For Tuesday: Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (read to around page 50 or so)

Jean Rhys as a young woman

NOTE: See the post BELOW for more discussion and ideas about Kincaid's "A Small Place" (if you're not already exhausted by it).  It was our best discussion yet, so I kind of want to prolong it.  Remember, I'm not trying to offend anyone, but to complicate our views about the 'postcolonial' world, which may or may not even exist!

Some ideas to consider when reading/responding to Wide Sargasso Sea:

1. How does the novel contrast Antoinette with the rest of her society, almost all of whom are recently liberated slaves?  Why do they call her "white nigger" and "white cockroach," and how might this hint at tensions in power structure of slavery itself? 

2. How does Rhys use the landscape as a character itself in the novel?  How is it described and how do individual characters, such as Antoinette and Rochester, respond to it? 

3. Examine the passage on page 23-25 when the estate is burned down.  What is the significance of this scene and what happens (and what is said)? 

4. Why does Christophine stay with the family when everyone else abandons them?  What role do you feel she plays in the novel?