Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea is considered a gripping Caribbean novel, set between the world of capitalism and the post-emancipation West Indies. However, many critics often tend to overlook the marginality of women in the postcolonial era, as white Anglo-American feminists often emphasize white women's rights and freedom, while postcolonial critics tend to focus on those of men of the postcolonial era. postcolonial kingdoms. Postcolonial feminist critic Gayatri C. Spivak therefore offers a theoretical model from a feminist perspective for studies of postcolonialism. According to Spivak, epistemic violence means that colonizers attempt to reject or reshape the local culture of the colonies through the imperial discourse of science, universal truth, and religious redemption. Thus, by considering the Great Sargasso Sea from Spivk's point of view and reading this book as a text that restores the voices victimized by historical silences, readers can perceive that the tragedy of the protagonist, Antoinette, is rooted in reality in the impact of “epistemic violence”. of imperialism, which can be seen in three elements: Antoinette's empty world, the binary constructions between Antoinette and Rochester, and the application of the mirror metaphor. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Speaking as if Antoinette is in an empty world, where she doesn't talk to anyone for no reason, she struggles to confirm her racial thought and its identity -identification under the influence of epistemic violence. The first section of the story is full of scenes to illustrate racial thinking. Antoinette partly reproduces that of her mother, without surprise to the point that blacks and mixed-race people like Christophine manage to reassure her. As his mother said, without Christophine, they would all have died and “that would have been a better fate than to be abandoned, lied to, helpless” (Rhys 27). However, Mardorossian points out that “Antoinette is unaware of the subtext of these comments; she does not repeat the trope of the talkative and idle black man to which her mother refers” (1074). Otherwise, she wouldn't bother to console her mother by telling her that Godfrey and Sass had stayed. To identify herself, Antoinette said in the story: “They say when trouble comes, ranks are closed, and that's what the white people did. But we were not in their ranks. Jamaican ladies never approved of my mother, “because she likes herself,” Christophine said” (Rhys 18). Readers can perceive that Antoinette draws her voice from a cross-cultural matrix as a unified cultural other and foreigner. Furthermore, in Winterhalter's words, "it defines itself in relation to the language of 'whites' by citing the authority of their popular wisdom"; and “established its distinct Creole heritage by placing itself apart from the white colonials, because “we were not in their ranks”; then “integrates the ideas of the blacks on the island by citing Christophine’s analysis of the reasons for her cultural rejection” (218). Even if in this empty world where "there is no fictitious listener of Antoinette's voice, no "you", no "reader", no recipient to mediate between the "I" 19th-century colonial and the 20th-century postcolonial reader,” this is very much the case. on the contrary, "the omission of a 'you' and a context – of a reason to speak – can increase the illusion of Antoinette as a reliable and truthful witness, informing the reader of the 'other side "of Brontë's version" (Neck-Yoder 185), and then exactly reflect the impact of theepistemic violence on Antoinette. Through binary constructions of the two protagonists, Antoinette and Rochester, and showing Antoinette's affliction and oppression, Jean Rhys actually treats Rochester also as a victim of epistemic violence in narrating the entire half of the novel. On the one hand, Rochester marries Antoinette solely for his wealth. Help him acquire a good position in society; after their marriage, he struggles to make Antoinette conform to his own desires by telling her how she should speak or behave; he even violently renames her Bertha after their separation and the fact that he knew his mother was crazy. Antoinette gradually becomes aware of the "constructive character of notions of reality", and "she is mainly shown trying to live up to her husband's pre-established views and submitting to his unshakeable belief in the naturalness of his ways of knowing socially sanctioned” ( Mardorossian 1076) by saying: “You are trying to make me someone else, by calling me by another name. I know, it’s obeah too” (Rhys 147). However, Antoinette still tries to win him back. She tells him the truth about his mother, tells him her past stories and wears the white dress he loved. Unsurprisingly, she fails. Because Rochester confirmed that she was abnormal and probably inherited her mother's madness. Furthermore, she is unable to understand that Rochester views her dress as female sexual folly and "prostitution", and indeed, Rochester views her only as a sexual partner instead of a true, respected wife. On the other hand, in Rochester's situation, he is forced to purchase an heiress in the colonies by the patriarchal law of inheritance because she is not the firstborn. Then, considering his behavior towards Antoinette, Spivak reveals that “something as intimate as personal and human identity could be determined by the politics of imperialism” (240). She emphasizes for her part that Rhys uses "the theme of Oedipus", which is "the normative masculine subject" and "shared between the female and male protagonist, feminism and a critique of imperialism become accomplices" (241) to link Rochester and its heritage. Seeing Rochester from Spivak's point of view, readers can understand that Rhys actually provides the evidence by showing the storyline of the letters to his father, which can be seen as part of the explanation of the tragedy of this book: Dear Father . The thirty pounds were paid to me without question or condition. No provision is made for her […] I will never be a shame to you or to my dear brother the son you love. No begging letters, no petty requests. None of the furtive, shabby maneuvers of a younger son. I sold my soul or you sold it, and after all is it such a bad deal? We think the girl is beautiful, she is beautiful. (59) Dear father, we arrived from Jamaica after a few uncomfortable days. This small estate in the Windward Islands is part of the family property and Antoinette is very attached to it. […] Everything is going well and went according to your plans and wishes. I of course dealt with Richard Mason […] He seemed attached to me and trusted me completely. This place is very beautiful but my illness has left me too exhausted to fully appreciate it. I will write again in a few days. And so on. (63) From the two versions of letters above, Rochester changes his descriptions of surrounding things, even his potential feelings about everything he experiences. However, readers do not know the name of the character who corresponds to Rochester, nor the final destination of the letter. Rochester actually traps itself within the barriers of the surname and underthe great effect of the discourse of imperial epistemic violence. Again, in Spivak's words, "his writing of the final version of the letter to his father is in fact overseen by an image of the loss of the surname", and "Rhys's version of the Oedipal exchange is ironic , not a closed circle” (241). If in the case of Rochester and his heritage, which Rhys associates with the theme of Oedipus, then, for Antoinette, Rhys uses the theme of Narcissus. When it comes to Narcissus, there are often many images of the mirror metaphor. For example, Tia, a black Jamaican servant, who is Antoinette's playmate: We ate the same food, slept side by side, bathed in the same river. As I ran, I thought: I will live with Tia and I will be like her […] When I was very close, I saw the jagged stone in her hand but I did not see her throw it […] We looked at each other, blood on my face, tears on his. It was like I was seeing myself. Like in a mirror. (Rhys 38) Antoinette wants to maintain their friendship and see Tia as an indispensable part of her life, while Tia doesn't think so. Because Jamaican slaves were freed and enjoy freedom. Even though Tia bursts into tears when she sees Antoinette's bloody face, she still throws the stone. This seemingly simple behavior exactly indicates that Tia is more sensitive to the "conflicted relationship" between the local Jamaican population and the British colonizers, which is a metaphor for the relationship between Tia and Antoinette. As a young white Creole girl, Antoinette suffers from an affliction of marginalization, standing between the British colonizers (imperialism) and the black aborigines; while as an independent individual, she can do nothing but separate herself from Tia. In ancient Greek mythology, Narcissus' madness is revealed when he realizes that his Other (his reflection in the water) is himself. Similarly, at the very end of Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, before Antoinette burns herself, there is also a metaphor of the mirror which shows narcissism and leads Antoinette to death, as Antoinette finds herself becoming an "Other" in the mirror: “I went and returned to the hall with the big candle in my hand. That's when I saw her, the ghost. The woman with flowing hair. She was surrounded by a golden frame but I knew her” (Rhys 154). Antoinette finds herself stuck in the fictional England of her vision, and thus becomes a fictional Other herself to play her role, setting herself on fire and burning herself, helping to establish Jane Eyre as the feminist individualist heroine of British literature. Just as Spivak says: “I must read this as an allegory of the general epistemic violence of imperialism, of the construction of a colonial subject who self-immolates for the glorification of the social mission of the colonizer” (240 ). Overall, Wide Sargasso Sea depicts the white Creole, dramatic but tragic life of Antoinette and her "interculturation" between white and black Creoles, as well as her relationship with her husband which shows the other side of Bertha and Rochester from Brontë. By observing the three aspects of Antoinette's empty world, the binary constructions between Antoinette and Rochester, and applying the mirror metaphor above, readers can finally realize the strong effect of imperial epistemic violence in this novel. By creating a series of scenes of marginal women in history and a feeling of "recursive margins in the reader", Wide Sargasso Sea shows the changing perspective on feminist criticism of postcolonial literature, which focuses on "silent women » in the Third World: “the approach which praised the unified and autonomous subject Jane […] has given way to a model which scrutinizes negations and devaluations. 2015.