A thematic analysis of Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys focuses upon madness with examples included in a paper consisting of five pages. Three sources are cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: D0_MBsargso.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
in their everyday lives? In Jean Rhyss Wide Sarasso Sea, she explores these very questions through the lives of her characters and their descent into madness. The main characters name
is Antoinette Cosway, a young girl living on a plantation in Jamaica. The Emancipation Act has freed the slaves and her family, plantation owners, have found themselves scrambling to adjust
to the shift of lifestyles. Unable to cope, Antoinettes father drinks himself to death, leaving Antoinette, her mother, and her ailing brother to fend for themselves in a world that,
for them, is changing too fast. Faced with the growing unrest and discontent of the freed blacks on the island, Antoinette must also contend with almost crushing loneliness and despondency.
Later, she leaves the island, but her problems follow her, it can be said. She finishes her schooling and is married, and finds that her mother has gone mad. This
legacy of madness begins to descend on her as well, shortly after she and her husband return to Jamaica. Paranoia about her husbands faithfulness leads her to consult one of
the servants for a love potion, which she is given. After an argument with her husband she learns that he has indeed been unfaithful to her with one of the
servants. She physically attacks him and bites his arm. Convinced of her madness, he takes her back to England where she is locked away in a tower room with a
vindictive nurse, Grace Poole. Antoinette loses all sense of time or reality while she is in the tower. When her step brother comes to visit her, she is so crazed
from the isolation that she attacks him with a knife, remembering little about it afterward. The book ends with Antoinette taking Graces keys, unlocking the door and walking town the