W Jan 30 In Class: "Wide Sargasso Sea: Real and Imaginary Islands" and Discussion; all selections by Rhys, 132-56

     The selection of letters presented to us in pages 132 to 145 show us, the readers of the letters, an in depth analysis of the mind of Jean Rhys in her writing of here book, Wide Sargasso Sea. She makes at first many comments about freedom of criticism in the relation between Americans and the English, how she was "dragged into writing by a series of coincidences", and the state of the arts.
     Now, at first, this may seem like menial things just to talk about with a friend but however, everything she writes here is reflected on in here novel. She chooses to write about the mind of a lunatic from the West Indies. This goes to contradict what the English generally publish which is about pleasant things in a sense to control he masses, an abstraction of what was written by Jean Rhys herself. She takes on the perspective of a character of whom would be difficult to understand of which is a feat in literature, a new perspective. She wants to build up the "mad Creole". Give an explanation to the madness, a reason for Mr. Rochester cruelty.
Jean Rhys makes it perfectly clear in her letters about her intentions for her novel. Not only does she want to build this character up, but as mentioned in the letter to Francis Windlam in the 4th paragraph, "But I, readin it later, and often, was vexed at her portrait of the "paper tiger" lunatic, the all wrong creole scences,...", she wanted to build up Creole, and the true cruelty of Mr. Rochester. On the note of Mr. Rochester true cruelty, here is a quote in the same letter that shows a perspective from whence his cruelty came. I say a perspective because it is not the only perspective:

     "Mr. Rochester tries hard not to be a tyrant. Back in Spanish Town he gives her a certain freedom, tries to be kindly if distant.
     But now she is angry too. Like a hurricane. Like a Creole. For his second revenge - his affair with her maid (and next door) has hurt more than the first.
     She uses her freedom to rush off and have an affair too - first with her pal Sandi - then with others. All coloured or black, which was, in those days a terrible thing for a white girl to do. Not to be forgiven. The men did as they liked. The women - never.
     So imagine Mr.R's delight when he can haul her to England, lock her up in a cold dark room, deprive her of all she's used to - watch her growing mad. And so on ..."

This perspective offers insight to the cruelty of Mr. Rochester in the sense that he is getting hypocritical revenge for her not only smearing her own name, but in the process smearing his.


    All of which falls in line with her novel Wide Sargasso Sea. These letters are the inner-workings of Rhys' mind as she worked on completing the novel.

(Sorry for the wall of text! ~Leroy Hunter 8:49pm 30/1/2013~)

I would like to mention that in the very last reading, From Black Exercise Book†, there was this sense of double consciousness  She feels uneasy with both black and white people. She felt akin to black people but in reality is rejected for she is white yet, although she is white, she feels akin to black people. A conundrum which create the double consciousness.



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Again, I am sorry for the wall of text provided here, I could not organize my thoughts as I would have liked. (Sensitive to the light being emitted everywhere on the account that I might be sick.) So this wall of text is an example of the untrimmed version of a blog that I put up at first.

R L.Carson's Reading Sargasso Sea

     "Once they lived near the sea's edge, a few feet or a few fathoms below the surface, but never far above a firm bottom. They knew the rhythmic movements of waves and tides. They could leave the shelter of the weeds at will and creep or swim about over the bottom in search of food. Now, in the middle of the ocean, they are in a new world."

     I feel that this quote represents the feeling of both colonizers going to the West Indians and the indigenous people having to meet and experience the colonizers. Both people were thrown into new environments, West  Indians into the societies of their colonizers and colonizers into the new environment of the West Indies, and had to learn the differences betwixt each other. Because of which, no one can feel safe or find a home even among themselves as people find new tides or waves to suit life in their new environments. This create changing of the rhythm brought on by time disturbs the tides and creates the double consciousness not only among the West Indies' indigenous but creates conflict among the colonizers and causes immense changes within both cultures.

Reading by Jane Eyre

From page 129
'"Go," said Hope, "and live again in Europe: there it is not known what a sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to you. You may take the maniac with you to England; confine her with due attendance and precautions at Thornfield: then travel yourself to what clime you will, and form what new tie you like."

This first portion of the quote I believe is what formed the mindset about many colonists. They believed that they lived 2 different lives. One in the West Indies and one in England. It explains why many colonists acted the way they did and thus treated the people the way they did. The life they had in the West Indies did not matter, the only one that was important was the life in England, the one to which they were born too.

"That women who has so abused your long-suffering - so sullied your name; so outraged your honour; so blighted your youth - is not your wife; nor are you her husband."

This quote seems to contradict the presence of God because their marriage was under him. So why is it that should he return to England that this marriage does not stand? Is God's presence not accounted for in the West Indies? If this is the case, it this why colonist treated the indigenous people of the West Indies like beast or in a twist of words, why the colonists acted like beasts themselves?
 

End of Mary Prince Readings 89-115

The quote I am about to post is of several parts and comes from pages 110-111 

"Masters v. Slaves

Jacob of Mozambique, slave of W, Servyntyn, for threatening the life of his master, and making resistance against the Veld-Cornet: condemned to be exposed to public view, made fast under the gallows; thereupon to be flogged, branded, and confined on Robben Island (to work in irons) for life."

Jacob basically receives a life sentence for threatening his master. Even with this perspective alone, the unfairness can be seen. The slave's life, of which he doesn't even own because it is at the master's discretion, is basically and permanently taken away from him as he is sent to prison. Now, a true demonstration of unfairness.

"Slaves v Masters

O.C Mostert, for cruel treatment of a female slave, in consequence of which she died; condemned to be banished from this colony and its dependencies for twenty-five years."

To compare, Mostert is not even sent to prison, just sent away from the colonies for 25 years as compared to Jacob, who didn't kill anyone, it given a life sentence to prison on Robben Island. Even the law judges slaves differently. The slaves believed they would be treated differently if they were free but in their society, it is impossible for that to truly happen, that and the chance of them being free was slim as the master's would physically and psychologically prevent slaves from achieving that purpose.

W Jan 16 Read the Introduction and The History of Mary Prince to p. 38

Posted at 11:39 p.m. EST

Taken from page 10 of Am I Not A Woman and a Sister? The History of Mary Prince,

     "When I reached the house, I went in directly to Miss Betsy. I found her in great distress; and she cried out as soon as she saw me, "Oh Mary! my father is going to sell you all to raise money to marry that wicked women. You are my slaves, and he has no right to sell you; but it is all to please her." She then told me that my mother was living with her father's sister at a house close by, and I went there to see her."

     I find that it is a strange conflict to talk about being a slave, an item, and about that item's family in the same sentence. If slaves are not human, if slaves are items that hold value and can be traded at any whim, why is it that one, Miss Betsy shows fondness of them as humans, and two tells the "item", about their family?

What I am trying to say is that their seems to be confusion brought on by this myriad of owners that Mary goes through. (To be clear, Mary has a few good owners but then the rest are awful.). She is treated humanely and inhumanely at the some time. She is an other in her society, even when she became free.

She is never truly free in that society.

Pg 34 applies directly to this blog.
"She said, "If she goes the people will rob her, and then turn her adrift."

Finally, There is a passage on page 37, that ends with the end of the reading on page 38 if which is very long and thus unreasonable for me to try to post, that starts with "I am often much vexed,..." that shows an example of misrepresentation.
   Many slaves were not able to read and or write  even much for that matter communicate on a level of which they could be understood outside of their "class". So, it is a farce for anyone other than a slave to say how a slave must feel and even worst so for people to believe what that person says.

M Jan 14 "The Dark Mirror: Slave Communities" : just the speeches from Shakespeare's The Tempest (1611) by Caliban; also read Richard Steele's THE SPECTATOR entry for Tuesday, March 13, 1711. on Inkle and Yarico; also read Robert Browning's 1864 dramatic monologue "Caliban Upon Setebos"

From The Spectator

     "Sir, when I consider, how perfectly new all you have said on this Subject is, and that the Story you have given us is not quite two thousand Years Old, I cannot but think it a Piece of Presumption to dispute with you: But your Quotations put me in Mind of the Fable of the Lion and the Man. The Man walking with that noble Animal, showed him, in the Ostentation of Human Superiority, a Sign of a Man killing a Lion. Upon which the Lion said very justly, We Lions are none of us Painters, else we could show a hundred Men ruled by Lions, for one Lion killed by a Man. You Men are Writers, and can represent us Women as Unbecoming as you please in your Works, while we are unable to return the Injury. You have twice or thrice observed in your Discourse, that Hypocrisy is the very Foundation of our Education ; and that an Ability to dissemble our affections, is a professed Part of our Breeding. These, and such other Reflections, are sprinkled up and down the Writings of all Ages, by Authors, who leave behind them Memorials of their Resentment against the Scorn of particular Women, in Invectives against the whole Sex. Such a Writer, I doubt not, was the celebrated Petronius, who invented the pleasant Aggravations of the Frailty of the Ephesian Lady; but when we consider this Question between the Sexes, which has been either a Point of Dispute or Raillery ever since there were Men and Women, let us take Facts from plain People, and from such as have not either Ambition or Capacity to embellish their Narrations with any Beauties of Imagination."

     I have decided to use this passage because it shows a true example of otherness within a society by Arietta's scolding of a man of whom exhibits a very sexist nature in his account of the Story of the Ephesian Matron. By otherness, I mean to point out that even with her own society, that women are made into an entirely different class as men. Because of this class difference, women are not able to properly represent themselves and are represented improperly and are unable to show the faults of that way of thought. This quote serves not only as an example but also as an awakening to the hypocrisy that is happening. 

F Jan 11 "Reflections of Europe in the New World": all extracts from Christopher Columbus's 1492 Journal and Sir Walter Raleigh's 1595 The Discovery of Guiana

    Both sources seem to show that the motive for exploration was for the discovery of gold and other various riches for the king and queen to have. Their exploration also being for knowledge and expansion, in other words colonization. Their description of the people as they move through the islands seems to show that the people are primitive compared to them and weak if they should attack them.

      "I do not, however, see the necessity of fortifying the place, as the people here are simple in war-like matters, as your Highnesses will see by those seven which I have ordered to be taken and carried to Spain in order to learn our language and return, unless your Highnesses should choose to have them all transported to Castile, or held captive in the island. I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased."

     The importance of this, is to show how different they were compared the indigenous people of the islands they passed by. The intentions of the colonizers is to, one, find and discover land suitable for the king and queen, two, discover untold riches and bring it back to their king and queen, and finally although indirectly, suggest changes for the king and queen to infer onto the indigenous people of the islands to make them more civilized like converting them to Christianity, and making them learn their language. General rules of colonization.

     On a side note, we don't really see anything from the perspective indigenous other than the fact that they are in awe of the explorers and willing to trade for things although they seem ignorant of their values.

Child's article

" ln the period after decolonization,

it rapidly became apparent (to the newly independent nations, at least) 

that although colonial armies and bureaucracies might have with-

drawn, Western powers were still intent on maintaining maximum 

indirect control over erstwhile colonies, via political, cultural and 

above all economic channels, a phenomenon which became known as 

neo­colonialism."

   This text is important to consider when formulating the definition of post-colonization. Post colonization is very ambiguous in the fact that it can be different for which ever country entering said period.  For example, some countries although decolonized in a sense remain colonies to the country that colonized it in the first place. Their post colonization COULD then be defined as neocolonialism as this period of time that the former colony is subject to the colonial countries whim has an effect on the culture of the people in the former colony. 

    The true importance of this text, is to show the problem of specificity with a word like post-colonialism. Does it mean after decolonization, is it after being colonized for some time, or could it be when there was some noticeable change with the social operation of the colony? The ambiguity of the term makes it difficult to discern yet making the term specific causes problems of inclusion. By this I mean, if the term were to be specific, it would fail to include other examples of what was thought to be post colonization on the grounds that it didn't fit specifically within the definition yet it was OK before the term's definition changed. It is a paradox. This is a theory because it isn't perfect. 

 "In The Political Unconscíous, Fredric jameson high-

lights the Ways in which theories, ideologies and intellectual practices 

contain a Utopian dimension, for instance, dialectical thought as ‘the 

anticipation of the logic of a collectivity which has not yet come into 

being’.16 If even unsavoury ideologies such as Fascism can project a 

Utopian aspect, how much more so sets of theories which are grounded 

in the histories and experiences of the formerly- or still-colonized world, 

and which articulate their aspirations? There is a form of perverseness 

in taking the label ‘post-’ for a state which is not yet fully present, and 

linking it to something which has not fully disappeared, but in many 

Ways that paradoxical in-betweenness precisely characterizes the post-

colonial World."