Readings/Writing for Tuesday

Finish Part Three of Wide Sargasso Sea (105-112) if you haven’t already

Then read BACKGROUNDS (119-156):
* Bronte, from Jane Eyre
* Rhys, Selected Letters
* Rhys, Selected Excerpts (The Bible is Modern, etc.)

For Tuesday’s class, I want you to read the above excerpts, and use them to “read” some aspect or passage of the novel. How do Rhys’ other writings, or Bronte’s original novel shed light on what Rhys wrote or how she may have wanted us to see it? How do her letters reveal her own creative struggle to bring the “madwoman in the attic” to life, as well as discuss her own identity as a “postcolonial”/Caribbean writer in English? Also consider how the short essays may “rewrite” or expand upon ideas that are implicit in Wide Sargasso Sea itself. Be SPECIFIC and use these background writings as theory: that is, as a way to decipher and understand the subjective and mercurial nature of a literary work.