to take refuge in Indian culture will be discussed in the first two chapters. The last two chapters will focus on Antoinette’s struggle in relation to place and belonging and gender inequality presented in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’, followed by conclusion of the full essay.

Introduction

The twentieth century is an era of decolonization of colonial and imperial age established colonies and the ending of colonized sufferings. Britain, France and Holland, which were the occupants of the most of the parts of the world, could not maintain their control on their colonies. The British Empire was wound up in the post second world war period. The ruling territories of these colonial powers remained a few because of indigenous freedom struggles. New life began for those nations which had spent centuries under painful colonial occupation.

It has always been difficult to define the term postcolonial. However, one definition of postcolonialism is “the period after colonialism”. This explanation of colonialism is quite political because it does not include or show the effects of colonialism in the postcolonial period. It does not bring to light the continuing far-reaching effects of colonialism or the “overt or subtle forms of neo-colonial domination” (Ashcroft and Griffiths et al, 1997, p.3). An approach to literature of colonized countries that deals with the subject of colonization has been named postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory focuses particularly on the misrepresentation of the colonized nation presented by the colonizer’s literature. It unfolds the harsh realities of the colonial period as well as the struggle of the people who claim their own identity, ethnicity and culture. It shows how people in the postcolonial period experience the closeness to their culture, tradition and language. Postcolonial literature presents comparative images, behaviours and scenes of the colonized and colonizer’s life which become the inevitable part of the history and literature.

Postcolonial theory also presents colonial ideology as the constructor of two different worlds. One is completely ordered, rational, masculine and good and the other is disorganized, absurd, feminine and evil. Such concepts not only divided societies but created a vast gap between the colonizer and colonized. Lye argues that colonized people are very much different from colonizer in every respect of life. People keep different concepts like “black consciousness, Indian soul, aboriginal culture” and so on (Lye, 1998).

Postcolonial theory also represents the features of postcolonial struggle and resistance, destabilization or mimicry of the colonizer. This resistance carries different concepts and ideologies like, human freedom, issues of gender equality and question of identity and so on. These are the questions which culturally distinguish the colonizer and the colonized.

Ethnicity and indigeneity are two most complex issues in postcolonial theory. Each of them presents a debate on race and identity. These issues are the most commented and discussed topics in the postcolonial writings exposing hatred among different ethnic groups in the postcolonial societies. Ethnicity plays an important role in people’s lives. Its influence can be positive as well as negative. On the one hand it is a source of knowledge about one’s identity; on the other hand it divides people between groups resulting in prejudice, discrimination and conflicts.

Sollors argues about being ethnic in an interesting way. He says “every one in a society is ethnic” (Ashcroft and Griffiths et al, 1997, p-213). An ethnic group of people therefore see themselves as different from others on the basis of their culture and background. For some people it can be on the basis of skin and colour, and others can distinguish themselves because of their language, religion, nationality or shared cultural traditions. In many cases ethnicity is constituted by the combination of many of these things.

Connolly is suspicious about the originality and stability of ethnicity or its long term existence in any region. “Ethnic identities develop and change over the time”. The strength [number of people, italics mine] of any ethnic group can be different because they change over times as a consequence of particular social and political developments (Connolly, 2005). People who migrated* in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries to the Caribbean region as slaves or indentured servants for coffee, coca or sugar plantation maintained their ethnic status even in the postcolonial period (Drescher and Stanley, 1998, pp.119-125).

The literature of one nation shows the mood and life style of its society. It is a unique history which distinguishes any nation from the others on the basis of historical incidents. The literature of a nation gives a picture of cultural, geographical and social structure of its society. Bassnett quotes Charles Mills Gayley’s argument that “Literature as distinct and integral medium of thought, a common institutional expression of humanity, differentiated to be sure, by the social conditions of the individual, by racial historical, cultural and linguistic influences, opportunities, and restrictions but irrespective of age or guise, and aspirations of man, sprung from common faculties psychological and physiological, and obeying common laws of material and mode, of the individual and social humanity” (Bassnett, 1993, p.3).


*(1. Those East Indians who migrated to Caribbean for economic purpose and those who were taken as indentured servants.)

V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men and Wide Sargasso Sea of Jean Rhys discuss different issues and miseries of the colonial and the postcolonial Caribbean inflected by colonial powers. Both of these novels present the hybridization of cultures and other issues which I have mentioned above. The Caribbean is a multiethnic and multicultural region that produces a long history of slavery, immigration and racial conflicts. Without doubt these two postcolonial novels present hybridised cultures involving a dialectical relationship between European and the local Caribbean populations. Both of these novels show the discursive strategies and struggles of the European nations to get a privileged position to maintain their rule and domination within two worlds (Third World and their own region, italics mine). Naipaul and Rhys show how cultural differences problematize the division of past and present, tradition and modernity, at the level of cultural representation.

V.S. Naipaul is one of the renowned names in present-day English fiction. In his novels Naipaul presents a subtle and receptive account of the distressing experiences of the colonized people. He shows politics as an empty theatre and works upon the senses of his reader by his writing style and dramatic technique of presentation of disorder and institutional and personal mimicry. His commitment to truth and hunt for a genuine selfhood, power and freedom distinguishes him from other writers. As described by a newspaper, “Almost all of Naipaul’s writings deal with real world, with politics, race and personality rather than exclusively with literary fictions” (The Hindu. 21 October, 2001).

The Mimic Men by Naipaul shows the picture of marked opposition between centre and margin. It reveals the racial politics of Trinidad and the relation between Trinidadian Afro- Caribbean and the East Indian communities. The novel is the fictional memories of protagonist Ralph Singh who is an Indian descended Trinidadian. The story has been written in the form of the autobiography of Ralph’s life which ranges over his childhood in Isabella, his higher educational period in London, and lastly his unsuccessful political career back in Isabella. Ralph is a perfect colonial character, an intelligent and sensitive person raised in a multicultural and multiethnic society who is greatly concerned about his status and identity. The flashback of Ralph’s memories links him with his past and present. His story reveals how he faces the racism of the black African ethnic majority in Trinidad. Ralph’s character shows him as an uncomforted and dispossessed person who is connected with India his ancestral land. He is unfitted for the political system of Trinidad and his political career ends in the form of exile in London. In this situation he feels himself in a state of “inbetweenness” both physically and psychologically.

The second postcolonial novel which I shall talk about is Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys; published in 1966, more than a century after Charlotte Bronte’s famous novel Jane Eyre. Wide Sargasso Sea starkly reveals the fate of a disillusioned Creole woman who is powerless and unnerved in postcolonial West Indian society. Jean Rhys’ novel articulates some aspects of women’s experience that Jane Eyre inevitably suppresses. The novel is set during a significant period of Jamaican history, the time following the passing of the Emancipation Act of 1838. This was a period of immense racial tension and Rhys depicts this tension by the character of young Antoinette Cosway. Throughout this novel Antoinette is very much disturbed by her racial identity that is why she feels herself a displaced person more than any one else.

The novel deals with some dark aspects of human life in the twentieth century. Wide Sargasso Sea discusses the status of women, their needs and rights. Overall Jean Rhys invests her personal experience in the construction of the story.

I shall discuss each of these novels by referring to postcolonial theories and try to present a comparative account with critical view.

Chapter 1: A Case Study of “The Mimic Men”
1.0 Quest for the Centre

“My presence in this city which I have known as a student, politician and now as a refugee immigrant, to impose order on my own history” (Naipaul, 1967, p.266).

In his room in a London hotel Ralph Singh writes an account of his life which is full of dislocation and disorder. He tells in the beginning of the novel about his first arrival in London as a student. He stays in a Kensington house that belongs to Mr. Shylock a Jewish immigrant who used to spend “occasional nights with a young girl” (Naipaul, 1967, p.3). Ralph welcomes the news of snowing in a calm mood as something long expected that has finally arrived. “Snow. At last; my element” (Naipaul, 1967, p.4). He goes out from his attic to experience his first snowfall in the final season of the year. “The flakes didn’t only float; they also spun. They touched the glass and turned to a film of melting ice. Below the livid grey sky roofs were white and shining black in patches. […..] I felt all the magic of the city go[es] away and had an intimation of the forlornness of the city and of the people who lived in it” (Naipaul, 1967, p.5). Ralph finds the snow fall an eye catching scene but melting snow and the abandoned condition of London show him the picture of destruction, misery and disorder which is the result of the Second World War. London, the wounded capital of British Empire that has the horrors of war on its face, is a different place to what he has imagined. He feels this scene similar to his “ancestral shipwreck” incident which brought misery to his ancestors and their future generations. Singh seems struck by the secrecy of London’s life. He finds the death and funeral ceremony of his landlord Mr. Shylock very unlike the lively funeral processions of his native island (Naipaul, 1967, p. 4). This is the first cultural shock which he encounters after his arrival in London. Singh comes across to visit Mr. Shylock’s room which he discovers is untidy and spoiled. He feels it contrary to Shylock’s distinguished personality and image that Shylock used to maintain in public life (Naipaul, 1967, pp.3-5). Singh is struck with this situation:

“I thought: let it not happen to me. Death? But that comes to all. Well, then, let me leave more behind. Let my relics be honoured. Let me not be mocked. But even as I tried to put words to what I felt, I knew that my own journey, scarcely begun, had ended in the shipwreck which all my life I had sought to avoid” (Naipaul, 1967, p.6).

This is the same feeling which Singh has been trying to escape since his early times. He has been in search of a true and pure place for him where he can lead his life according to his wishes. He remembers the incident of a ship drowning and the death of three children on his island. People were drowning, “The fishermen being begged to go out and save them”. They “mended their nets”, instead of helping them. He calls the Afro-Carib fishermen “selfish people” with expressionless faces (Naipaul, 1967, p.117).

Naipaul’s approach in depicting London as an outsider is very much similar to Charles Dickens’ who is considered one of the best satirists of the nineteenth century. The difference between Naipaul and Dickens’ narration is that being a Victorian writer Dickens visualized and presented the domestic miseries of a Londoner’s life and dehumanization of that time in a light and comical style, while Naipaul being a subject of the colonialism sees it differently. His observation of London as an outsider and displaced person involves the questioning of his identity. The solitary and rational life style of London does not match the nature of Naipaul’s protagonist.

Naipaul's characters wander in the bleakness of London yet have no way of escape. They find themselves trapped in its planned life discovering no opportunity to start fresh life. Ralph being a colonial is incapable of creating an original identity because he is dependent on imitating the colonizer in an attempt at originality trying to play a role that the colonizer has set for him. Singh’s life in London reveals to him his dependency on the imperial country for his identity.

“An awareness of myself not as an individual but as a performer, in that child's game where every action of the victim is deemed to have been done at the command of his tormentor, and where even refusal is useless, for that too can be deemed to have been commanded” (Naipaul, 1967, p.85).

Kelly argues it is through “the expression and presentation of the events that he can reduce the pain of being a displaced colonial man. The act of writing his memories provides him with the final solution to his sense of dislocation, through writing he is at last able to take control of the fragments of his past and shape them into a spiritual and psychological autobiography” (Kelly, 1989, p.90).

The actions of Naipaul’s characters show that each and every act of their lives begins like an actor who performs according to a playscript. Singh who is in London on a quest to find his identity gives himself a new personality up to the values of the colonial society. He seeks order in London thinking it “a great city” but faces disappointment. He looks in the eyes of others to find their impression of himself; but this makes his “ambition confused”, so he locates “certainties for him on his island Isabella” (Naipaul, 1967, p.26). The regular shifts between the past, the present and the future may also reveal Singh’s internal disorder; as Thieme (1987) indicates, this technique is appropriate to present “social and psychological disturbances” (p.114). However the irony is that in his search for order, Singh seems unable to follow a chronological pattern to impose order on his writing.

Hamilton (1971) discloses that in associating himself with colonials and inhabiting a colonial territory Naipaul feels secure and ordered. He does not feel any fear for his political status and this makes his world easy and leaves him little to do. Naipaul declares England a “purely literary region”. He has said: “I could not have become a writer without London” (Jussawalla, 1997, pp.14-19).

Donadio (2005) writes that Naipaul distinguishes himself from other writers who wrote about the organized societies*. He says, “I had no such society; I could not share the assumptions of the writers. I did not see my world reflected in theirs”. Naipaul declares his world more mixed, second hand and restricted. She further writes that Naipaul considers “Conrad’s world of his own background. I found that Conrad 60 years before, in the time of a great peace had been every where before me. Not as a man with a cause, but a man offering a vision of the world’s halfmade societies as places which continuously made and unmade themselves where there was no goal and where always something inherent in the necessities of successful action […] carried with it the moral degradation of the idea. Dismal, but deeply felt a kind of truth and half a consolation”. Naipaul calls Conrad great but declares his Novella, Heart of Darkness written in reportage style, feeble and excessive fictional writing. Naipaul excludes himself from reportage style of writing (Donadio, 7th August, 2005).

This colonial world produces nothing for Singh but disappointment. Everything is the same; nothing changes, even people with solid aims lose their “solidity” in the colonial life pattern. Similar to their past their present identity is embodied in their masters. These puzzled people are the “mimic men” imitating their colonial masters to get power which again makes them losers rather than winners. This demands them to shun seeing the world with their own eyes. It does not matter if some one is “Asiatic Aryan” or “Malts Lieni”*. They all have associated themselves with this place; they have gained the titles of “smart London girl” and “London dandy”. Now they do not have any escape from this arranged colonial lifestyle. The need to look like colonials has shortened the broader vision of life which they had before coming to England. This feeling of coming from nowhere or being in between two places produces for them nothing but a timely escape. An escape from their past, which these people envision as a horrible incident, even more faded than their gloomy present and dark future.

*(1.Educated European societies. *2.Lieni from Malta who is housemaid in Mr. Shylock’s cottage.)

Naipaul gives importance to the idea of representation. He envisions those people as important and worthy who live with proper representation disregarding place and territory. But he rejects those who do not have any representation for them. “They are a lost, and I don’t think any one is interested” (Jussawalla, 1997, p.10).

The characters of The Mimic Men lack responsibility in their lives and that is what makes them similar to their colonial masters. Naipaul declares any kind of association with colonialism as the acceptance of those things “coming from a great wonderful source outside yourself and outside the people you know”. He considers Africa a backward place where African people hardly accept realities and try to settle their problems by pushing them aside. Naipaul divides his characters in “three different visions” (Jussawalla, 1997, pp.26-27). Ralph’s character fits to the long vision category of people who continue to play their roles to achieve eternity. The other characters of the novel like Lieni, Sandra, Lady Stella and Deschampsneufs can be categorised as short and medium vision players who appear for a short passage of time and disappear after achieving minor success in their lives. Singh remains unsuccessful in achieving what he tries to get.

The destruction of Singh’s vision can be for different reasons. Firstly, this happens because he comes to London from a Third World Country where people are less educated short visioned and descendants of slaves. Secondly, this maybe because they think themselves inferior to their colonial masters who ruled over them. Despite these reasons they are uncertain about their position in an imperial society where they can neither stand with their colonial masters nor as free human beings. They are in a state of “inbetweenness” in all fields of life.

Roache (1972) argues that Naipaul’s theory about acquiring power depends on a slow and steady course of “hard work” and upon the skills of other people. Naipaul thinks “The creation of power is a painful, slow and complex” process (Jussawalla, 1997, p.38). Singh tries to keep the illusion of London as a beautiful city and full of life since his first arrival in London. He describes it as a miraculous place which has the power to hypnotize people in its beauty. “In the great city, so solid in its light, this gave colour even to unrendered concrete […..]. In this solid city life was two dimensional” (Naipaul, 1967, p.18). In all his three visits to London as a student, as a politician and lastly as an exiled person Singh tries hard to maintain the fantasy of London’s beauty. But each and every time it becomes harder and harder for him. On his first visit to London when he goes out to see the snowing scene he finds “all the magic of the city go[es] away” (Naipaul, 1967, p.5). Snow it is just not snow* but a soft death for every living thing. Naipaul uses the same style and technique which James Joyce used in “The Dead” the last short story of Dubliners. The death scene of Gabriel is in winter and its snowing. Similarly Mr. Shylock dies in winter in snow season. “It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark falling obliquely against the lamp light. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward” (Joyce, 1914, p.255).

*(1. Naipaul used snow scenes to show dark aspects of the colonial life similar to Joyce’s satire on Irish social system in his times.)

The use of snow in The Mimic Men is negative. Naipaul uses it to describe the moral and religious barrenness of London. As Singh walks in the city he finds London different from his first visit. “Its heart must have lain somewhere. But the god of the city was elusive. [.....] I would play with famous names as I walked empty streets and stood on bridges. But the magic of names soon faded” (Naipaul, 1967, p.18).The last description of London shows Singh’s broken illusion of magical city. Big highways, grand hotels, and traffic noises have taken the place of “gardens and tranquillity, coolness and solitude, twittering hedge-rows and morning walks. It has become terrible city” (Naipaul, 1967, p.245).

With the passage of time Singh’s consciousness develops; he feels regret for his loss. He states in the beginning of his story “my journey, scarcely begun, had ended in the shipwreck which all my life I sought to avoid (Naipaul, 1967, p.6). Naipaul’s characters show how strongly a postcolonial society stands for her identity in the period of decolonization. Naipaul tries to highlight miseries of a postcolonial community in The Mimic Men. Singh’s story indicates that a colonial society can not guess or share the experience of the problems which a colonized nation bears in the form of race, gender, class and belief. Decolonization of any nation brings freedom for her but at the cost of her identity. That is the bitter reality which Naipaul shows through the characters of his novel. His characters succeed in realising their objectives but on the grounds of their master’s construction. Singh describes this reality in his own words, “our landscape was as manufactured as that of any great French or English park” (Naipaul, 1967, p.158).

The flashback of Singh’s memories projects him as a disturbed person. He is unable to get rid of his past. Mr. Deschampsneufs tells Singh in his last meeting with him, “All my friends go abroad and come back and say what a wonderful time they had. But I note they all come back. I tell you, boy, this place is a paradise” (Naipaul, 1967, p.193). The constant shift between present and past shows disorder in Singh’s life who is worried more than before about his disappointment. Mr. Deschampsneufs being a French descendant in Trinidad makes Singh aware of the reality of the illusion he is after. “My great grandfather and even my grandfather, they always talked about going back for good, they went but they came back. You know, you are born in a place and you grow up there. You got to know the streets and plants” (Naipaul, 1967, p.185).

Memmi (1965) agrees about the basic problems of a colonized society, “It is a diseased society in which internal dynamic no longer succeed in creating new structures” (pp.98-99). Naipaul criticises his own Trinidadian society on following the colonial route despite achieving freedom. Each and every description of the West Indies is full of satire. Rouse (1968) observes that Naipaul seems furious about being called a West Indian writer. “I feel I no longer know the place”. He further says, “I have nothing in common with the people of Jamaica” (Jussawalla, 1997, p.10). Naipaul dropped a publisher who presented him as a West Indian Writer (Jussawalla, 1997, p.xii). Singh desires to see the world with his own eyes rather with the eyes of a visitor, “we learned to see with them, and we were seeing only like visitors” (Naipaul, 1967, p.158). He declares his islanders unreal people who “pretend to be real, to be learning, to be preparing ourselves for life; we mimic men of the New World” (Naipaul, 1967, pp.157).

Singh is the product of transferred colonial culture who reflects diverse moods of colonized life. “My first memory of school is of taking an apple to the teacher. This puzzles me. We had no apples on Isabella. It must have been an orange; yet my memory insists on the apple. The editing is clearly at fault, but the edited version is all I have” (Naipaul, 1967, p.90). Naipaul produces another image of Singh who being the production of colonial education system is unable to adjust in any society. Singh is the production of hybrid cultures which has weakened his roots and his identity. His western education does not give him any support. He is not helped in his political career by the Englishman Lord Stockwell. His illusion of power smashes by England refusing any financial assistance to his country. London in the end is a refuge for him not a home. He is a hollow man with a damaged personality who can never be a perfect man. London can give him temporary relief but not the eternal solidity which he is trying to locate. He can lead a life of an observer who sees the fall and rise of nations but can do nothing for his own sustainability. Singh is a “mimic man” finding his designed originality in London, trying to maintain his illusion of freedom. He is everywhere but nowhere because he does not exist originally. “The city and snow, the island and the sea: one could only be exchanged for the other” (Naipaul, 1967, p.254). An “inbetweenness” is his fate and that the state he leads his life in. A disillusioned person, an imitator, he exists nowhere.

Chapter 2: Racial and Ethnic Problems in Trinidad

Trinidad is a multiethnic society in the Southern Caribbean discovered by the first European voyager Christopher Columbus in 1498, and later settled by slaves and indentured workers from Africa and East India. The adoption of slavery shows the economic purposes of imperial rule. Naipaul’s represented society illustrates the ethnic division of Trinidad as the descendants of African slaves and Indian indentured servants of sugar, Cocao*, and the coffee plantation (Drescher and Stanley, 1998, pp.111-113).

Singh’s character reveals the ethnic and racial conflicts that emerge in a colonized society in the postcolonial period. His story shows two major reasons for racial and ethnic conflicts in Trinidad. Firstly, the Europeans created the hostile environment between different groups to maintain their control on the island. Secondly, jealousy and ethnic competition caused conflict between East Indians and the black Africans of Trinidad. Naipaul projects how this conflict creates poor cultural, economic and political situation in the postcolonial society. This problem continues between black African and East Indian ethnic groups of Trinidad even after the exile of its politicians. Naipaul shows the fears of migrant Indian communities who settled in Caribbean and Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The situation of Trinidad seems worse because of rigid racial politics of these two ethnic groups.

According to Walcott (1965), Naipaul declares Trinidad a “haphazard sort of society”. He sees all Trinidadians as restless and confused, with bad manners. They feel themselves “insecure and unfulfilled”. He feels Trinidad despite its cultural and geographical beauty to be a “frightening and sinister” place to live in. (Jussawalla, 1997, p.6)

The ethnic division of Trinidad is visible by the colour, race and religion of its inhabitants. As Singh observes it:

“We drove along narrow rough roads into the valleys of our eastern hills. [….] People were a baked copper colour […] as Spaniards. […..] There were a small community […..] full-blooded Africans. […..] We drove through Carib areas where the people were more Negro than Carib. […..] Slaves and runaways…..had no romance for me. […..] We came out into Indians areas the flat lands where rice and sugar cane grew” (Naipaul, 1967, pp.130-131).

*(1. The name of a tree and its seed, used to produce chocolate.)

The historical backgrounds create differences among Caribbean population. The feeling of keeping a distinguished personality is a hurdle to their social mingling. “Their lean Carib black faces were like masks. I imagined myself drowning” (Naipaul, 1967, p.117). Singh’s political career reveals the worse picture of Trinidadian racial ethnicity. He sacrifices his business to start the political career to “make something out of nothing”. This becomes a source of satisfaction and gives him the feeling of being a “politician more than a man with a cause” (Naipaul, 1967, p.37).

Fanon defines a political leader as symbol of “moral power”, whose guidance promises his nation’s “richness and social stability” (1963, p.133). He further argues that a leader makes his best efforts to mix with people using all means trying “to calm them and bemuse them” (p.136). A politician considers politics an ambition, a field which gives “self advancement”. Singh fights for Trinidadian society regardless of favouring either East Indians or Africans (Naipaul, 1967, p.37). In the time of racial violence Singh refuses those Indians who come to him for help. He advises them “think about this as something in a book” (Naipaul, 1967, p.241). Singh perceives the racial division of Trinidad society is due to hypocrisy and weak political awareness. Even Brown, Singh’s friend despite being black, shows his disregard towards blacks by saying, “If I thought black people were handling my few cents I would not sleep too well”. He prefers “the company of other races” (Naipaul, 1967, p.202).

Singh recalls a childhood incident of attending the fair where blacks win the prizes in different competitions which are decided on the basis of race and ethnicity. The beginning of his political career seems revolutionary when Singh and his friends adopt the struggle against the colonial political system. However, despite having the same cause Singh and Brown belong to two different races. Both are the products of colonialism and have different racial and cultural backgrounds. Brown insists on sticking with his past; on the other hand Singh is also his double. Eventually, their friendship turns to hostility. Brown uses racial violence to satisfy his followers while Singh thinks Brown’s life inferior with respect to conditions of living. “It was not my past. It was not my personality” (Naipaul, 1967, p.156).

Fanon declares the African political parties “puffed up in a most dangerous way”. He sees the people as lacking, doing nothing except praising their politicians (1963, p.147). The emergence of a new political system is a direct counter to imperial powers and aims to show them challenge for the glory and revival of a newly born state. Fanon further argues that colonial powers are reluctant to free a colonized society. A colonial power presents the idea of freedom for a colonized society as embodied with the threat of going back “in the Middle Ages” (p.76). Singh’s fight is against that notion which Naipaul presents as “yet how could we see, when we ourselves were part of the pattern”? (Naipaul, 1967, p.207). Colonialism does not bear the painful rejection of their patronized political infrastructure. Fanon thinks “National consciousness” a blow to colonialism, which tries to break this “will to unity” using the “movement’s weaknesses” (1963, p.128).

Naipaul under Fanon’s* words “to know themselves” is the beginning of the struggle “against the colonial regime” (1963, p.132). The success of the new political system is like flowers and “shining eyes in shining faces”, which has been supported by “all races and all classes” of Trinidad (Naipaul, 1967, pp.210-213). The union in Trinidadian society is the result of one cause “they thought to be their own”. A true political movement in Fanon’s words, works according to the moods and aims of the people “mobilizes all classes of the people”, gets success in the society. After getting success, these “triumphant people” try to break up the “old strata of culture” for the re-establishment of a national culture (1963, pp.197-198).

Evans (1971) argues that Naipaul feels a revolutionary change in a less intellectual society is easy but it is not durable. Naipaul views such revolutionary changes as though “nothing has changed” (Jussawalla, 1997, p.29).

Dramatic political change in The Mimic Men completely changes the atmosphere of Trinidadian society. Colonialism uses its hidden tricks in the form of economic manipulation to keep its control on the postcolonial society. Colonial withdrawal from the capitals of these societies is a strategy to build economic pressure around these societies. Secondly, they use the elite class like “Chiefs, Caids, and Witch Doctors” alongside peasants to achieve their goals. Such conditions drive the nation on the route of economic refuge under the supervision of colonialists (Fanon, 1963, pp.76-109).

The unsuccessful ending of Ralph’s political career in Trinidad gives him nothing except regret. Economic decline in this hybrid society creates instability and increases ethnic and racial hate. “There was talk of exploitation and absentee landlords; at the same time, here and there in town, there were demonstrations of counter violence, totally racial in character. This type of environment causes harm to nationalism and it becomes a meaningless word (Naipaul, 1967, p.239). Economical instability is one of the major reasons which increase the racial tension in a colonized society in the times of colonialism and postcolonialism.

*(1. Fanon being revolutionary adopts every aspect of resistance against colonial powers instead Naipaul proves conservative who sought his roots in his past. There is great difference between these two writers but common aspect is this that both write against empire and its inflected miseries on a postcolonial society.)

As Fanon* argues, this is the result of plundering of “gold and raw materials of colonial countries”, so if any colonial power comes to secure the people from underdeveloped countries “we do not tremble with gratitude” (1963, p.81).

Singh’s diplomatic failure in London to achieve the economic revival of his island makes his future uncertain. “The great city”, which the colonial politicians see as a land of promises rejects them. Any trifle favour is regarded as better than nothing. At a meeting with the imperial minister, he declares to the deputation of newly born land that “our game had gone on long enough and he had other things to do than to assist the public relations of colonial politicians” (Naipaul, 1967, p 245).

The Mimic Men is a sad mimicry which shows no escape except acceptance and obedience to the imperial power. Fanon analyses this situation as “controlled economy”, which helps a postcolonial politician to run the budget of his country with the gift of a loan. Ministry-level trips or government delegations are means to declare affiliation with “mother countries” (1963, p.134). Singh’s failure to achieve the economic revival of Trinidad ends his political career and means his disgrace in his island. Singh the only “Asiatic figured” politician goes in exile. No Negro nor any African descendant black or Carib faces such adversity. Naipaul presents Trinidad as a society of “black power”, which has no space for East Indian descendants. He presents “African hysteria”, which thinks for black people only (Jussawalla, 1997, p.29).

Roach (1972) writes; Naipaul’s vision about black power or black revolution is that it is no more than a source of “anarchy”, which he thinks is a “kind of pre-colonial feebleness” (Jussawalla, 1997, p.37). Singh’s exile and restlessness indicate two factors: the influence of a colonial emperor in the postcolonial society; secondly, the ethnic and racial division of a fabricated society. Naipaul projects this source of violence through the characters of The Mimic Men, which is imitation or mimicry of colonial authorisation.

*(1. (Irony.) Fanon rejects every aspect of colonial suppression.)

2.1 Memories of the Past and Cultural Differences

I shall now focus on Singh’s quest to link him with his ancestral Indian heritage and his struggle to revive his Indian culture and religious traditions.

Singh uses constant shifting from present to past and past to present to reconstruct his identity. Past inspires Singh providing him the stories of his ancestors’ achievements. Throughout in the novel the flashback of memories provide Singh a route of mobility which he seems unable to adopt with his physical body structure. He is in search of a Centre, a home which can give him the feeling of perfect human being with his complete identity. Singh is a twice displaced person, ancestrally from India and as an exiled politician from Trinidad to London. For Singh India is his home because his roots belong to that soil. Bruce (1993) argues that the dislocation and isolation which Indians are facing in Caribbean is because of leaving India. Departure from Indian soil is the reason for losing their Indian-ness. This “original sin” results in fall of Indian culture and Indian-ness. Indians accepted the influence of outsiders and became weaker and weaker. The rest of the damage was done by intermarriages with other communities (1993, p.68).*

Nixon (1992) applies this situation to all those Indians who live in Caribbean. Their migration or mobility to “Kala Pani”* snatched their Indian-ness from them (1992, p.4).

*(1. Naipaul blames foreign rulers who ruled over India and spoiled real Indian culture. Naipaul’s books, India: A wounded civilization, India: A Million Mutinies Now, India: An Area of Darkness, expose his concerns in this regard.*(2. Meaning Black Water. British viceroys for the Subcontinent region used to send criminals and insurgents on far off islands where it was difficult to return from. Small Indiman islands are famous in this regard where thousand of rebels were detained. Mehmood Ahmed’s (a former detainee of Kala Pani) book Kala Pani has published in Urdu and Hindi languages which describes different sad stories of the British colonial crimes.)

Singh does not see himself as a Trinidadian nationalist rather an Asian who is a “picturesque Asiatic” (Naipaul, 1967, p.82). By categorising himself he ravels his inner feeling of dissatisfaction from Trinidadian society. Evans (1971) argues that in Naipaul’s words “an unreal place” where “there was not a proper general bookshop in my childhood” (Jussawalla, 1997, p.25). Linking himself to his Indian heritage by his character Naipaul finds a source of “joining a big world” with a “flag”. He rejects Trinidad for being a “small community and a backward part of the world”. Naipaul’s concern for India is to associate himself with this power which he thinks bigger and ancestrally his own (Jussawalla, 1997, p.41). Singh’s memories of his past are a genuine way to associate himself with his original ancestors who he claims were Aryans.

Naipaul like other displaced Indian writers projects Indian wisdom and superiority by describing the example of the Aryans. He considers himself part of the ancient colonial Aryans who ruled over most parts of the world. Singh’s inclination towards his Indian heritage and culture and his memorizing of ancient Indian history shows his interest to associate himself with his ancestors.

“Mine was of Rajputs and Aryans, stories of knights, horsemen and wanderers. […..] I had read of the homeland of the Asiatic and Persian Aryans, which some put as far away as the North Pole. I lived a secret life in a world of endless plains, tall bare mountains, white with snow at their peaks, among nomads on horseback, daily pitching my tent beside cold green mountain torrents that raged over grey rock, waking in the mornings to mist and rain and dangerous weather. I was a Singh. And I would dream that all over the Central Asian plains the horsemen looked for their leader. Then a wise man came to them and said, ‘you are looking in the wrong place. The true leader of you lies far away, shipwrecked on an island the like of which you can not visualize’. Beaches and coconut trees, mountains and snow; I set the pictures next to one another” (Naipaul, 1967, p.105).

Recalling Aryans Singh distinguishes himself as a noble person which is the exact meaning or definition of the word Aryan. They are considered the founders of Indian culture. Singh presents a battle field to colonial masters by presenting his Aryan background. It is the revival of an old culture which has the power to confront colonial values.

In Fanon’s words, “men of culture take their stand in the field of history”. He further argues that the defensive method which the intellectuals of a nation adopt to protect their national culture is surprising. Those who condemn this passion are wrong because they sustain themselves with the help of other cultures. (1963, p.168)

Naipaul himself is a Brahman and his protagonist is his exact in all the actions which he performs. Naipaul uses the historical context of Aryan to show the conflict between races and cultures. Secondly, the association with pre-colonial and pre-historical culture is a wish to escape from the western culture which he is afraid being swamped by.

Fanon argues, colonial intellectuals establish their contact with the “oldest and most pre-colonial springs of life of their people”, to save the life of their nation. Their anger is their hope to escape from the “misery of today”. A stage is set to give fight to the colonial master. Their encounter does not keep individual purpose but “they fight for the whole continent”. The past is honoured. “Culture, extracted from the past to be displayed in all its splendour” (1963, p.178).

Naipaul mixes history, autobiography and fiction to present cultural politics and personal unhappiness in The Mimic Men. His characters live solitary lives. This mimicry which both Singh and Naipaul present in The Mimic Men is beyond from fear. In the middle of the novel Singh’s
father becomes the leader of poor people and imitates like a Holy Hindu Guru* (Naipaul, 1967, p.136). Both Naipaul and Singh are deeply fascinated by Hinduism. Son of a “Guru”, (p.174) his father’s “gospel grace”, (p.94) and “religious pictures” of Hindu gods exposes their spirituality. Wheeler argues that Naipaul understands Hinduism as a bridge which takes him back to the “classical world” of the past so he practices its rituals. Naipaul claims “a lot of Hindu attitudes, the deeper attitudes are probably also mine”. Both the writer and his protagonist seem unable to stop this “bad blood coming to the surface” (Jussawalla, 1997, p.42).

*(1. Sanskrit word meaning teacher, a theologian, a clever person (in slang Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi languages).

The characters of The Mimic Men present an impatient society whose inhabitants have lack of tolerance. Different ethnic groups of Trinidad do not seem accepting the social, cultural and religious attitudes of each other. The killing of race horse as a sacrifice by Singh’s father shows the sentimental level of their thinking (Naipaul, 1967, p.150).

For Singh’s father coca cola is a form to impose the imperial culture on them so he destroys the shopkeeper’s stock (Naipaul, 1967, p.112). Naipaul fascinates his reader by providing him with the historical context of the story. His writings produce literary resistance which in Slemon’s words, emerges in mutual understanding between the text and the reader. He further writes that the best literary resistance is the result of an organized national resistance (Ashcroft and Griffiths et al, 1995, pp.106-107). The reality of resistance against the colonial power provides the real story of Indian heroes. Ralph’s father and Baghat Singh2 (who fought against British Empire in the Subcontinent) seem the reflection of each other. Singh’s father has been killed on a solitary place as Baghat Singh was hanged in Lahore jail. The death with Lugar, (p.195) and death on gallows are the symbols of colonial power (Gadar Heritage Foundation, n.d.). Naipaul projects the resistance of colonized people who try to take their place back. They wish to exchange their place with their colonial master. A colonial is never accepted as native but as a foreigner. He is rejected on every level. His rejection is actually the rejection of his code of social livings which he imposes on native people.

*(2. A Hindustani freedom fighter of 1920-30 who resisted against British rule. [Born in Banga wala Pull meaning the bridge of Banga’s, it’s his village name; fifteen miles away from my own hometown Faisalabad, Pakistan.)

Singh’s attitude is quite ambivalent. Sometimes he mourns his “shipwreck”, while during his stay in London he marries Sandra who is racially a colonial. Singh’s fear is whether his mother will accept this colonial relation to Isabella? “Sandra face to face with conventionally attired Hindu widow. […..] I paid no attention to my mother’s interjections that I had killed her”. (Naipaul, 1967, p.54) Singh further shows his regret by saying, “I had given my mother a blow. […..] I don’t think she ever forgave me or the island (Naipaul, 1967, p.55). Singh compensates his regret on Indian Republic Day, when Sandra attends the ceremony wearing Indian dress “sari”, “succeeded in antagonizing the entire group” (p.69). These incidents present Trinidad a racial and multicultural society which is still in the cycle to gain cultural self confidence.

Singh remains unable to adopt any culture perfectly. He is the victim of colonial exploitation which has taken his original identity. He is dispossessed and displaced at the same time he has no power in his hands. He is the victim of inbetweenness. Inbetweenness, which has snatched his power of decision and his feeling of ownership. He has nothing to say on his own. He wishes to fly “for afresh lucidity”, similar to the Milkman Dead’s grandfather in Toni Morison’s Songs of Solomon, who finds no way to escape from colonial misery but flight to Africa.

Chapter 3: The Case Study of Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea has raised troubling issues in relation to place and belonging. In her subjective approach she wrote the novel that is about the question of identity. Wide Sargasso Sea highlights the issues which create conflict in its heroine’s life. Jean Rhys portrays Antoinette’s struggle for her identity within the historical, cultural and social contexts of Jamaican history. Wide Sargasso Sea is a rewriting of Charlotte Bronte’s Victorian novel Jane Eyre. It primarily deals with two major themes: firstly, the bondage of dependency and its result and secondly, conflict of values between the colonials and West Indians. This cultural conflict stems from the meeting of European and Caribbean culture.

Antoinette’s struggle in Wide Sargasso Sea is an act of survival in a hostile environment. The novel has been written in three separate parts. The first part is narrated by its main protagonist Antoinette Cosway. She gives the account of her life in a mournful and nostalgic voice; telling about the incidents which she and her family face in Jamaica just following the Emancipation Act of 1833. The first section of Wide Sargasso Sea gives details of Antoinette’s education in a convent school, her mother’s conditions of insanity after the burning of the family estate and the death of her son and Antoinette’s arranged marriage set up by her stepfather. Rhys depicts the poor and isolated condition of Cosway’s Creole family, which is affected by the racial politics of the colonial Caribbean.

Section two starts with the voice of Mr. Rochester, Antoinette’s husband who narrates his experience of living in Jamaica and then his return to London. Section three is narrated by Antoinette and her caretaker Grace Pool. This part of Wide Sargasso Sea exposes Antoinette’s madness, the burning of Thornfield and her ultimate victory over colonial suppression by giving her life. Antoinette’s story shows West Indian Creole woman as victim, who is passive and helpless to do anything. Rhys seems to disagree with Bronte’s portrait of Bertha in Jane Eyre. In an interview she says,

“I was convinced that charlotte Bronte must have had something against the West Indies, and I was angry about it. Otherwise, why did she take a West Indian for that horrible lunatic, that really dreadful creature”? (Kubitscher, 1987, p.24).

Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea is a rewriting of Bronte’s Jane Eyre. The story is constructed on a West Indian plot different to Jane Eyre’s English plot.

Antoinette is presented an isolated, homeless, “stripped of her name, her money, and her property”, a prisoner in a small attic in the Thornfield, Rochester’s ancestral home in England. Harrell writes, “in the English speaking Caribbean these women [Creoles] must bear the guilt of the horrors of slavery inflected by their own white ancestors upon the people whose country they now call their own.[…] The whiter Creole woman can find a sense of belonging, her identity, only in her Caribbean homeland. But the price for such a choice is high” (Harrell, 1985, p.282).

Antoinette’s deep desire to know her original identity is obvious in Wide Sargasso Sea. All the characters in the novel present the relational attitude between the colonizers and colonized at the time of imperialism. Antoinette as a white Creole woman is forced to live a life of inbetweenness. This inbetweenness creates psychological and cultural displacement which causes mental disorder in her life.

Dilemma of Creole

Rhys describes her experience of reading Bronte’s Jane Eyre as:

“When I read Jane Eyre as a child, I thought, why should [Charlotte Bronte] think Creole women are lunatics and all that? What a shame to make Rochester’s first wife, Bertha, the awful madwoman, and I immediately thought I’d write the story as it might really have been. She seemed such a poor ghost. I thought I’d try to write her a life” (Plasa, 2001, p. 38).

One of the functions of Diaspora literature is to explore the uncertainties of identity in the colonial and postcolonial periods. Rhys explores the problems that emerge as a result of hybrid cultures and the hybrid social system of the Caribbean in Wide Sargasso Sea. Through her female character, she tackles the miseries of Creole woman that stop the Creole woman belonging to any society fully. The word Creole originates from Spanish ‘crier’, meaning ‘to breed’. Creole was first used to describe the European descendants in the Caribbean. It is also used for animals, plants and things that grow in natural climate and conditions (Smith, 1997, p.134).

Rhys, the daughter of a Welsh doctor and a white Creole mother came to England at the age of sixteen. She studied in English colonial institutions which created colonial attitudes towards colonized cultures. Rhys’ novel Wide Sargasso Sea presents tough struggle of its characters against the colonial empire. The Colonial culture and language are always considered a sign of superiority. The Mother country [colonial empire] has always been presented as a land of opportunities fulfilling all the wishes of colonized peoples. Howells argues that Rhys personally disliked to be called West Indian. She hated her Perse School for Girls in Cambridge because in the school she was regarded as West Indian (Howells, 1991, pp.22-23).

Rhys adopts the perspective of both Creole woman and white Englishman to try to describe the tensions that existed in Caribbean landscape which destabilized the society. Antoinette’s story produces an inbred, corrupt and emigrant Caribbean world. She is disliked by free slaves and oppressed by the rich white planters. Antoinette’s character incorporates the uncertainties of Creole. Her character is the exposure between colonial identification and misidentification with England. In Rhys’ novel Creole woman who is the victim of increasingly separate and economic of England and the West Indian colonies, constantly calls attention to this ambivalent situation which has a deep impact on her personality (Cilkowcki, 1997).

Antoinette’s character shows her consciousness for her identity as Creole woman. Being a white Creole female she is unable to locate her place and status in the multicultural and multiracial environment of the Caribbean society. She often wonders who she is; “So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all” (Rhys, 1966, p.64).

Antoinette faces tough events after the Emancipation Act. She experiences racial violence by black Africans who killed her mother’s horse and created different troubles for her. But Antoinette’s mother does nothing against them.

Cilkowcki writes by 1830 there was virtually a national consensus in England regarding the immorality of slavery. The abolition movement in England was steeped in “the rhetoric of Christian fellowship, human rights, and moral law that not only added in excluding the slaveholder from the community of respectable Englishmen and women but also clearly invested him with the moral and sexual indecencies attached to the hateful system he espoused” (Cilkowcki, 1997). Antoinette further discusses her identity displacement by stating a childhood incident:

“They called us white cockroaches let sleeping dog lie. One day a little girl followed me singing. Go away white cockroach, go away, go away, I walked fast but she walked faster, white cockroach, go away, go away, nobody wants you, go away” (Rhys, 1966, p.9).

Cockroaches are nocturnal scavengers and household pests; they are usually black or brown and associated with dirt and decay. So this word has been used for the best description of Creole. It also contains the hatred of blacks towards the Creoles. Such clashes greatly impact on Antoinette’s personality which causes uncertainty about her future.

Rhys writes in her unfinished autobiography Smile Please the reasoning of her cockroach hysteria is due to Meta the black housemaid. Rhys says:
“She said that when I was asleep at night they would fly in and bite my mouth and that the bite would never heal. […] It was Meta who taught me to be truly afraid of them.[…] Meta also told me that if a centipede was killed all the different bits would be alive and run into corners to become bigger, stronger, centipedes. It must be crushed. She said, mashed up” (Rhys, 1979, p.30).

Rhys and Meta who are the other of Antoinette and Christophine explain cockroaches as centipede and as a symbol of colonialism. Meta visualises cockroaches as white colonizer whose occupation is like sting which gives pain and remains as a blot of dishonour on the face of the colonized nation. Meta’s insist on “it must be crushed” represents the fear of black Africans who do not want any further exploitation in the hands of their previous white masters after Emancipation Act.

Savory considers Rhys under Brathwaite’s words: “the Helen of our wars”* a most influential and acclaimed writer in different postcolonial cultural lobbies. Caribbean cultural agony emerges in the form of race which has primary space in Rhys’ fiction. In Brathwaite’s words, “her painful awareness of race” declares Rhys the Caribbean writer. Savory further argues that it is impossible to escape from four hundred years racially divided Caribbean culture. The struggle to achieve African identity within the reference of black power’s insurgency in Trinidad highlights the crucial issues of Caribbean cultural politics and race. According to Brathwaite (1974) it is hard to identify white Creoles in “the present structure” of Caribbean and in its spiritual world. Rhys’ satirical approach exposes injustice and cultural dilemma that emerges with the creation of racial boundaries and with complexities of stereotypical ethnic behaviour in Caribbean (Brathwaite 1974; Savory 1998, pp.33-34).
*(1. She is compared to Helen’s beauty due to her unique writing style.)

When Mr Cosway dies, Antoinette’s French Creole mother and a servant from Martinique raise Antoinette on the French named Coulibri estate in the British colony of Jamaica so from the beginning Antoinette’s heritage is muddled. The impact of this muddled cultural heritage on her personality further increases by her mother’s marriage to an Englishman. This marriage proves a safeguard for Antoinette. Firstly, Antoinette is saved by the disgrace of poverty and secondly, the labels of “white niggers and white cockroaches” fall away. One certain point is that before the arrival of Mr. Mason Cosway, the Creole family is able to exist in the world of their own creation, a world where blacks are their own companions; their living style is very much same as the blacks have. A problem which becomes prominent by the arrival of Mr. Mason is the changing of family culture. This change is neither physical nor geographical but psychological and is chosen by Mr. Mason when he brings English lifestyle, manners and servants. Antoinette becomes an alien by giving up her own Caribbean culture. Despite adopting English manners, Antoinette misses Christophine’s cooking; “I was glad to be like an English girl but I missed the taste of Christophine’s cooking” (Rhys, 1966, p.17). The influence of Mr. Mason on both Antoinette and her mother presents colonial male superiority on colonized female. He introduces these Creole women to Englishness in order to maintain his control over their body and brain.

Mr. Mason’s character is a symbolic paragon of British virtues who with clever business mind seeks rebuilding of declined Coulibri estate. Booker and Juraga both view Mason as “an opportunist seeing Jamaica with its economy in ruins as ripe territory for exploitation by the wise businessman he believes himself to be”. Mason brings East Indian labours with him to replace the slave workers. This increased hostility among blacks and Creoles (2000, p.166).

O’Connor argues that the change in relationship between white Creoles and black Creoles is due to the arrival of “second wave of colonial British; represented by Mason and Rochester” (1986, p.198). Antoinette simultaneous with the arrival of white English visitors severs her childhood friendship with Tia. The collapse of this friendship shows winding up relations between white Creole and blacks in Jamaica. Antoinette calls Tia “cheating niggers” when she refuses to return Antoinette’s money despite her defeat in swimming by Antoinette. Tia responds by calling her “white nigger”. She says, “black nigger better than white nigger” (Rhys, 1966, p.10). Coulibri becomes a bitter place for this Creole family after the Emancipation Act has been introduced in the Caribbean. Indigenous blacks burn the estate of family to assert their liberation and superiority. A servant informs Mr. Mason and Annette about the burning of the house:

‘Oh, my God, they get at the back; they set fire to the back of the house’. He pointed to my bed room door which I had shut after me, and smoke was rolling out from underneath (Rhys, 1966, p, 20).

On a script for stage drama two performs share Jean’s role (Diana Quick as an older Jean and Madeline Potter plays her younger self called Ella) when she was actually baptised. In this extract Jean and Ella become aware to each other for the first time. Through this extract Rhys’s fear of black insurgencies in the Caribbean can easily be perceived (BBC, 2003):

Older Jane: What are you doing here?
Younger: Go away. (Weeping)
Older Jane: I can’t.
Younger: Leave me alone.
Older Jane: I am trying to remember.
Younger: Remember what?
Older Jane: Remember who I was? When, I was still called Ella. Remember. Why?
Younger: It’s what?
Older Jane: Her grandparents, what my grandparents, what your grandparents did to her? What they did to the slaves?
Younger: Why?
Older Jane: Because they were frightened. Imagine living on the other side of the world on a tiny West Indian island. Imagine twenty thousand people and only one hundred of them white. They were terrified.
(BBC, 2003).

Jean Rhys claims in her unfinished autobiography that “her grandfather’s estate house was burnt down by the freed negroes after the Emancipation Act” (Rhys, 1979, p.33). Angier opposes Rhys’ claim of estate destruction, instead she writes in her book ‘Biography of Rhys’ that “there is no evidence that the house was destroyed” (Angier, in Evans, 2005).

From the beginning of the novel Annette has an ambivalent attitude towards blacks. She considers them trustworthy but with some exceptions. Annette’s argument about blacks that they are “lazy or not but more alive than you are [Mr. Mason] but dangerous for some reasons”, shows her proleptic indenty of racial conflicts (Rhys, 1966, p.16). Rhys writes:

“I remember the riot as if it were yesterday. I must have been about twelve. One night my mother came into the bedroom I shared with my baby sister, woke us up. […] I heard far away a strange noise like animals howling but I knew it wasn’t animals, it was people and the noise came nearer and nearer. […] My father said: ‘they are perfectly harmless’. That’s what you think my mother said” (Rhys, 1979, p.47).

Antoinette herself experiences racial violence especially when she is surrounded along with her family by the mob of black people. She experiences the wrath and frenzy of natives. Here Antoinette encounters Tia, but Tia rejects Antoinette as she rejected Tia before, by joining the mob and throwing a stone at Antoinette (Rhys, 1966, p.24). This violent racial behaviour of blacks is due to two reasons, firstly; the ending of slavery, and second wealth and poverty. Perhaps the Blacks think that after the Emancipation Act, the land only belongs to them and they have the right to keep it in their captivity to use it. That is why they use force to expel the Creoles and whites from Coulibri. As Antoinette says,

“The black people did not hate us quite so much when we were poor. We were white but we had not escaped and soon we would be dead for we had no money left. What was there to hate?” (Rhys, 1966, p.16).

Savory views the economical apartheid of Barbados or in other words the economic classification between Black Africans and White Creoles is due to white Barbadians* dominance in business, finance, hotels, sport facilities and clubs (Savory, 1998, pp.33-34).

*(1. Savory uses Barbadians to reflect the economical classification of entire Caribbean region.)

Rhys has given a little space to Tia who is Antoinette’s black self, her double and her mirror linking Antoinette to her past. Tia, with her three times appearance in the novel holds a significant position especially when blacks set Coulibri estate on fire. Tia, Antoinette feels relax to see, is the only person whom Antoinette best identifies herself with. The burning incident of Coulibri estate when Antoinette’s family is encircled by blacks gives other picture of Antoinette and Tia’s relation:
“Then, not so far off, I saw Tia and her mother and I ran to her, for she was all that was left of my life as it had been. We had eaten the same food, slept side by side, [and] bathed in the same river. As I ran, I thought, I will live with Tia and I will be like her. Not to leave Coulibri. Not to go. Not. When I was close I saw the jagged stone in her hand but I did not see her throw it. I did not feel it either, only something wet, running down my face. I looked at her and I saw her face crumple up as she began to cry. We stared at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers. It was as if I saw my self. Like in a looking glass” (Rhys, 1966, p.24).

Though Tia denounces Antoinette along with other black people yet her face tells a different story; a story Antoinette recognizes as her own. Tia represents the natural world which, Antoinette is in-search of to stabilise her identity. Surrounded by the blacks induced violence, Antoinette, in Evans words, “still refuses to separate herself from the people” with whom she is best identified (Evans, 2005).

The relationship between Tia and Antoinette is more than friendship. Tia being racially black shows racial hatred between blacks and white Creoles and at the same time she represents the longing of whites to unite with the blacks. Antoinette’s positive feelings of personal identity come from Coulibri and Granbois. The garden at Coulibri is fragrant and sensuous but wild; Antoinette describes Coulibri in sensatory words.

“Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild; the paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. […] It was a bell shaped mass of white, mauve, deep purples, wonderful to see. The scent was very sweet and strong. I never went near it” (Rhys, 1966, p.6).

Coulibri seems a mortal paradise for Antoinette, who has been driven out of it. The above passage suggests Antoinette’s state of mind, driven as she is by memories of childhood by a woman with a tragic sense of what has lost. The other aspect of the text is that colonials are responsible for Jamaica’s wreckage. Staley argues; colonization caused desperation and violence in the Caribbean. Present doomed condition of Caribbean is strong enough to erase its beautiful past. He further argues that at the time of Rhys’ birth Dominica presents the scene of a Spanish town where grass grew in the streets with buildings as yellow as the fever (1979, p.104).

Callaghan discusses Rhys’ West Indianness which emerges through the issues “at stake during the late sixties and seventies”. Many Creole and white female writers wrote about the West Indian female experience during the ninetieth and twentieth centuries. The writings of these female writers involve the personal experience they faced “during and after the slave/plantation continuum”. These female writers discuss the issue of race to get to know the authenticity of the question can women only belonging to one race be West Indian? The less contributed attitude of white Creoles, Callaghan articulates, on cultural platform distanced them from blacks and disfigured their relation with present West Indian structure (Callaghan, 1998, pp.34-35).

When Antoinette leaves Coulibri and recovers from her illness and injury, Mr.Mason places her in a convent school. Here Antoinette learns proper European virtues. Her father visits her at the convent, and makes clear his plans for Antoinette. He has asked some English friends to spend next winter there (Rhys, 1966, p.33). Actually, Mr. Mason is preparing Antoinette for her future life which she possibly will lead in England. That is why she is being introduced to English culture and disregarding her own Creole or West Indian cultural heritage.

Chapter 4: Gender Inequality; Feminist Perspective of Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea raises problematic issues of race and gender. All women characters, presented in the novel are pitiful, segregated and victims of unkind behaviour of the white man. Women’s financial and gendered limitations make their condition much worse. Women fight against the society that has been formed and controlled by white colonial man. Rhys in Wide Sargasso Sea presents the sentiments of a Creole woman who has the feelings of nothingness, isolation and she thinks herself socially excluded. For Antoinette, happiness is unreal and meaningless because of constant sufferings she faces as female Creole. Rhys from a feminist perspective discusses the entire situation in the cultural context of Caribbean society where males are dominant over women. Rhys’ women do not find any alternate to escape except negotiation with the unfavourable circumstances created by men.

Antoinette’s struggle depicts women’s concerns about their place in male-dominant society along with the question of equal rights that they deserve being female. The differences of gender inequality are so great that sources of happiness and security are snatched from Antoinette and this situation lasts until the story ends. Wide Sargasso Sea presents changing moods of feminist movements in the twentieth century. The novel has been written in the postcolonial period exposing the complexities of male and female interaction. Rhys, through Wide Sargasso Sea, tries to represent deep-rooted gender differences that create hopeless situation for women in Caribbean region.

The marriage with Rochester brings great change in Antoinette’s life. Antoinette’s safety and happiness is not considered through this marriage. Both Antoinette and Rochester are strangers to each other. It is a passionless marriage which in other words is a business deal between a wealthy plantation owner and an Englishman. Rochester agrees to bind himself to this relationship in order to acquire economical strength. This marriage is an example of “how the colonial system operated for the benefit of England’s established families” (Plasa, 2001, p.42). The frustration is due to different reasons on the part of both Rochester and Antoinette. Rochester seeks acceptance as colonial but is ultimately rejected by Antoinette. Rochester feels this place unreal because everything is totally different from England. His Granbois’ walk suggests his mental condition and his inability to accept the Caribbean culture and its inhabitants. “I felt as I rode wearily after her. Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountain too high. The hills too near, and the woman is a stranger” (Rhys, 1966, p. 42).

The major disappointment Rochester faces is the strangeness of the woman which increases his fear of rejection and shows his apathy and inability to make any decision about his surroundings. This marriage also holds an aspect of danger of further alienation besides the concept of matrimonial bliss and hope. From the beginning of part two of the novel, Jean Rhys tries to convey the English view about the West Indies. A strong atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion is visible between Antoinette and Mr. Rochester. Rochester’s escape from the coolness of this uncivilized island represents the defeat of the colonial culture. Rochester’s honeymoon trip makes him more suspicious regarding his acceptance in black and Creole Dominican society. He describes Amelie, the little servant girl as “a lovely little creature but sly, who welcomes him with this remark ‘I hope you will be very happy, sir, in your sweet honeymoon house’. […]She was laughing at me I could see (Rhys, 1966, p.39).

Rochester is also in anxiety about his status as a purchased person. His pitiable condition is evident through his first written letter to his father.

“Dear father. The thirty thousand pounds have been paid to me without question or condition. No provision made for her (that must be seen to). I will never be a disgrace to you or to my dear brother the son you love. No begging letters, no mean requests. None of the furtive shabby manoeuvres of a younger son. I have sold my soul or you have sold it, and after all is it such bad bargain? The girl is thought to be beautiful, she is beautiful. And yet” (Rhys, 1966, p. 42).

Rhys shows an ideological element within Rochester’s personality, afraid of going back to England as a “rejected suitor jailed by this Creole girl” (Rhys, 1966, p.48). Kendrick argues, “Lacking an English wife, he can not in turn imagine himself as a proper English husband” (Kendrick, 1994). This fear reduces his capacity to resist the blanks of his mind that in his own words “can not be filled up” (Rhys, 1966, p.46).

A major psychological effect on Antoinette’s mind and thinking comes from her dreams. These dreams are the predictions of her future hardships. They tell her how to behave and handle daily matters. Her second dream before her marriage and after her father’s visit to the convent with Antoinette’s marriage plan shows Antoinette’s psychological growth.

“Again I have left the house at Coulibri. It is still night and I am walking towards the forest. I am wearing a long dress and thin slippers, so I walk with difficulty, following the man who is with me and holding up the skirt of my dress. It is white and beautiful and I don’t wish to get it soiled. I follow him, sick with fear but I make no effort to save myself; if anyone were to try to save me, I would refuse. This must happen. Now we have reached the forest. We are under the tall dark trees and there is no wind. ‘Here’. He turns and looks at me, his face black with hatred, and when I see this I begin to cry. He smiles slyly. ‘Not here, not yet,’ he says, and I follow him, weeping. Now I do not try to hold up my dress, it trails in the dirt, my beautiful dress. We are no longer in the forest but in an enclosed garden surrounded by a stone wall and the trees are different trees. I do not know them. There are steps leading upwards. It is too dark to see the wall or the steps, but I know they are there and I think, ‘it will be when I go up these steps. At the top,’ I stumble over my dress and cannot get up. I touch a tree and my arms hold on to it. ‘Here, here.’ But I think I will not go any further. The tree sways and jerks as if it is trying to throw me off. Still I cling and the seconds pass and each one is a thousand years. ‘Here, in here,’ a strange voice said, and the tree stopped swaying and jerking” (Rhys, 1966, p.34).

Allan Gordon argues that Antoinette’s dreams present the psychological development which she acquires at different points in her life. In her first dream Antoinette is merely walking in the forest, ‘with someone who hated me’; in the second dream, she is walking through the forests around Coulibri in the company of a man who is “black with hatred”. Antoinette‘s clean dress symbolizes her virginity which she keeps. Antoinette’s dreams in a way show the consequences which she will face in her married life. Gordon further argues, “The pure dress represents a wedding dress, and the hateful man Rochester” (Gordon, 2004). In O’Connor’s view, she “masochistically and insistently lays herself on the sexual altar, of marrying Rochester” (1986, p.186). Antoinette’s second dream also shows Antoinette’s helplessness and powerlessness in the patriarchal society. Antoinette’s dress represents an ideal femininity. This dream also indicates how powerless and helpless she will be in her married life. Different types of natural objects in her dreams like, forest, garden, strange trees and walls present a strange world for Antoinette. “We are no longer in the forest but in an enclosed garden”, clarifies Antoinette’s further relocation to England.

Throughout Rochester’s portion of the novel Antoinette can be seen struggling with her identity. She is not sure about her future home in England. She believes what she sees. Antoinette expresses her emotions with her homeland, by introducing Rochester to the beauty of Granbois, “the earth is red here do you notice?” It is red in parts of England too. Oh, England, England she called back mockingly, and the sound went on and on like a warning. I did not choose to hear” (Rhys, 1966, p43).

Rhys depicts Rochester as an irritable person. She presents Antoinette’s story from the man’s perspective as well. Rochester says: “We drank champagne. A great many moths and beetles found their way into the room, flew into the candles and fell dead on the tablecloth. […]Is it true she said that England is like a dream? Because one of my friends who married an Englishman wrote and told me so. She said this place London is like a cold dark dream sometimes. I want to wake up’. Well,’ I answered annoyed, ‘that is precisely your beautiful island seems to me quite unreal like a dream.’ But how can rivers and mountain and sea be unreal?’ ‘And how can millions of people, their houses and their streets be unreal’? ‘More easily,’ she said, ‘much more easily. Yes a big city must be like a dream.’ ‘No, this is unreal like a dream,’ I thought” (Rhys, 1966, p.49).

Both Christophine and Antoinette think England an unreal place. Christophine warns Antoinette of the hypocrisy of colonial behaviour. She also thinks of London as a cold place which “freezes bones and they [will] thief your money”. Rhys uses the word “cold place” to indicate the barrenness and harsh reality of London as the centre of the colonial power. Antoinette has never seen England and does not know whether or not it exists on the map of the world. She perceives every thing through Christophine’s remarks, “I know what I see with my eyes and I never see it [England],” (Rhys, 1966, p.70). The entire situation and atmosphere around Antoinette seems fixed and complex. She is in-between places and unable to choose a single.

Rochester from the beginning of his marriage imposes his authority on his wife. Due to its material basis this marriage provides Antoinette with nothing but sorrows. Rochester uses different means to tease Antoinette and Daniel’s letter provides him with the grounds for this action. Rochester’s sexual relationship with Amelie deals a psychological blow to Antoinette. She firms herself to denounce her relation with Rochester. Being Rochester’s wife is a profound psychological shock for Antoinette because Rochester has ignored her attempts to build a sexual relation with himself. Accad argues that the issue of sexuality is very strong, that’s why people try to avoid it. Instead, they prefer to discuss other factors of social inequalities and injustice such as economics and traditional values, but sexuality has been a key factor in the inequality and instability of any society (1990, p.11).

Rochester does not like the relationship between Antoinette and Christophine. His inability to understand the Creole culture creates a distance between himself and them. His perception about Christophine as an Obeah woman is strengthened by Daniel’s letter. Rochester argues to Antoinette on her contact with Christophine:

Why do you hug and kiss Christophine? I’d say.
Why not?
I wouldn’t hug and kiss them,’ I’d say, ‘I couldn’t.
At this she’d laugh for a long time and never tell me why she laughed (Rhys, 1966, p.57). Rochester feels Antoinette’s behaviour very strange sometimes. He perceives her as English in heritage even European in culture, but of a different race. “She never blinks at all it seems to me. Long, sad, dark alien eyes. Creole of pure English descent she may be, but they are not English or European. And when did I begin to notice all this about my wife Antoinette? After we left Spanish town I suppose” (Rhys, 1966, p.40).

Christophine tells Antoinette about the psyche of the male gender and advises her to leave Rochester. But Antoinette being economically dependent is unable to do so. She says, “I am not rich now, I have no money of my own at all, everything I had belongs to him” (Rhys, 1966, p.69). By law Rochester is authorised to hold everything that belongs to Antoinette. This situation presents Antoinette as a dependent and powerless woman who is unable to decide anything for herself. Explaining the importance of economical freedom for women Eichler Margrit argues: “the oppression of women is understood within the basic politico-economic structure of the state. […] Whether or not a woman has her own independent income is likely to be more important for her than the amount of money her husband earns” (1980, p.105).

Antoinette in this miserable situation asks Christophine to help her by Obeah. She reluctantly uses Obeah to support Antoinette. Obeah is a spirit theft, and it can reduce human beings to the state of puppets, dolls or zombies. Christophine recognizes what Rochester is doing and accuses him of spirit stealing; “All you want to break her up […]. She come[s] to me and ask me for something to make you love her again and I tell her no […]. It’s foolishness. […]. You start calling her names, Bertha, Antoinette, marionette, marionette, antoinetta” (Rhys, 1966, p.99). Christophine accuses Rochester of sexual betrayal. Rochester threatens Christophine with the law but she answers directly, dismantling his coded message of imperial power, “no police here. […] No chain gang, no tread machine, no dark jail either. This is a free country and I am free women” (Rhys, 1966, p.103). Christophine’s personal life asserts her deliberate difference from Rochester, but Antoinette, who tries to mimic Christophine in an attempt to become like her, is trapped in limbo and defined by negatives and eventually sees herself without recognition as “the ghost women with streaming hair” (Rhys, 1966, p.123).

Rhys presents all black women characters as free and more liberated than white women. Tia, Amelie and Christophine being black women feel free to do anything even establishing sexual relationships with whites. Christophine’s character is a source of inspiration for Antoinette. She provides a tough contest for Rochester over his actions. Christophine produces a strong critique on the patriarchal and imperial system. She argues with Rochester very strongly as:

“She is Creole girl, and she has the sun in her. Tell the truth now. She don’t come to your house in this place England they tell me about, she don’t come to your beautiful house to beg you to marry with her. No, it’s you come all the long way to her house. It’s you beg her to marry. And she loves you and she gives you all she has. Now you say you don’t love her and you break her up. What you do with her money, eh?” Her voice was still quiet but with a hiss in it when she said, money (Rhys, 1966, p.102).

Christophine rejects any type of patriarchal male dominance whether it appears in the relationship of husband, son and father. She is the only person who offers to guard Antoinette. Antoinette and her mother’s condition is very similar. Both mother and daughter seem ghosts in their lifetime. Both of them become victims of colonial repression. Mr. Mason and Mr. Rochester are very much similar in their behaviours. Both of them gain physical control over Creole bodies and aim to grip their thinking as well. They want to dominate these Creoles physically and psychologically. But they face a strong and determined resistance from mother and daughter.

Gender inequality distances Rochester and Antoinette. Rochester sees Antoinette as a mad girl and a ghost and Antoinette blames him for portraying false heavens. They are both incompatible to each other. Both Rochester and Antoinette wish to kill each other by their hatred. “We’ll see who hates best, but first I’ll destroy your hatred” (Rhys, 1966, p.110). Isolation, rejection and negligence all participate in increasing hatred. Antoinette has become a puppet in this miserable situation. She is like a caged bird that flaps her wings but is unable to take flight.

Isolation is another factor in Antoinette’s inbetweenness and madness. She is rejected by her mother, isolated by blacks, carried to London and imprisoned in an attic as a mad woman. In England Rochester imprisons her in one window, colourless and cardboard room which is completely different from her birth place. In a conversation with Grace Pool, Antoinette expresses her distrust of being in England. Psychologically disturbed Antoinette argues that “we have lost our way to England. When? Where? I don’t remember, but we have lost” (Rhys, 1966, p.117). The discoloured England is extremely different from the “Red earth”, of Granbois. It is contradictory to Rochester's claim “it is red in parts in England too”. Antoinette is in the situation of inbetweenness that puzzles and frightens her about her future. A hopeless, psychologically ill woman wonders “why I have been brought here. For what reason? There must be a reason. What is it that I must do”? (Rhys, 1966, p.116).There is no rescue for Antoinette and no more Christophine to save her. She is in a strange circle of time. Is this the time to prove “say die and I will die, say die and watch me die”. Isn’t she dead already? A ghost with a dead mind who wishes to see herself in the looking glass “to know what I am like now. I remember watching myself brush my hair and how my eyes looked back at me” (Rhys, 1966, p.117). Antoinette is still in agony to discover her identity despite being mentally disturbed. An identity she has had to relocate from Jamaican gardens to an English attic. From the warm sunshine of Caribbean to the cold and dark features of England.

Her mother also faced quite similar circumstances in her time when her son died. Christophine says about her mother’s condition that, “they tell her she is mad, they act like she is mad. [….] They won’t let me see her” (Rhys, 1966, p.101). In part third of the novel, Grace Poole also shows her concerns regarding Antoinette’s physical and mental condition when she speaks to Mrs. Eff, “She sits shivering and she is so thin. If she dies on my hands who will get the blame?” (Rhys, 1966, p.115) Antoinette is isolated and feels empty without the scenery of Coulibri. That is the place where her spirit moves; she is inextricably linked to this environment. The only time she believes in England is when she is taken outside her attic to the garden. It is only the grass, the trees, and water which allows her to believe.

Antoinette’s imprisonment in the attic in London brings back to her past and sense of identity. She wears an old red West Indian dress instead of Grace Pool’s grey wrapper. The red dress reminds her of the warm and lively West Indies. She says, “But I looked at the dress on the flour and it was as if the fire had spread across the room. It was beautiful and it reminded me of something” (Rhys, 1966, p.121). Just after this passage Antoinette dreams her last dream of escape. Actually at this stage when she is mentally deranged, she seems unable to stop the intermingling of her dreams and memories. The past and the future effectively capture her state of mind; she is passionately determined whilst simultaneously confused and forlorn.

Her dream begins in the tower where she is imprisoned. She steals the keys from the sleeping Grace Pool and comes out of the tower with a burning candle. “I walked as though I were flying”. The act of flying provides her escape but Antoinette is afraid of an unseen person who follows her. “Someone was following me; someone was chasing me, laughing. […] I never looked behind me for I did not want to see that ghost of a woman who they say haunt this place” (Rhys, 1966, p.122). The woman with streaming hair is unidentified. She is either the older version of Bronte’s Bertha or her mad mother who was confined in the farmhouse. Rhys portrays a pessimistic picture of Antoinette who wishes to escape but the woman’s laughing suggest Antoinette’s unsuccessful attempt.

Antoinette exposes her interior emotion and deep desire not to be displaced any more. “I saw the grandfather clock and Aunt Cora’s patchwork, all colours. […] and I heard the man’s voice, Bertha! Bertha! All this I saw and heard in a fraction of a second. Someone screamed and I thought, why did I scream? I called Tia, and jumped and woke” (Rhys, 1966, p.123). The images of the “orchids and stephanotis and jasmine” and her doll’s house hearken back to her relatively innocent and safe childhood in the Caribbean. The fire represents a transformation from cold, stony, drab England to a warm, passionate, colourful Caribbean. Allan Gordon argues that,

Antoinette’s anger can be seen at the corruption of her identity in the final scene of her dream. The image of Coco the parrot jumping from a burning Coulibri parallels that of Antoinette jumping from a burning Thornfield. It suggests that Antoinette feels anguish at Rochester for subjugating her as her stepfather, another Englishman, subjugated Coco by clipping his wings (Gordon, 2004).

Antoinette’s inability to recognize her voice as the source of the scream reflects her loss of identity. The fire to the attic indicates Antoinette’s rebellion against Rochester’s patriarchal behaviour. Antoinette’s perception of Rochester’s calls to “Bertha,” an identity he imposed upon her, suggests Rochester’s role in this loss.

Conclusion

Naipaul and Rhys both present the decolonization of Caribbean colonies and the problems this caused for their postcolonial citizens through their texts, The Mimic Men and Wide Sargasso Sea respectively. The characters of these novels experience the lasting effects of colonialism in the postcolonial period. Both the novels unfold the harsh realities of colonialism in the Caribbean region and the struggle of formerly colonized people to claim their own identity, ethnicity and culture. The characters of Ralph Singh and Antoinette represent simultaneously the features of resistance and mimicry of the colonizer. This response as I have interrogated it in Naipaul and Rhys’ novels involves different issues relating to individual freedom, gender inequality and questions of identity. Cultural differences, identity displacement and the sense of inbetweenness on the part of both the protagonists are clearly shown in these novels. Both the novels present a debate on race and identity which are two of the most complex issues in postcolonial societies, exposing hatred among different ethnic groups. The Mimic Man and Wide Sargasso Sea expose the psychological and mental inbetweenness of postcolonial citizens as a result of multiethnic and multicultural behaviours in Caribbean society. The major theme of these writings is to show the condition of those people who racially neither belong to colonizer nor the colonized natives since they were imported to the Caribbean from other regions of Britain’s colonial empire and became in the Caribbean victims of both of the colonisers and natives. Ralph and Antoinette’s characters are shown as being formed by the long historical context of colonial age migration. Ralph and Antoinette are the representatives of peoples who are stretched between two cultures and two places and are unable to hold to a single identity. The struggle of these people to find their original identity snatched by the colonizer is a major issue discussed by both Naipaul and Rhys, whose novels elaborate the misery produced by displacement and inbetweenness. These victimized people are in search of a centre in order to escape from the miseries and ethnic problems that exist in a postcolonial society. Both authors build into their novels the search for an original identity investing their personal experience in the construction of a broader vision. Ralph’s uncertain future and his vain struggle to connect himself to his ancestral culture produces nothing but further confusion regarding his own identity. Similarly Antoinette’s character raises some key question and concerns regarding female status within racially divided and patriarchal societies; Antoinette’s character reflects how difficult it is for a woman to maintain her identity and control her own life in completely hostile and unfavourable conditions in such a colonial patriarchal society. The struggle of Ralph Singh and Antoinette Cosway reveals the loneliness of the individual who finds how hard it is to persuade others to understand the emotions and feelings of a displaced personality. The common theme of these writings is to expose the conflicts surrounding race, ethnicity and gender encountered by Ralph Singh and Antoinette Cosway. V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men and Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea are remarkably successful revelations of the realities left by the inhuman face of colonialism and its inflected miseries.

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