MADNESS as ANTI-COLONIAL AGENT in WIDE SARGASSO SEA and THE BELL JAR

Abstract

The present article studies the metaphor of mirror as third space of enunciation in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and Syliva Plath’s The Bell Jar. Women characters’ madness as a result of colonial power namely patriarchy in Esther of Bell Jar and imperial approach in Antoinette of Wide Sargasso Sea is the result of their fractured sense of identity, response to their dispossession from selfhood, and frightening sense of dismissing culture and sanity. Both female characters are emotionally vulnerable; while Antoinette is economically powerless; internally displaced, who deals with dismissed sexual passion, Esther’s suicidal depression is the result of her reaction against the pressures of social conventions and protest against patriarchal power which has contaminated the psychiatric treatment to make female patients obedient wives. Both Esther and Antoinette seek seclusion in mirrors following the loss of their mental health. The looking glass in both novels suggests double identity, madness and deterioration of subjectivity as a result of colonizing power. Mental instability and loss of identity has been interpreted as Bhabhaian third space of enunciation in mentioned novels.