Prisms of Perception - Speech, Silence, and Racial Identity in “Wide Sargasso Sea”
Bachelor thesis
Permanent lenke
https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3005120Utgivelsesdato
2022Metadata
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- Student papers (HF-IKS) [770]
Sammendrag
In this essay I aim to answer two questions. Firstly, whether Wide Sargasso Sea’sportrayal of black Creoles allows them to exhibit strength within the narrative. And secondly,its portrayal can be considered an authentic expression of the Caribbean bypostcolonial standards. I argue that Christophine, as well as other black Creoles in thenarrative, exhibit strength in their use of speech and silence. The foundation of this argument is found in exploration of the text through analysis by Keith A. Russell andCarine M. Mardorossian’s articles on the novel, demonstrating the power in speech, andsilence, respectively. The paradoxical commonality of their concepts builds a solid argumentfor the novels empowerment, which when fused with other concepts such as Bakhtin’s“Heteroglossia,” Russell’s “Refractive spaces,” and economic racialization, have brought me tothe conclusion that the historic value attainable from such works should be determined, not bythe author’s race or class, but by whether they are capable of perceiving the people theychronicle as selves, and not others. In this essay I aim to answer two questions. Firstly, whether Wide Sargasso Sea’sportrayal of black Creoles allows them to exhibit strength within the narrative. And secondly,its portrayal can be considered an authentic expression of the Caribbean bypostcolonial standards. I argue that Christophine, as well as other black Creoles in thenarrative, exhibit strength in their use of speech and silence. The foundation of this argument is found in exploration of the text through analysis by Keith A. Russell andCarine M. Mardorossian’s articles on the novel, demonstrating the power in speech, andsilence, respectively. The paradoxical commonality of their concepts builds a solid argumentfor the novels empowerment, which when fused with other concepts such as Bakhtin’s“Heteroglossia,” Russell’s “Refractive spaces,” and economic racialization, have brought me tothe conclusion that the historic value attainable from such works should be determined, not bythe author’s race or class, but by whether they are capable of perceiving the people theychronicle as selves, and not others.