Women, Slavery, and the Problem of Freedom in Wide Sargasso Sea

Gilchrist, Jennifer

doi:10.1215/0041462x-2012-4003

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…In the utterance the actual animal is not present, and it is only what the animal represents that is brought forth to differentiate between "us" and "them." Because the novel is permeated by symbolism, it is no wonder that many read Coco predominantly through his symbolic and metaphoric functions (see e.g., Gilchrist 2012;Hope 2012;Huggan 1994;Neel 2017). Granted, the animal symbolism in Wide Sargasso Sea and surrounding Coco is unmistakable, but perhaps exactly because of this it is refreshing to think of him -or any of the other nonhuman animals for that matter -as an own character instead of as a mere symbol and metaphor for human actions and destinies.…”

Section: Symbolism and Wide Sargasso Seamentioning

confidence: 99%

"Ché Coco, ché Coco": An animal reading of Coco the parrot in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

Kangas

2024

FJHAS

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The various human characters of Jean Rhys’s novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) have attracted the attention of literary scholars from different perspectives. However, the novel’s nonhuman animal characters have previously been studied mainly as symbols for human actions and destinies. In this article, I problematise this type of anthropocentric approach from a Human-Animal Studies and a literary criticism perspective. I analyse Coco as a character of the novel and as a member of his own species. My analysis examines the nature of human-animal relationships, their representations in literature, and the binary oppositions inherent in them. Additionally, I critically evaluate the ways in which nonhuman animals are perceived and depicted in cultural representations. I argue that Rhys shows Coco as a parrot with species-typical behaviour and as a character with his own agency. Nevertheless, one should not disregard his symbolic functions, which draw attention to gendered colonial violence. Furthermore, the symbolic and linguistic violence in the novel forces the nonhuman animal into a position below the human animal and normalises violence towards nonhuman animals. The human-animal relationships in Wide Sargasso Sea vary from something akin to close companionship all the way to subjugation under the will of the more powerful.

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Section: Symbolism and Wide Sargasso Seamentioning

confidence: 99%

"Ché Coco, ché Coco": An animal reading of Coco the parrot in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

Kangas

2024

FJHAS

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“…Jennifer Gilchrist (2012)in her women Slavery, and the Problem of Freedom in Wide Sargasso Sea claims that Jean Rhys presentation of the post-Emancipation Jamaican setting of Wide Sargasso Sea as one of despair subverts a conventional, progressive conception of history: that the end of slavery marked a triumph of goodwill over vicious greed and a spiritual and ethical advance for mankind. In the novel, the locus of despondency is Antoinette, for whom the Abolition of Slavery Act means the deaths of her immediate family members.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

8TH INTERNATIONAL VISIBLE CONFERENCE ON EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS Book of Proceedings

2017

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Turkey. Our mission is to make Education Faculty of IshikUniversity a place where academics and researchers from all over the world meet to discuss the developments of their discipline and present their work. To serve this purpose, conferences are organized along the lines of well-established and well defined scientific disciplines. In addition, interdisciplinary conferences are also organized because they serve the mission statement of the University. We would like to thank all the participants, the members of the organizing and academic committee and University administrative for putting this conference together. 20-Function and Position of Noun phrases in English and KurdishJwan 40-Flipped Classrooms in Teaching Method Courses at Universities in IraqDr. Hamdi Serin / Alfer Khabibullin 520 AbstractIn our new scientific world of complex and abstract concepts, which are often not directly perceivable, we need a new way to spark better our perceiving of unfamiliar, complex and some problematic ideas that enters our lives. The only appropriate way to achieve the former aim is , to use metaphor or specifically " scientific metaphor " which is considered such powerful and fundamental devices within the figurative language , that can affect in our everyday communication and thinking about scientific knowledge . Metaphor is viewed as a key element of human cognition by its importance as a crucial device which is found for helping us to perceive the new , complex and abstract concepts and make these concepts to be impact and memorable by linking them to old concept that we already perceiving with physical senses that evolution has given us . Metaphor is applied frequently on technology and used for scientific purposes to make people more familiar when they are talking or thinking about new things. Nowadays evolution has not equipped humans to directly perceive new concepts, as a computer and internet which are highly complex new technology means used for communication .Since long and complex sentences in scientific texts .and the the abstract phenomena cannot be perceived , they have to be perceived imaginatively in order to explain them by using metaphors or analogies , there is a need for this study .The main aim of this study is to investigate EFL students' perception of metaphor in different scientific texts. The current study examines the hypothesis that the students of English as foreign language can not perceive metaphor, its source domain, the closest meaning of metaphorical expressions and literal meaning of metaphor in scientific text, it also investigates whether there is significant difference between male and female students in their perception of the same aspects and finding out EFL students level in perceiving metaphor in scientific texts. This study is limited to the students of fourth stage in English Department at Tikrit University during the academic year 2014 -2015. A diagnostic test has been constructed , its validity is achieved by presenting it to the jury members and its reliability has be...

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What can be said and not said, is known and not known: race and the work of Jean Rhys, Fanny Kemble and Katherine Anne Porter

Savory

2023

Feminist Modernist Studies

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Women, Slavery, and the Problem of Freedom in Wide Sargasso Sea

Cited by 6 publications

References 23 publications

"Ché Coco, ché Coco": An animal reading of Coco the parrot in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

"Ché Coco, ché Coco": An animal reading of Coco the parrot in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

8TH INTERNATIONAL VISIBLE CONFERENCE ON EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS Book of Proceedings

What can be said and not said, is known and not known: race and the work of Jean Rhys, Fanny Kemble and Katherine Anne Porter

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