Study on Space and Identity in Wide Sargasso Sea

Abstract

Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea mainly tells the tragic fate of the white Creole woman Antoinette Cosway, dealing with problems of identity and inequality arising from French and British colonisation in the Caribbean. This novel serves not only as a narrative of personal tragedy but also as a spatially oriented exploration where the space is instrumental in shaping characters and reflecting colonial history. Based on the Space Theory and Homi K. Bhabha’s Postcolonial Theory, this paper endeavours to trace Antoinette’s journey across three significant spaces, explore how these spaces impact her identity and self-reconstruction under the patriarchal and racial oppression, and reveal the complex interactions between space and Antoinette’s identity in the novel, aiming to break down the binary oppositions in colonial discourse and understand the multiplicity and fluidity of identity.