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Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and the Case 
of Postcolonial Haunting 

 
*** 

Kathleen Hemingway is currently in her third year at the University of 
Toronto Mississauga where she is specializing in English and majoring 

in History. She has spent the last five summers working as both a 
counsellor and a teacher at an arts camp. Kathleen is particularly 

interested in ideas of translation and post-colonial as well as 
transnational literature.  

 

The “grand narratives” of history are dominated by stories of 
victory and heroism, tales of conquest and the “spread of civilization.” 
What these “grand narratives” fail to tell are the stories of the 
conquered, the losers of history. These stories remain in the periphery 
of the historical narrative, mentioned only here and there in passing; a 
cargo jettisoned from a slave ship or the cackling laughter of the mad 
Creole woman in the attic. The “histories we choose to remember and 
recount” (Bhabha 57) provide a one-sided, often Eurocentric view of 
the state of the world. As a result they push “minor” cultures and people 
further and further into the margins until they become little more than a 
footnote. Postcolonialism aims, as Homi Bhabha puts it, for a “radical 
revision” of this fact. By tearing down the binary oppositions which 
structure the current historical and literary narratives, postcolonial 
theory allows for the emergence of the “projective past” or haunting of 
the present by an unsettled past and the “split narratives” that 
accompany it (Bhabha 57). The postcolonial narrative acts to represent 
cultures that have been marginalized through colonization as it “bears 
witness to the unequal and uneven forces of cultural representation” 
(Bhabha 46). In other words, the postcolonial acts as a centrifuge 
pulling the peripheral narratives back to the centre. The result, 

*** 



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suggested in  Bhabha’s essay “Freedom’s Basis in the Indeterminate” 
and exemplified by Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, is that postcolonial 
literature serves as both “action and agency” (57): action being the 
“radical revision” (46) of the historical narratives, and agency—a more 
complex representation of the marginal cultures of history. I will argue 
that, as the “projective past” forces itself into the texts of the colonial 
narrative, it splits that narrative to allow for a space of revision in which 
the story of the marginalized can be expressed. This splitting of the 
narrative is visible in the structure of Rhys’s novel: it is composed of 
three discreet parts in which different characters’ voices take up the 
narration. Part One is told by Antoinette, Part Two by Rochester, and 
Part Three (set in England), brings us Antoinette/Bertha’s final echo. In 
the gap between these sections, there is the untold story of the “mad 
woman,” a story that, in dialogue with Jane Eyre, the reader must 
reconstruct. 
 In 1847 Charlotte Bronte published Jane Eyre, a novel which 
would stand the test of time and become part of the English literary 
canon. Bronte’s novel catalogues the sadness of Jane’s early life; her 
mean aunt, a boarding school no child should ever be subjected to and 
eventually, her employment as a governess in Thornfield Hall. This is 
where Jane’s luck seems to turn. Once at Thornfield, she falls in love 
with her employer, the dark, brooding Mr. Edward Rochester, and he 
with her. Unfortunately Jane’s luck turns again when, just as the two are 
to be married, it is made known that Mr. Rochester is already married 
and that he has his wife imprisoned in the attic of Thornfield. The sad 
truth comes out, that Rochester was tricked into this marriage with 
Bertha, a Creole woman of “bad blood,” and that he has imprisoned her 
because she is mad.  Jane leaves and finds refuge with her distant 
cousins. Meanwhile, back at Thornfield, Bertha in a fit of madness sets 
the house ablaze and ends her own life. Rochester attempts to rescue her 
but is crippled by the fire. Jane eventually returns to him and happiness 
is restored to both of them.    

Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea “bears witness” (46), as Bhabha 
suggests, to the unequal cultural representation in Jane Eyre; it offers 
the radical revision of the narrative. In Jane Eyre, the character of 
Bertha Mason exists solely in the margins of the story. As a peripheral 



Kathleen Hemingway – JEAN RHYS’S WIDE SARGASSO SEA & THE CASE OF 
POSTCOLONIAL HAUNTING 

22 
 

character, she is only heard echoing through the halls of Thornfield, 
unseen for most of the book. She is simply a tragic mistake in 
Rochester’s past; the mad Creole woman in the attic whose madness 
stems from her bad blood. In contrast, Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea 
provides a more complex understanding of a more complex character. 
The reader is able to see the evolution from Antoinette Cosway of Wide 
Sargasso Sea to Bertha Mason of Jane Eyre and all of the factors 
contributing to her madness. Rhys questions that madness and suggests 
that it cannot simply be explained by Bertha/Antoinette’s bad blood.  
  Bhabha states that the postcolonial text speaks “of the reality of 
survival and negotiation that constitutes the lived moment of resistance, 
its sorrow and its salvation” (57). In other words, postcolonial writing 
constitutes the moment of self-definition and all that accompanies it. It 
resists the forced marginalization imposed by the center/periphery 
structure of the colonial system. While in Jane Eyre Bertha’s death is as 
marginal as her existence, with the sole purpose of clearing the way for 
Jane’s and Rochester’s marriage, in Wide Sargasso Sea, death 
represents Antoinette’s salvation from her colonial relationship with 
Rochester.   
 According to Bhabha, there is a “time lag” of the postcolonial 
and its function is to “slow down the linear, progressive time of 
modernity to reveal its gesture” (56). Time lags in such a way that it 
allows for a more critical viewing of the past. Bhabha claims that “this 
slowing down, or lagging, impels the past, projects it” (56) and that this 
projection is “a mode of breaking the complicity of the past and present 
in order to open up a space of revision” (57). Bhabha’s projective past 
is therefore a ghost-like reappearance and representation of the past in 
the present. In Wide Sargasso Sea this past is represented as the zombi, 
which Rochester comes across in a book entitled “The Glittering 
Coronet of Isles” and specifically the chapter on Obeah where 
Rochester finds the definition of the zombi. It is “a dead person who 
seems to be alive or a living person who is dead. A zombi can also be 
‘the spirit of a place.’” (Rhys 88) Rochester experiences this ghost of 
the place when he gets lost in the forest and stumbles on the ruins of the 
priest’s house. The “spirit” of the place appears hostile to Rochester and 
he feels “certain of danger” (87). What he sees are the ruins of 



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colonialism: the “pavé road like the French made” (87) and the priest’s 
house itself are all remnants of the colonial past, they remain as ruins 
preventing that part of history from being forgotten. 
 Apart from this incident, numerous other examples of the 
projective past confirm Rhys’s concern with restoring the margins to 
the center in Wide Sargasso Sea. Of the island, Rochester says that he 
“hated its magic and the secret [he] would never know” (Rhys 141). 
What he feels is the presence of the projective past and its hostility 
which he cannot comprehend because he is not willing to revise the 
colonial narrative. The island haunts Rochester because it is attempting 
to confront him with the colonial past and force a revision. Rochester 
refuses to do this and as a result feels this presence in every aspect of 
the island and so grows to resent it. Rochester measures everything in 
relation to the fact that he is English and the locals are not; he still 
defines everything through a pre-existing binary opposition. For 
Rochester, things are either English or they are not and it is, of course, 
only the English things which he values. In the postcolonial context, the 
binary opposition clearly places the colonizing power at the centre and 
measures everything else in accordance with this structure. Rochester 
can only see all of the ways in which the island is not English and it is 
therefore worth less to him. In revising the colonial narrative, Rhys 
undermines this binary opposition so that the colonizer and colonized 
are represented equally.  

Another instance of the projective past is the haunting character 
of Antoinette’s mother and her descent into madness. Early in the text, 
Antoinette goes to visit her mother who is described as “a white woman 
sitting with her head bent so low that I couldn’t see her face. But I 
recognized her hair, one plait much shorter than the other” (40). After 
Rochester’s arrival and soon after her own descent into madness begins, 
Antoinette is described in much the same way: “she was sitting in a 
rocking chair with her head bent. Her hair was in two long plaits over 
her shoulders” (66). Rochester begins to hear stories about Antoinette’s 
mother and sees her madness projecting itself into Antoinette. However 
he fails to fully understand the complexity behind the madness, 
dismissing it simply as “bad blood” and attempting to bring Antoinette 
under his control.  



Kathleen Hemingway – JEAN RHYS’S WIDE SARGASSO SEA & THE CASE OF 
POSTCOLONIAL HAUNTING 

24 
 

The most concrete example of the projective past, however, lies 
in the structure of the text. Part one describes the innocence of 
Antoinette and by extension it is a representation of the island in its 
original, untouched state. Part two is the introduction of the dominating, 
colonizing force. In this case, it is Rochester. And in part three 
Antoinette has left her story entirely; she is projected into the story of 
Jane Eyre as a “ghost of a woman” (153). She is the haunting aspect of 
Rochester’s past that lingers in the story of his present just as the 
history of colonialism haunts the postcolonial narrative. According to 
Bhabha, “the time lag of postcolonial modernity moves forward, erasing 
that compliant past tethered to the myth of progress, ordered in the 
binarisms of its cultural logic: past/present, inside/outside” (Bhabha 
56). As Jean Rhys’ story moves forward, she erases the compliant past 
that is the story of Jane Eyre and instead reorganizes the binarisms by 
moving what was at the outside of the story, to the inside. 
 The ghost of the past in the present necessitates a literal split in 
the narration “between the time of utterance and the space of memory” 
(57). A split between the past, narrating the time of utterance and the 
narration of the present, affected by the space between the “then” and 
“now”, not fully understanding what has happened because of what has 
been lost. The difficulty in writing the postcolonial narrative is that 
there is so little evidence of the tragedies once faced by the colonized 
people precisely because the very nature of colonization is to 
marginalize and erase. In the space of memory, aspects of identity are 
lost - including language, tradition and culture. With the integration of 
the projective past, those aspects are present and so the projective past 
not only allows for a more complete revision of the past but for a more 
thorough recognition of present identity.  
 In Wide Sargasso Sea the narration is split along several lines. It 
is split between Antoinette in the first section and Rochester in the 
second. This shows the split of representation inherent in colonial 
history. The moment of their marriage becomes the moment of 
colonization; Antoinette is no longer represented through herself, she is 
wholly represented through Rochester. He renames Antoinette and 
begins calling her Bertha effectively stealing her identity, an integral 
part of the act of colonization. Their experience on the island together 



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becomes the “space of memory” where little pieces of her are chipped 
away until she no longer recognizes herself.  However in the third 
section, when she becomes a haunting presence as the embodiment of 
the “projective past,” the narration splits again. This time it splits 
between Bertha and Antoinette, arguably the same person but Bertha 
has lost so much of her identity that she no longer recognizes herself as 
Antoinette. Wandering the halls of Thornfield she turns a corner and 
sees “...the ghost. The woman with the streaming hair. She was 
surrounded by a gilt frame but I knew her” (Rhys 154). She has lost so 
much of herself that she does not recognize her own face; she only has a 
vague sense of familiarity upon seeing it in the mirror. Nevertheless she 
has moments where she remembers her past, the “smell of vetivert and 
frangipani, of cinnamon and dust and lime trees when they are 
flowering” (151). Bertha is haunted by the memory of Antoinette just as 
Rochester is haunted by the ghostly presence of Bertha. Bertha is 
however able to reconcile the “projective past” and reclaim her identity 
in a final act of resistance and revision. 

A result of the “projective past” and its split narratives is the 
redefinition of the colonial relationship. According to Bhabha the 
postcolonial “departs from the traditions of sociology of 
underdevelopment or the ‘dependency’ theory”. (47) That is to say that 
it moves away from defining a culture based on its dependence on 
another. As it stands postcolonial societies are defined by their 
relationship to their colonial counterparts by a this, not that mentality; if 
it’s black then by definition it cannot be white, for example. In Wide 
Sargasso Sea Rochester describes Antoinette as “Creole of pure English 
descent” but “not English or European” (Rhys 56). He also describes 
the way the people speak as “not English but the debased French 
Patois” (57). It is made very clear that in the mind of the European 
colonizer the world is defined only by their relation to it. Rochester sees 
the features of the island and of Antoinette as definitely not English.  

However as Bhabha points out, the postcolonial seeks to revise 
“the pedagogies that set up the relation of Third and First Worlds in a 
binary structure of opposition” (Bhabha 47). They seek to define these 
cultures without dependency on the colonizing force as a point of 
reference. Jean Rhys succeeds in this by taking Bertha who was 



Kathleen Hemingway – JEAN RHYS’S WIDE SARGASSO SEA & THE CASE OF 
POSTCOLONIAL HAUNTING 

26 
 

previously written solely in the margins of the story and defined 
exclusively as “not being Jane Eyre” and gives her life a complexity 
that is unreachable in the binary state. In this form she is able to become 
Antoinette Cosway and it forces “a recognition of the more complex 
cultural and political boundaries” (48) that exist outside the sphere of 
binary opposition. Wide Sargasso Sea tells of her struggle for identity 
and when she finally breaks out of the binarisms that Rochester tries to 
impose on her she is able to reconcile her identity. Jean Rhys forces a 
recognition of Antoinette’s identity separate from the sphere of the 
colonizer.  

Ultimately this is the purpose of the postcolonial narrative, the 
action of which Bhabha spoke. It follows a “revisionary impulse” of 
“reinterpreting and rewriting the forms and effects of an ‘older’ colonial 
consciousness” (Bhabha 48). The postcolonial revision does not 
actively seek to alter the past, solely the representations of it. The 
postcolonial uses the haunting aspect of the colonial past to represent a 
more complete past where both the history of the colonizer and the 
colonized are represented. Jean Rhys rewrites the “‘older’ colonial 
consciousness” of Jane Eyre and she opens “up a space of revision” 
(57) when she takes Bertha from the attic of Thornfield and allows her 
to become fully recognized and fully represented.  

Through the projective past which is present in Wide Sargasso 
Sea and the split narratives that accompany it, the postcolonial reorders 
the binary oppositions which previously ordered the colonial 
relationship thus redefining and revising both the identity of the 
colonized and the history of colonization. The postcolonial narrative 
acts as both “action and agency,” (57) it both demands action through 
revision and enables it through representation. Jean Rhys’s 
reconfiguration of the story of “the mad woman in the attic” in Wide 
Sargasso Sea represents an idea “more complex than either the nihilism 
of despair or the utopia of progress” (57). Rhys has reconfigured the 
colonial story of Jane Eyre so that it represents the histories of both the 
colonizer and the colonized. The haunting of Jean Rhys’s text “speaks 
of the reality of survival and negotiation that constitutes the lived 
moment of resistance, its sorrow and its salvation” (57). 
 



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Bibliography 
 
Bhabha, Homi K. "Freedom's Basis in the Indeterminate." The Identity 
in Question (1992): 46-57. Web. 

Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. Great Britain: Penguin, 1966. Print. 

 
 


