碩士 / 高雄師範大學 / 英語教育研究所 / 98 / Abstract
This thesis focuses on the use of the Victorian elements as symbols in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and discusses contemporary women’s suffering of colonialism, imperialism and men’s patriarchy. After reading Charlotte Brontë's masterpiece Jane Eyre, Rhys thinks there must be an unknown secret which entangles the main protagonists. Being also a Creole, Rhys thus decides to give a voice to the Creole lunatic in the story. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys applies extensive symbolic skills to the story and displays the complicated inner emotions of the protagonists. She also puts the Victorian values in use to portray the features of the contemporary society and its profound influence on the protagonists.
The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One emphasizes the importance of realizing the symbolic skills when appreciating literary works. In this chapter, an overview of the theories of symbolism is presented. Through the concepts of various literary theorists, critical analysts and writers, we can readily understand the crucial role of symbolism. Moreover, the characteristics of the Victorian period and the classification of the settings in the novel are also mentioned in this chapter. The second chapter aims to examine the symbols of the natural settings, including animals, plants and landscape settings. Rhys exquisitely describes the natural settings and provides the readers with special symbolic meanings to reflect the colonial intrusion on the female protagonists and to express their doomed and unescapable destinies. In the third chapter, manufactured settings which comprise the convent, England and the names of the locations in the West Indies as symbols are explored. Rhys uses manufactured settings to expound the phenomenon of Victorian men’s oppression of women. The males were influenced greatly by the climate of society and by repressing the opposite sex, the men could extend their national belief—colonialism. Chapter Four discusses the symbolic meanings of time as settings. We take the Victorian Period as the background to make a study of people’s values and the effects of the Emancipation Act. Also, the female protagonist Antoinette walks between day and night, dream and reality and every incident she experiences makes her and other protagonists trapped in a loveless and miserable life. Therefore, Rhys has used several settings as symbols to foreshadow the ending of the story. The conclusion is made in the fifth chapter. Through the analysis of the symbolic meanings of the natural settings, manufactured settings and time as settings, we can not only understand the messages that Jean Rhys attempts to express but capture the essence of Wide Sargasso Sea more.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TW/098NKNU5239002 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Chiao-yu Chang, 張鐈予 |
| Contributors | Dr. Pen-shui Liao, 廖本瑞博士 |
| Source Sets | National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Format | 98 |
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