Hacettepe University Graduate School of Social Sciences Department of English Language and Literature British Cultural Studies Programme A BHABHAESQUE APPROACH TO HYBRIDITY IN JEAN RHYS’SWIDE SARGASSO SEA AND CARYL PHILLIPS’S THE FINAL PASSAGE Hatice ÇELİKDOĞAN Ph.D. Dissertation Ankara, 2021 A BHABHAESQUE APPROACH TO HYBRIDITY IN JEAN RHYS’S WIDE SARGASSO SEA AND CARYL PHILLIPS’S THE FINAL PASSAGE Hatice ÇELİKDOĞAN Hacettepe University Graduate School of Social Sciences Department of English Language and Literature British Cultural Studies Programme PhD Dissertation Ankara, 2021 YAYIMLAMA VE FİKRİ MÜLKİYET HAKLARI BEYANI Enstitü tarafından onaylanan lisansüstü tezimin tamamını veya herhangi bir kısmını, basılı (kağıt) ve elektronik formatta arşivleme ve aşağıda verilen koşullarla kullanıma açma iznini Hacettepe Üniversitesine verdiğimi bildiririm. Bu izinle Üniversiteye verilen kullanım hakları dışındaki tüm fikri mülkiyet haklarım bende kalacak, tezimin tamamının ya da bir bölümünün gelecekteki çalışmalarda (makale, kitap, lisans ve patent vb.) kullanım hakları bana ait olacaktır. Tezin kendi orijinal çalışmam olduğunu, başkalarının haklarını ihlal etmediğimi ve tezimin tek yetkili sahibi olduğumu beyan ve taahhüt ederim. Tezimde yer alan telif hakkı bulunan ve sahiplerinden yazılı izin alınarak kullanılması zorunlu metinleri yazılı izin alınarak kullandığımı ve istenildiğinde suretlerini Üniversiteye teslim etmeyi taahhüt ederim. Yükseköğretim Kurulu tarafından yayınlanan “Lisansüstü Tezlerin Elektronik Ortamda Toplanması, Düzenlenmesi ve Erişime Açılmasına İlişkin Yönerge” kapsamında tezim aşağıda belirtilen koşullar haricince YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezi / H.Ü. Kütüphaneleri Açık Erişim Sisteminde erişime açılır. o Enstitü / Fakülte yönetim kurulu kararı ile tezimin erişime açılması mezuniyet tarihimden itibaren 2 yıl ertelenmiştir. (1) o Enstitü / Fakülte yönetim kurulunun gerekçeli kararı ile tezimin erişime açılması mezuniyet tarihimden itibaren ….. ay ertelenmiştir. (2) o Tezimle ilgili gizlilik kararı verilmiştir. (3) ……/………/…… Hatice Çelikdoğan “Lisansüstü Tezlerin Elektronik Ortamda Toplanması, Düzenlenmesi ve Erişime Açılmasına İlişkin Yönerge” (1) Madde 6. 1. Lisansüstü tezle ilgili patent başvurusu yapılması veya patent alma sürecinin devam etmesi durumunda, tez danışmanının önerisi ve enstitü anabilim dalının uygun görüşü üzerine enstitü veya fakülte yönetim kurulu iki yıl süre ile tezin erişime açılmasının ertelenmesine karar verebilir. (2) Madde 6. 2. Yeni teknik, materyal ve metotların kullanıldığı, henüz makaleye dönüşmemiş veya patent gibi yöntemlerle korunmamış ve internetten paylaşılması durumunda 3. şahıslara veya kurumlara haksız kazanç imkanı oluşturabilecek bilgi ve bulguları içeren tezler hakkında tez danışmanının önerisi ve enstitü anabilim dalının uygun görüşü üzerine enstitü veya fakülte yönetim kurulunun gerekçeli kararı ile altı ayı aşmamak üzere tezin erişime açılması engellenebilir. (3) Madde 7. 1. Ulusal çıkarları veya güvenliği ilgilendiren, emniyet, istihbarat, savunma ve güvenlik, sağlık vb. konulara ilişkin lisansüstü tezlerle ilgili gizlilik kararı, tezin yapıldığı kurum tarafından verilir *. Kurum ve kuruluşlarla yapılan işbirliği protokolü çerçevesinde hazırlanan lisansüstü tezlere ilişkin gizlilik kararı ise, ilgili kurum ve kuruluşun önerisi ile enstitü veya fakültenin uygun görüşü üzerine üniversite yönetim kurulu tarafından verilir. Gizlilik kararı verilen tezler Yükseköğretim Kuruluna bildirilir. Madde 7.2. Gizlilik kararı verilen tezler gizlilik süresince enstitü veya fakülte tarafından gizlilik kuralları çerçevesinde muhafaza edilir, gizlilik kararının kaldırılması halinde Tez Otomasyon Sistemine yüklenir. * Tez danışmanının önerisi ve enstitü anabilim dalının uygun görüşü üzerine enstitü veya fakülte yönetim kurulu tarafından karar verilir. iii ETİK BEYAN Bu çalışmadaki bütün bilgi ve belgeleri akademik kurallar çerçevesinde elde ettiğimi, görsel, işitsel ve yazılı tüm bilgi ve sonuçları bilimsel ahlak kurallarına uygun olarak sunduğumu, kullandığım verilerde herhangi bir tahrifat yapmadığımı, yararlandığım kaynaklara bilimsel normlara uygun olarak atıfta bulunduğumu, tezimin kaynak gösterilen durumlar dışında özgün olduğunu, Prof. Dr. Burçin Erol danışmanlığında tarafımdan üretildiğini ve Hacettepe Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Tez Yazım Yönergesine göre yazıldığını beyan ederim. Hatice Çelikdoğan In loving memory of my parents… v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I am deeply grateful to my advisor, Prof. Dr. Burçin Erol for inspiring, encouraging, guiding and correcting me patiently in every stage of this dissertation. I am especially grateful to her for calming me down and daring to believe in me when I doubted. Without her this dissertation could not have been completed. I am most thankful to my committee members, Prof. Dr. Belgin Elbir and Prof. Dr. Huriye Reis for guiding, challenging and encouraging me during the process of writing this dissertation. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to Prof. Dr. Deniz Bozer, Prof. Dr. Serpil Oppermann, Prof. Dr. Aytül Özüm, Prof. Dr. Hande Seber, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Şebnem Kaya, Assist. Prof. Dr. Alev Karaduman, Assist. Prof. Dr. Papatya Alkan Genca and Dr. İmren Yelmiş for guiding and inspiring me in my studies, which I hope are reflected in this dissertation. I am thankful to Res. Assist. Hüseyin Alhas, Res. Assist. Ulaş Özgün, Res. Assist. Onur Çiffiliz, Res. Assist. Adem Balcı and Özkan Taş for helping me with computer. I am also thankful to Dr. Peter Hopkins for proofreading. My grateful thanks are also due to my friends in the Department for all their encouragement. Last but not least, I am especially thankful to my husband Aydın Çelikdoğan for his amazing patience and generous support during my study, and for his help in proofreading. vi ÖZET ÇELİKDOĞAN, Hatice. Jean Rhys’in Wide Sargasso Sea ve Caryl Phillips’in The Final Passage Adlı Romanlarındaki Melez Kimliklerin Bhabha’nın Bakış Açısı ile İncelenmesi. Doktora Tezi, Ankara, 2021. Bu tez Jean Rhys’in Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) ve Caryl Phillips’in The Final Passage (1985) adlı romanlarındaki karakterleri arada kalmış melez kimlikler olarak ele almaktadır. Bu nedenle, bu tez Homi Bhabha’nın sömürgecilik sonrası dönemi bağlamında geliştirdiği melezleşme, üçüncü alan, arada kalmışlık ve taklitçilik kavramlarını kullanarak Wide Sargasso Sea ve The Final Passage adlı romanlarda sömürgecilik sonrası farklı melez kimliklerin betimlendiğini savunmaktadır. Sömürgeciliğin sonucu olarak hem sömürgeciler hem de sömürgeleştirilmiş olanlar melezleşmiştir. Bu bağlamda, Giriş’te Homi Bhabha’nın tanımladığı melezleşme, arada kalmışlık, üçüncü alan ve taklitçilik kavramları ve sömürgecilik sonrası dönem bağlamında melez kimlikler konusu ele alınmaktadır. Birinci Bölüm’de Jean Rhys’in Wide Sargasso Sea adlı romanında çocukluğunu ve genç kızlığını geçirdiği Karayipler’den “İngiliz koca” ile mutsuz bir evlilik yaparak İngiltere’ye giden, beyaz bir Kreol varisi olan ve Bhabha’nın ifadesiyle “üçüncü alan”da yaşayan Antoinette’nin melez kimliği ve bu kimliğindeki değişimler incelenmektedir. İkinci Bölüm’de Caryl Phillips’in The Final Passage adlı romanında ne siyah Karayipli ne de beyaz Avrupalı olan ama nispeten açık bir renge sahip olan ve Bhabha’nın ifadesiyle “üçüncü alan”da yaşayan 19 yaşındaki Leila’nın melez kimliği incelenmektedir. Sonuç’ta ise bu romanlardaki melezlik ve melez kimliklerin yarattığı karmaşıklığın doğallaştırılmasındaki sorgulama belirtilmektedir. Hem Wide Sargasso Sea hem de The Final Passage’da arada kalmışlık yaşayan melez karakterler, üçüncü alanda melez kimliklerinin yeniden tanımlanması için sorgulamakta, müzakere etmekte ve alternatif çözümler sunmaktadırlar. İlk romanda daha önceki bir tarihte yer alan melez ilişkiler anlatılmaktayken, Phillips daha sonraki kuşakta bunu ele almaktadır. Melezlik kavramı dönüşmeyi sürdürürken iki kuşak arasındaki farklılıklar ortaya çıkmaktadır. Anahtar Sözcükler: Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, Caryl Phillips, The Final Passage, Melez Kimlik, Homi Bhabha, Üçüncü Alan. vii ABSTRACT ÇELİKDOĞAN, Hatice. A Bhabhaesque Approach to Hybridity in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage. PhD Dissertation, Ankara, 2021. This dissertation reads the main characters in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage (1985) as hybrids, owning a hybrid identity and experiencing in-betweenness. Employing Bhabha’s postcolonial concepts of hybridity, the Third Space, in-betweenness and mimicry, this dissertation argues that these novels depict a variety of characters as representations of postcolonial hybrids. As a result of colonisation, both the colonised and the coloniser end up as hybrids. In the introduction of this dissertation the concepts of hybridity, the Third Space, in- betweenness and mimicry as defined by Homi Bhabha are introduced, and the issue of hybrid identity is explored in relation to postcolonial identity. The first chapter deals with Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys in order to explore how hybrid identity is depicted through Antoinette, a white Creole heiress, living in a Bhabhanian Third Space, from the time of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage with the English husband and relocation to England. In this chapter her hybridity and the transformation of her identity are examined. The second chapter focuses on The Final Passage by Caryl Phillips in order to examine the concept of hybrid identity through Leila, a 19 year-old girl with a lighter skin who is neither black Caribbean nor white European, living in a Bhabhanian Third Space. In the conclusion, it is argued that these novels question and challenge the naturalisation of the complexity of hybridity and hybrid identities. The hybrid characters in both Wide Sargasso Sea and The Final Passage inhabit a Bhabhanian Third Space where they experience in-betweenness, challenge, question, negotiate and offer alternative solutions to redefine their hybrid identities. While Rhys deals with the hybridity in the nineteenth century, Phillips focuses on the hybridity in the mid-twentieth century; as a result, the differences between the two generations can be seen while the nature of hybridity keeps on evolving. Key Words: Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, Caryl Phillips, The Final Passage, Hybrid Identity, Homi Bhabha, the Third Space. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS KABUL VE ONAY…………………………………………………………...………..i YAYIMLAMA VE FİKRİ MÜLKİYET HAKLARI BEYANI……..........….….....……ii ETİK BEYAN............................................................................................ ..........iii DEDICATION PAGE………………………………………………………...………iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………….…..……....v ÖZET…………………………………………………………………………………. vi ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………..vii TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………………….…viii INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………….… 1 CHAPTER I: HYBRID IDENTITIES IN JEAN RHYS’S WIDE SARGASSO SEA……………………………………………………………................……....... 26 CHAPTER II: HYBRID IDENTITIES IN CARYL PHILLIPS’S THE FINAL PASSAGE………………………………………………….................................... 70 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………… 120 WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………. 127 APPENDIX 1: ORIGINALITY REPORTS .……………….……....……………..143 APPENDIX 2: ETHICS BOARD AND WAIVER FORMS......................…..….145 １ INTRODUCTION Hybridity is an important and complicated concept, and it has been the focus of a number of debates and given rise to many publications. The concept of hybridity remains problematic implying the meeting or mixing of completely separate and homogeneous cultural spheres, but it has enabled one to recognise the production of new identities and cultural forms such as “British Asians.” As a result, the concept of hybridity is acceptable as a device to capture cultural changes. On the other hand, the support for the new forms of fluid, hybrid identity can hide some difficulties; for example, are hybrid identities always a favourable option? Does everybody experience hybrid life in the same way? How do differences of class, gender, sexuality, region and age all affect hybrid communities? The hybridisation and creolisation of language, literature and cultural identities is, therefore, a common theme of postcolonial literature and theory. Emphasising this theme, contemporary postcolonial British writers focus on the discourse of hybridity as it appears in the “Third Space” (The Location of Culture 37) where ambivalence of being neither/nor “meets the subversive practice of resistance” (Kraidy 58). Among the novelists who have used the discourse of hybridity and hybrid identities are Jean Rhys and Caryl Phillips, who are also hybrid writers rewriting their histories and stories. Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage (1985) are noteworthy postcolonial novels that introduce circumstances under which hybrid characters find themselves in the Third Space. Both Jean Rhys and Caryl Phillips were born in the Caribbean, dealing with common themes such as colonialism, alienation, loneliness, identity, namely hybrid identity. Not only did Jean Rhys write novels, but also she inspired writers and novelists such as Caryl Phillips to write about her. Caryl Phillips was interested in Jean Rhys with whom he had a lot in common. For instance, they were both interested in the Brontes. While Wide Sargasso Sea is a rewriting by Jean Rhys of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, The Lost Child is a rewriting by Caryl Phillips of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights’s Heathcliff, depicting him as Mr Earnshaw’s illegitimate son and a former slave. In addition, Phillips praises Jean Rhys for her “precise and clear style” (Extravagant Strangers 63). Unsurprisingly, Phillips ２ turns his attention to Rhys’s life and writes a novel titled A View of the Empire at Sunset, which is based on her experiences. While Jean Rhys rewrites the story of Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea which takes place in the nineteenth century, Caryl Phillips focuses on the immigrants in The Final Passage through the story of Leila and her family who come to England from the West Indies in the 1950s. Both writers create two different hybridity, concentrating on women characters, Antoinette and Leila. Interestingly, one is a woman and the other is a man, choosing to tackle the complexities of hybridity faced by women hybrids. In addition, it is observed that these hybrid characters that belong to different generations show different reactions and approaches. These two novels are chosen because they illustrate the process of the changes and differences in approaches adopted by the hybrid characters that belong to different eras, although they share the same geography. Each novel questions and challenges the concept of hybrid identity in its own right, raising awareness about the complexity of hybridity. The question of the concept of hybridity in these novels shows that neither colonial nor colonised cultures and languages can be presented in “pure” form, inseparable from each other, giving rise to forms of hybridity which challenge the ideas of centre and margin. The aim of this dissertation is to examine and argue that Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage reflect the emergence and formation of hybrid identities, with regard to the concepts of postcolonial hybridity and hybrid identity based on racial, cultural, social, class, economic and religious levels. In addition, these two novels, which cover different periods, give us a chance to observe the changes that take place in hybridity and the reactions of the hybrids. The hybrids also display changes in the assertion of their identities; that is to say, hybridity is also open to change. Forming new identities out of two or more different identities, hybrid characters find themselves not entirely belonging to either the one or the other, but dwelling in the Third Space; in consequence, they own a hybrid identity living within the in-between cultures. Within the context mentioned above, this dissertation argues that these characters, Antoinette Cosway and Leila, are hybrids as defined by Homi K. Bhabha so experience in-betweenness. ３ This dissertation employs Homi K. Bhabha’s concepts of hybridity, Third Space, in- betweenness and mimicry in analysing Jean Rhys’s and Caryl Phillips’s characters. It sees them as representations of postcolonial hybrids who search for an alternative identity while challenging, distorting and destabilising the power of the coloniser in order to make room for negotiation and to deal with the complexities of hybridity. If questioned whether hybridity solves the problems, it can be argued that it offers alternative solutions for co-existence to be whole. This dissertation aims to present that hybridity is not static, but it changes; as a result, hybrids change and they change each other while co-existing and complementing each other in the Third Space. The term hybridity has developed from biological and botanical origins: As a biological term, hybridity refers to the outcome of two different species of animals or plants; the term was also employed in racialist discourse, referring to mixed race. The OED explains it as “of human parents of different races, half-breed”. The OED defines hybrid as: “the offspring of two animals, plants of different species, or (less strictly) varieties, a half-breed, or mongrel” (“Hybrid,” def. 1a). The term hybrid regarding the mixture of people of different races was first used in the nineteenth century, showing the possibility of the increase in human hybrids. The word hybrid stems from Latin hybrida as a version of ibrida which means “mongrel” specifically the “offspring of a tame sow and a wild boar” (“Hybrida” emphasis original). According to the Miriam-Webster dictionary, the term hybridity dates back to the seventeenth century. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Webster defined a hybrid as “a mongrel or mule; an animal or plant, produced from the mixture of two species”. In the nineteenth century miscegenation was used referring to people of mixed races such as the mongrel, mulatto, mestizo, and half-caste. Some anthropologists such as Sir Arthur Keith commented on how British people were regarded as a mixed and mongrel group of breeds. While it was employed in terms of physiology in the nineteenth century, it was used again in the twentieth century, this time, in terms of culture (Colonial Desire 16). Later, “hybrid” turned into a pejorative term which was employed in the Eurocentric portrayals of ethnic roots (Colonial Desire 6). Chris Rojek defines hybridity as “the mixing of cultural, ethnic, and racial elements” (58). Eventually, hybridity played the role of a bridge between “the racial categories of the past and contemporary cultural discourse” (Colonial Desire 25). ４ The concept of hybridity proves significant “for diaspora peoples, and indeed many others too, as a way of thinking beyond exclusionary, fixed, binary notions of identity based on ideas of rootedness and cultural, racial and national purity” (McLeod 219). The concept of hybridity is associated with the notion of identity, in particular, for migrants and diasporic societies; but it also relates to the issue of languages and of mixtures of cultures and traditions. Identity itself is always under construction and change; hybrid identities are never complete in themselves, remaining “perpetually in motion” (McLeod 219), pursuing unpredictable routes, open to change. Hybridity here is a key term that implies the impossibility of essentialism. Hybridity challenges notions of identities and cultures as fixed or stable entities, emphasising the interactions and exchanges that take place across cultures. Within the context of postcolonialism hybridity is defined as “the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization” (Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts 108). Vanessa Guignery argues that hybridity comes as “an alternative discourse,” subverting “the very idea of a dominant culture,” and inviting “a re-examination of power structures” (4). Thus, the concept of hybridity functions politically as a challenge to the binaries between coloniser/colonised or self/other that are often used to enforce and justify imperial and colonial politics. Some critics argue that hybridity can be seen as “both cultural exchange and commodification without being reduced to either one or the other” ( Brah and Coombes 1). For example, music is a field in which hybridity can be observed in the way as mentioned above. On the other hand, some critics point out that hybridity can be described as a threat of contamination for the people who advocate the idea of purity (Brah and Coombes 1). In discussions of hybridity as a key concept in cultural criticism, postcolonial studies, and debates about cultural contestation, critics have argued that it is the very issue which challenges and questions the politics of culture. In their discussions of hybridity and identity, theorists such as Stuart Hall and Homi Bhabha draw attention to the importance of the political role played by hybridity. Ien Ang argues this point in these words: ５ For postcolonial cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Trinh Minha, Homi Bhabha and others, hybridity has an explicitly critical political purchase. They see the hybrid as a critical force that undermines or subverts, from inside out, dominant formations through the interstitial insinuation of the ‘different’, the ‘other’ or the ‘marginalized’ into the very fabric of the dominant. (198) In the twentieth century, the concept of hybridity lent itself to the fields of linguistics and culture, with the potential of creating new perspectives, and mixing different languages, cultures, and genres. Developing a linguistic version of hybridity, Mikhail Bakthin describes hybridisation as “ a mixture of two social languages within the limits of a single utterance, an encounter, within the arena of an utterance, between two different linguistic consciousnesses, separated from one another by an epoch, by social differentiation or by some other factor” (358). Bakhtin’s emphasis on intentional and unconscious “organic” hybridity is important in understanding how “[i]ntentional semantic hybrids are inevitably internally dialogic […]. Two points of view are not mixed, but set against each other dialogically” (360). Elaborating on the difference between “intentional hybridity” and unconscious “organic hybridity,” Bakhtin argues that: Unintentional, unconscious hybridization is one of the most important modes in the historical life and evolution of all languages. We may even say that language and languages change historically primarily by hybridization, by means of a mixing of various ‘languages’ co-existing within the boundaries of a single dialect, a single national language, a single branch, a single group of different branches, in the historical as well as paleontological past of languages. (358-9) The co-existence of various languages in organic hybridity which are “mute and opaque” (360), for Bakhtin produces a “productive” effect of unconscious hybrids: It must be pointed out… that while it is true the mixture of linguistic world views in organic hybrids remains mute and opaque, such unconscious hybrids have been at the same time ６ profoundly productive historically: they are pregnant with potential for new world views, with new ‘internal forms’ for perceiving the world in words. (360) The idea of organic hybridity is also discussed by Robert Young who points out that “[i]n organic hybridity, the mixture merges and is fused into a new language, world view or object; but intentional hybridity sets different points of view against each other in a conflictual structure, which retains ‘ a certain elemental, organic energy and openendedness’” (Colonial Desire 20). Hybridity, Young argues, is an illustration “[…] of a doubleness that both brings together, fuses, but also maintains separation” (Colonial Desire 21). Young shows how hybridity functions “in two ways”: “‘organically’, hegemonising, creating new spaces, structures, scenes, and ‘intentionally’, diasporising, intervening as a form of subversion, translation, transformation” (Colonial Desire 23). As he notes, intentional hybridity “enables a contestatory activity, a politicised setting of cultural differences against each other dialogically” (Colonial Desire 22). Homi Bhabha turns Bakhtin’s intentional hybridity, which is “a form of subversion,” (Colonial Desire 21) into a challenge and resistance against the colonial discourse, which lead to his notion of hybridity, including mimicry and the Third Space, namely an in-between space. In other words, according to Bhabha, hybridity subverts the colonial discourse. Expressing and theorising the concept of hybridity, Homi Bhabha presents the term in the colonial sphere and carries it to the postcolonial context in which it becomes a significant term in the fields of multiculturalism. Bhabha defines hybridity as “a problematic of colonial representation […] that reverses the effects of the colonialist disavowal, so that other ‘denied’ knowledges enter upon the dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its authority” (The Location of Culture 114). According to Bhabha, hybridity happens at a moment of colonial contact, and he regards it as a positive element. Basing his concept of hybridity on the notions of Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derida, Bhabha defines it as follows: ７ Hybridity is the sign of productivity of colonial power, its shifting forces and fixities; it is the name of the strategic reversal of the process of domination through disavowal… Hybridity is the revaluation of the assumption of colonial identity through the repetition of discriminatory identity effects. ( The Location of Culture 112) For Bhabha hybridity subverts the colonial discourse, and creates an outlet through which the colonised can express themselves. He asserts that hybridity is a mode of subversive resistance as “[i]t displays the necessary deformation and displacement of all sites of discrimination and domination” (The Location of Culture 112). Bhabha’s concept of hybridity suggests that colonial discourse is never completely in control of the coloniser. Bhabha’s idea of hybridity refers to something more than just the mere result of mixing or combining two cultures. To Bhabha, hybridity is a channel of negotiation between the boundaries and binaries that form identities and cultures. Homi Bhabha first presents the term in the colonial sphere and then carries it to the postcolonial context in which hybridity is linked to other terms such as mimicry and ambivalence. Like hybridity, mimicry is “[…] ‘a blurred copy’ of the colonizer that can be quite threatening” (Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts 125). It subverts the colonial dichotomy of self/other, us/them and insider/outsider, disrupting the liminal character of hybrids; while it upends the colonial power and authority, it intensifies the dilemma and conflict of the colonised. Bhabha’s theory of hybridity is associated with mimicry, which is ambivalent in that it entails a similarity and a dissimilarity: “a difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (The Location of Culture 86), but is also a denial that there were cultures already that became hybrid. This point becomes clear in the following quotation: [C]olonial hybridity is not a problem of genealogy or identity between two different cultures which can then be resolved as an issue of cultural relativism. Hybridity is a problematic of colonial representation and individuation that reserves the ８ effects of the colonialist disavowal, so that other ‘denied’ knowledges enter upon the dominant discourse and estrange the basis of its authority-its rules of recognition. Again, it must be stressed, it is not simply the content of disavowed knowledges- be they forms of cultural otherness or traditions of colonialist treachery-that return to be acknowledged as counter-authorities. For the resolution of conflicts between authorities, civil discourse always maintains an adjudicative procedure. What is irremediably estranging in the presence of the hybrid-in the revaluation of the symbol of national authority as the sign of colonial difference-is that the difference of cultures can no longer be identified or evaluated as objects of epistemological or moral contemplation: cultural differences are not simply there to be seen or appropriated. (The Location of Culture 114 emphasis original) This passage emphasises two points. First, the two different cultures are “not the source of conflict” but are “the effect of discriminatory practices” (The Location of Culture 114). Secondly, Bhabha argues that hybridity challenges the accuracy of traditional analyses of colonialism which change the terms of colonialism. These points lead to the connection that can be observed between colonial discourse and the postcolonial Third Space. Hybridity plays a central role in what Bhabha calls “Third Space”, which enables one to envision the identities of cultures surpassing the binary oppositions such as us / them, insider / outsider and inclusion / exclusion. In most of his works, Bhabha argues that colonial-and postcolonial- cultural systems and statements are constructed in the “Third Space of enunciation” (The Location of Culture 37), in which cultural hybridity comes into constant formation, is a place of movement, and of “fluidity,” and which opposes the traditional fixity of national narratives. In other words, the Third Space ensures that cultural signs are not fixed but can be rehistoricised, translated, and reread. According to Bhabha, it is the Third Space “[…] which constitutes the discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and read anew” (The Location of Culture 37). Bhabha regards it as “a place of agency and intervention” (142) where cultural meaning is formed. Bhabha asserts that it has a postcolonial importance in that it ９ may open the way to conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity. To that end we should remember that it is the ‘inter’- the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between space- that carries the burden of the meaning of culture. It makes it possible to begin envisaging national, anti-nationalistic histories of the ‘people’. And by exploiting this Third Space, we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as the others of ourselves. (The Location of Culture 38-9 emphasis original) This is a space intrinsically critical of essentialist positions of identity and a conceptualisation of “original” or “originary” culture (Rutherford 210). When interviewed by Jonathan Rutherford, Bhabha stated that “the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from which the third emerges, rather hybridity […] is the ‘Third Space,’ which enables other positions to emerge” (Rutherford 211). The aim of his argument, then, is the deconstruction of the mostly Western and modern colonisers, essentialist claims of an inherent purity of culture. Despite the exposure of the Third Space to contradictions and ambiguities, it provides the politics of inclusion rather than exclusion that “initiates new signs of identity and innovative sites of collaboration and contestation” (The Location of Culture 1-2). Cultural differences then are not synthetised into a new third term, but continue to exist in a hybrid “Third Space of enunciation,” a zone of exchange and negotiation with new possibilities. Bhabha also refers to people who live “border lives,” (The Location of Culture 1) explaining that living at the border, at the edge and in-between, requires a new art of the present. Borders are significant thresholds, full of contradiction and ambivalence, separating and joining different places. According to Bhabha, the border is also the place where conventional patterns of thought are disturbed and disrupted by the possibility of crossing over, from which new, shifting, complex forms of representation arise that deny binary patterning. Thus, it is noted that “imaginative” border-crossings are a result of migration like the “physical” crossing of borders. Because of the imaginative border-crossings, Bhabha challenges the received notions of identity and subjectivity which depend on fixed, binary definitions such as native/foreigner and １０ master/slave. Pointing out the fact that cultures are always leaking into each other, criss- crossing supposed barriers, Bhabha also uses the phrase “cultural difference” to endorse cultures as hybridised and fluid, where “cultural interaction emerges only at the significatory boundaries of cultures, where meanings and values are (mis)read or signs are misappropriated” (The location of Culture 34). Bhabha emphasizes the hybridity of cultures. In terms of cultural identities, hybridity refers to the fact that cultures are always in contact with one another leading to cultural mixed-ness. Before analysing Rhys’s and Phillips’s characters as hybrids in the Bhabhanian sense, it may be helpful to clarify Bhabha’s concept of identity in terms of hybridity. Bhabha focuses on identities which are constructed by the people “living on the borderlines” of different societies and being caught “in-between” in these societies; thus, Bhabha views borders as important thresholds summarising some “crises” and “conflicts” (The Location of Culture 1-2). In relation to border Bhabha says “[t]he beyond is neither a new horizon, nor a leaving behind of the past […] [that] produce[s] complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion” (The Location of Culture 1). In addition to this, Bhabha notes that “[t]hese in-between spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood –singular or communal- that initiate new signs of identity […]” (The Location of Culture 1) which defines “the idea of society of itself” (The Location of Culture 2). Bhabha also argues that “[…] there is a return to the performance of identity as iteration, the re-creation of the self in the world of travel, the resettlement of the borderline community of migration” (The Location of Culture 9) In this way, Bhabha bases his argument on in-between spaces in which hybrids reside, pointing out that there is no room for pure culture since there is no fixed and stable identity. Identity is a significant issue in cultural studies which, in Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedgwick’s words, “[…] examines the contexts within which and through which both individuals and groups construct, negotiate and defend their identity or self- understanding” (166). In terms of definition, Chris Barker defines identity as “[a] temporary stabilization of meaning or description of ourselves with which we emotionally identify. Identity is a becoming rather than a fixed entity, involving the １１ suturing or stitching together of the discursive ‘outside’ with the ‘internal’ processes of subjectivity (442). In a similar fashion, Peter Brooker points out that “[c]ontemporary identities can […] be fluid or consciously delimited. Any number of factors are likely to be under [negotiation] in either case; whether of religion, nation, language, political [ideology] or cultural expression” (131). As can be seen, in postcolonial studies identity and its construction are crucial. Edward Said, like Bhabha, comments that “[…] cultural forms are hybrid, mixed [and] impure […]” (Culture and Imperialism 14). Said explains his argument in these words: “Partly because of empire, all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogenous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic” (Culture and Imperialism xxv). Along with Bhabha’s argument, Hall and Young note that there is no culture which is unmixed and there is no identity which is fixed. With regard to this, Hall argues that identities “[…] are more the product of the marking of difference and exclusion, than they are the sign of an identical, naturally-constituted unity - an ‘identity’ in its traditional meaning (that is an all-inclusive sameness, seamless without internal differentiation)” (“Introduction: Who Needs Identity” 4). In addition, in “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’ ” Hall notes that difference or “the ‘Other’ is fundamental to the constitution of the self” (237) which leads identity into a state of instability. Young notes that the identity of the English has been persistently recognised as multifarious, “an identity which is not identical with itself” […] “from which the other is [never] excluded” (3). Thus, along with Bhabha’s argument, Hall and Young suggest that identity is not fixed and pure as the other is in itself. David Huddort refers to Bhabha and his postcolonial concepts such as hybridity, mimicry, in-betweenness and the Third Space, and argues that these concepts “[…] undermine the simple polarization of the world into self and other” (4). In the same manner, in The Location of Culture Bhabha argues that in the light of the psychoanalytical approach the identity of the coloniser, which is “self,” and the colonised, which is “other,” is incomplete and unstable; in other words, they are incomplete without each other. In fact, Bhabha draws on the notions of identity of Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan, and then develops his １２ terms in the postcolonial context. Therefore, it might be helpful to refer briefly to the views of these writers before examining Bhabha’s concepts of hybridity and hybrid identity. In his books titled Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon explores colonialism and its relationship between the coloniser and the colonised. In Black Skin, White Masks, utilising his experience as a psychiatrist Fanon focuses on the psychological effects on the colonised. Looking back on his experience, he expresses his feelings when white strangers in France called him “[d]irty nigger!” or “[l]ook, a Negro!” (Black Skin, White Masks 109), specifying his blackness or his difference in these words: On that day, completely dislocated, unable to be abroad with the other, the white man, who unmercifully imprisoned me, I took myself far off from my own presence, far indeed, and made myself an object. What else could it be for me but an amputation, an excision, a haemorrhage that spattered my whole body with black blood? But I did not want this revision, this thematisation. All I wanted was to be a man among other men. I wanted to come lithe and young into a world that was ours and to help to build it together. (Black Skin, White Masks 112-13) It can be seen that it was the power holders who defined Fanon’s identity in dismissive terms, making him view himself as an “object,” not a human subject. As a result, he feels degraded and “amputated.” In this situation, identity is the very thing the French create for him while committing a “violence that splits his very sense of self” (McLeod 20). Fanon continues to explore the results of the sense of internalisation imposed on the colonised as the “other,” namely inferior beings. “The white world,” Fanon says, “the only honourable one, barred me from all participation. A man was expected to behave like a man. I was expected to behave like a black man […]” (Black Skin, White Masks 114). In the context of colonialism Fanon points out the difference between “man” or self with “black man” or the other’s position. On the other hand, “The place of the Other,” Bhabha argues, “must not be imaged, as Fanon sometimes suggests, as a fixed phenomenological point opposed to the self, that represents a culturally alien consciousness. The Other must be seen as the necessary negation of a primordial １３ identity […]” (The Location of Culture 51-2). While Fanon draws attention to the effects on the colonised and how to resist, Homi Bhabha notes that mimicry can be a way of subversion since it destabilizes the core of colonialist ideology such as self/other or us/them. Unlike Fanon, who pays attention to the psychology of the colonised, Edward Said concentrates on the study of the Orient. Whereas Fanon stresses the relationship between the coloniser and colonised in Africa and the Caribbean, Edward Said focuses on India, Asia, and the Middle East. In Orientalism (1978), Said deals with how knowledge is “managed” by Europeans in order to maintain power, excluding the knowledge natives have. Said notes that Orientalism refers to an idea which can be regarded as a “Western style for dominating, restricting, having authority over the Orient” (Orientalism 3). He points out that: […] without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage-and even produce- the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically and imaginatively during the post-Enlightment period. (3) Said continues to argue that the Orient is vital in explaining the West “as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience” (Orientalism 2). In addition, “[…] Orientalism” Said argues, “was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, the West, ‘us’) and the strange (the Orient, the East, ‘them’) (Orientalism 43). Through binary divisions, namely us/them, which Orientalism constructs, the West defines itself. As a result, Said points out that “European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self” (Orientalism 3). In line with Said, who deals with the assumptions of Orientalism such as “Orientalism is legitimating,” Bhabha argues that colonialism tries to legitimate and justify itself. “The objective of colonial discourse”, Bhabha notes, “is to construe the colonised as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest １４ and to establish systems of administration and instruction” (The Location of Culture 70). Bhabha, however, differs from Said’s Orientalism; Bhabha argues that concepts such as hybridity and mimicry subvert the concepts of Orientalism such as stereotypes. While analysing Lacan’s theory of identity, Bhabha states that “[l]ike [in Lacan’s] mirror phase “the fullness” of the stereotype – its image as identity - is always threatened by lack” (The Location of Culture 77). In addition, Bhabha implies, “[f]or identification, identity is never an a priori, nor a finished product; it is only ever the problematic process of access to an image of totality” ( The Location of Culture 51). Along with Lacan’s argument, Bhabha argues that identity is unfinished because of lacking the other and not achieving completeness; therefore, according to Bhabha, it creates hybrid identities, not a separate self and/or other, within the postcolonial context. Referring to the mirror stage, David Huddart argues that Bhabha “ […] produces a Lacanian analysis of colonialism, turning away from lost unities and looking instead toward processes of identification and negotiation between necessarily divided selves” (29). As he continues his argument, he points out that “[i]n the mirror stage, narcissism and aggressivity are entwined, and for Bhabha this entwinement also characterizes the colonial scene […]. […] The colonizer aggressively states his superiority to the colonized, but is always anxiously contemplating his own identity, which is never quite as stable as his aggression implies” (29). That is to say, the instability of the coloniser’s power can be seen along with the challenges the colonised present. While developing his terms, Bhabha also turns to Derrida’s concepts: For example, “difference” and the complexity of binary oppositions, which are explored in Derrida’s concept of deconstruction. Derrida’s deconstructive concept touches upon the realm of possibilities regarding different meanings; that is to say, in Lois Tyson’s words, “possible meanings” (258) can be seen in the realm of possibilities. Dealing with the connection between differance and identity, Peter Redman notes that differance also brings a sense of unstability into identity. He comments: [D]ifferance suggests that identities are not fixed […]. Instead, the concept of differance suggests that identities take their １５ meaning from signifying practices […]. This suggests that identities take their definition only from that which they are not, implying, for example, that the identity of the supposedly ‘civilized European’ is constructed in relation to a range of ‘different’ others: the ‘barbaric’ African, the ‘exotic’ Oriental and so on. Disturbingly, this forces us to think of these differential identities as inherently unstable. From the perspective of difference, the identity of the ‘civilized’ European is constantly haunted by the liminal presence of the ‘black’ and ‘Oriental’ others against which it defines itself and into which it continually threatens to collapse. (12) In other words, Derrida’s concept of differance indicates how inseparable the self and other are, and how unstable identities are; these are the very points Bhabha uses and applies to the postcolonial circumstances in order to debate his hybrid identities. According to Bhabha, the binary oppositions construct the identity of the coloniser and the colonised, namely self and other, and their identities are inseparable; therefore, their identities create hybrid postcolonial identities. Although groundbreaking, Bhabha’s theory is not without contradictions and has regularly been the subject of criticism. Peter Childs and Patrick Williams argue that Bhabha’s work is criticised for its “vagueness over the application of his concepts and theories” (143). They state that “[…] while he usually draws the examples for his theories from specific historical moments, it is not clear to several of his critics how tied to those moments the different concepts are, or whether ‘paranoia’, ‘ambivalence’, ‘hybrid’, and ‘the stereotype as fetish’ apply equally at all times” ( 143). Since the experience of diaspora communities in Western nations is, as John Mcleod argues, one of segregation and ghettoisation rather than border- crossings and cultural exchange, then the necessity of considering how cultures inter-relate becomes crucial. Thus, Bhabha’s work tends to include an utopian element which has not always been welcomed by his critics. Bhabha is often regarded as a cosmopolitan because of his transnational terms of reference. While Homi Bhabha examines hybridity as a symptom of resistance by the colonised, Paul Gilroy concentrates on narratives of the historical entanglement of Europe, Africa, １６ and America. Paul Gilroy sees the hybridity of postcolonial cultural identity as a state of double consciousness, “[s]triving to be both European and black requires some specific forms of double consciousness” (The Black Atlantic 1), in which African heritage and the black diaspora in the Western world have formed the ambivalent position of black cultural identity. W. E. B. Du Bois used the term while referring to his theory of African American “double consciousness,” which challenges the potential of reconciliation between African heritage and a European education. He explored the local situation of American blacks and their history of slavery and forced exile from Africa, and his theory of double consciousness has made an impact on many critics, including Paul Gilroy. Du Bois depicts his experience of becoming aware of being a black American as follows: It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body […]. (2) Concentrating on this book which has had an effect on the black people in America, Gilroy elaborates on double consciousness, pointing out that double consciousness comes out of the three modes which are thinking, being, and seeing. Thinking is racially particularistic; being is nationalistic which stems from the nation state where the ex- slaves who are not-yet-citizens are; seeing is diasporic which is global. Du Bois’s thinking creates exquisite patterns in which these three factors are together. (The Black Atlantic 127) Paul Gilroy notes that one of the results of the colonial encounter has been double consciousness, producing the capacity to exist within two or more cultures and two or more views. Naming the “Black Atlantic”, Paul Gilroy focuses on the transatlantic flow of people, ideas, and culture that began with the slave trade, pointing out that it has been important for cultural renewal in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and America. They all cement a modern, hybrid world. As Gilroy states: １７ I have settled on the image of ships in motion across the spaces between Europe, America, Africa, and the Caribbean as a central organising symbol for this enterprise and as my starting point. The image of the ship- a living, micro-cultural, micro- political system in motion- is especially important for historical and theoretical reasons that I hope will become clearer below. Ships immediately focus attention on the middle passage, on the various projects for redemptive return to an African homeland, on the circulation of ideas and activists as well as the movement of key cultural and political artefacts: tracts, books, gramophone records, and choirs. (The Black Atlantic 4) While analysing double consciousness and black Atlantic culture, Paul Gilroy explores what diaspora means in the context of Britain, and how it can be employed. Thus in his There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack, Paul Gilroy states that Black Britain defines itself crucially as part of a diaspora. Its unique cultures draw inspiration from those developed by black populations elsewhere. In particular, the culture and politics of black America and the Caribbean have become raw materials for creative processes which redefine what it means to be black, adapting it to distinctively British experiences and meanings. (154) Drawing on the concept of double consciousness that is “[s]triving to be both European and black,” which can be regarded as hybridity, Paul Gilroy implies that his understanding of hybridity, on the whole, involves both rather than neither/nor. In the British situation, referring to ethnicity, Stuart Hall has written on the effects of hybridisation on contemporary culture. What is the meaning of “ethnicity” in this context? Ethnicity is a term which, in Edgar and Sedgwick’s words, “[…] refer[s] to different racial or national groups which identifies them in virtue of their shared practices, norms and systems of belief” (114). At this point Peter Brooker notes that ethnicity is sometimes confused with race. According to him, race is marked by phenotypical differences such as body size, skin colour and hair type. On the other hand, ethnicity defines social and cultural identities; thus ethnicity is a more flexible cultural definition than race. In fact, ethnic identity suggests a sense of belongingness based on a homeland, its belief system, language, literature, cultural heritage, history and customs. １８ In other words, the concept of ethnicity can be observed in the formation of borderline or hybrid identities (92- 93). In his essay titled “New Ethnicities,” Hall implies that a change is occurring in black cultural politics: “[…] the term ‘Black’ was coined as a way of referencing the common experience and marginalization in Britain and came to provide the organizing category of a new politics of resistance, amongst groups and communities with, in fact, very different histories, traditions, and ethnic identities” (223). Drawing on his own experience, Stuart Hall is instrumental in spreading the notion of diaspora as a “governing trope for Caribbean identities” (Castle 280). In his article titled “Negotiating Caribbean Identities,” Stuart Hall points out the importance of “how to negotiate identity” (281). According to him, the Caribbean is the original diaspora because of being diasporised twice; in other words, they made the triangular journey, and they are back in Britain. Hall also notes that in diasporas the intricate processes of negotiation that characterise Caribbean culture can be observed (284). In “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”, Stuart Hall argues that there are two kinds of identity; identity as being and identity as becoming. Cultural identity […] is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being’. It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being eternally fixed in some essentialised past, they are subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture and power. Far from being grounded in mere ‘recovery’ of the past, which is waiting to be found, and which when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past. (394) Hall continues his argument, pointing out that cultural identity is not a fixed core, remaining static, which is independent of history and culture (“Cultural Identity and Diaspora” 395). In this sense, Hall perceives Derrida’s idea of ‘difference’ helpful to depict that the supplement that the black or mulatto skin increases the refinement of １９ French or European culture. According to Hall, difference challenges the fixed binaries that stabilise representation, and demonstrates how meaning is not completed; in other words, it moves on to include other meanings (“Cultural Identity and Diaspora” 397). Taking Derrida’s notion of difference into consideration, Hall argues that there is a possibility to create “the positioning and repositioning of Caribbean cultural identities” through three presences (“Cultural Identity and Diaspora” 398). These three presences are Presence Africaine, Presence Europeene, and Presence Americaine” ( 398 emphasis original). Hall employs Caribbean identities, including his own, to explain how the first is necessary, and how the second one is truer to their postcolonial conditions. He accepts the idea of three cultural presences in the Caribbean: African, which refers to a history of slavery; European, which refers to exposure to colonial discourse and representations of the Other; and “New World,” which refers to the Caribbean that is an “emptied” land (Childs and Williams 211). He also uses the three presences, African, European, and American in order to illustrate the idea of traces in the Caribbean identity which leads to the definition of the Caribbean identity as diaspora identity. According to Hall, a hybrid cultural identity begins with “a system where every concept or meaning is inscribed in a chain or a system within which it refers to others, to other concepts and meanings by means of the systematic play of differences” (The Multicultural Question 11). Therefore, the emergence of cultural identity and the foundation cultural identification mean negotiating social-cultural differences. Avoiding the generalisation that everyone is a migrant, Hall sees human identity as something that is on the move without arriving at; in other words, it is very much part of diaspora. He argues that diaspora does not relate to those disconnected clans whose identity can be protected with regard to a consecrated homeland to which they must go back at the expense of other people (“Cultural Identity and Diaspora” 401). On the contrary, Hall employs diaspora to communicate an aesthetic that highlights difference and hybridity. That is to say, Stuart Hall’s notion of diasporic identity depends on difference and hybridity which is “ […] defined, not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of ‘identity’ which lives with and through […] difference; by hybridity” (“Cultural Identity and Diaspora” 402). Hall therefore presents a “different way of thinking about cultural identity,” theorising it “[…] as ２０ constituted, not outside but within representation; and hence of cinema, not as a second- order mirror held up to reflect what already exists, but as that form of representation which is able to constitute us as new kinds of subjects, and thereby enable us to discover places from which to speak” (“Cultural Identity and Diaspora” 402). Examining the ways in which representations are employed as a means of colonial power to maintain the subservience of colonised peoples, colonial discourses have been important in the development of postcolonialism. Postcolonial literature is described as a literature which critically scrutinizes the colonial relationship (Boehmer 3), resisting colonialist perspectives. Elleke Boehmer argues that “[t]o give expression to colonized experience, postcolonial writers sought to undercut thematically and formally the discourses which supported colonization-the myths of power, the race classifications, the imagery of subordination” (3). On the whole, postcolonial literature deals with self- representation. Authors who come from the former colonies are keen to express themselves, telling their stories, which at their core portray the psychological and historical pictures of the colonial encounter and its results. While focusing on self-representation and telling their stories, the notion of borders and national identity are often redefined, and hybridity is seen as “a cultural effect of globalisation” (Guignery 5). Therefore, it is important to focus on hybridity in the light of globalisation which seems to “[…] erase and homogenise differences and local inscriptions […]” in order to cause “a return to essentialized identities, communitarian attitudes and/or religious fundamentalisms that insist on the unicity, the purity and the integrity of identities and cultivate endogamy and the rejection of the Other” (Guignery 6). It is also important to concentrate on hybridity in terms of race and racism which causes the problem (Spencer 44); that is to say, British coloured or black racism. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin define race as “a term for the classification of human beings into physically, biologically and genetically distinct groups” (Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts 180). According to them, “[t]he notion of race assumes, firstly, that humanity is divided into unchanging natural types, recognizable by physical ２１ features that are transmitted ‘through the blood’ and permit distinctions to be made between ‘pure’ and ‘mixed’ races” (Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts 180). Moreover, they argue that the term of race is relevant to the rise of colonialism, in that “the division of human society in this way is inextricable from the need of colonialist powers to establish a dominance over subject peoples and hence justify the imperial enterprise” (Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts 181). As a result, a binary distinction between “civilized” and “primitive” takes place ( Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts 181). They argue that “[a]lthough race is not specifically an invention of imperialism, it quickly became one of imperialism’s most supportive ideas, because the idea of superiority that generated the emergence of race as a concept adapted easily to both impulses of the imperial mission: dominance and enlightenment” (Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts 181). According to them, a hierarchy, which is based on skin colour, is constituted: white Europeans are at the top, while black Africans are at the bottom (Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts 181). They go on: [t]he most important fact about race was, as Fanon was the first to notice, that however lacking in objective reality racist ideas such as ‘blackness’ were, the psychological force of their construction of self meant that they acquired an objective existence in and through the behaviour of people. The self- images and self-construction that such social pressure exerted might be transmitted from generation to generation, and thus the ‘fact of blackness’ came to have an objective determination not only in racist behaviour and institutional practices, but more insidiously in the psychological behaviour of the peoples so constructed. (Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts 186) Like Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, Peter Brooke deals with race and racism, pointing out that race is a problematic category (213). As he states: “The anthropological description of human races (note that we speak also of ‘the human race’ as Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid is based on identifiable genetic or phenotypical differences, but, given the possible genetic variation within races and the effects of migration, resettlement and intermarriage, the existence of races, as such, is itself often disputed […]” (213). In addition, he notes that “[t]he study of race therefore frequently develops as a study of racism and racist IDEOLOGY” (214 emphasis original). According to this ideology, three types of racism can be observed: “violent assault; institutionalized ２２ racism (exercised, for example, through poor provision in education, healthcare, housing, and/or discrimination and unequal pay in the workplace); and, third, through the expression of ‘COMMON SENSE’ attitudes based on unexamined and prejudiced assumptions (even of the kind that appear to make a positive statement, as in ‘blacks are good dancers’)” (214 emphasis original). Chris Barker also focuses on race, noting that “[t]he concept of race bears the traces of its origins in the biological discourses of social Darwinism that stress ‘lines of descent’ and ‘types of people;’” and he emphasises skin colour by referring to pigmentation (248). Moreover, these traits are associated with intelligence and capabilities, and they are employed to classify “‘racialized’ groups are in a hierarchy of social and material superiority and subordination” (Barker 248). Barker also states that these categorisations, which are formed in order to keep power, take place “at the root of racism” (248). In addition, Barker notes that “[t]he idea of ‘racialization’ or ‘race formation’ is founded on the argument that race is a social construction and not a universal or essential category of biology (248 emphasis original). Barker continues his argument by stating that “[…] the historical formation of ‘race’ is one of power and subordination” (248). In other words, people of colour are given the “subordinate positions in relation to every dimension of ‘life-chances;’” in consequence, “British Afro-Caribbeans […] have been disadvantaged in: the labour market; the housing market; the education system; the media and other forms of cultural representation” (Barker 248- 249). In addition, Barker points out that the situation in Britain in relation to race has changed: on the whole white character of the population was bothered in the 1950s by the advent of migrants who were from Indian sub-continent and the Caribbean. As a result, the question of national identity became a critical category; this is the very thing through which “racialization operated” (249). Barker argues that “[w]ithin the West, people of colour have often been represented as a series of problems, objects and victims” (264 emphasis original). As he points out: Black people are constructed as the object rather than subject of history. Unable to think or act for themselves, people of colour are not held to be capable of initiating activity or of controlling their own destiny. Subsequently, as objects and aliens from ２３ another place, black people pose a series of problems for white people, for example as a foreign contaminating cultural presence or as the perpetrators of crime. (264) Barker points out that the representation of people of colour in Britain consists of contradictions; for instance, black people are portrayed both as criminals and middle- class success. On the other hand, race is viewed as a problem; however, racism is seen as a thing in relation to the past (270). Like Barker, Hall comments on the contradictions as follows: […] people who are in any way significantly different from the majority – ‘them’ rather than ‘us’ – are frequently exposed to this binary form of representation. They seem to be represented through sharply opposed, polarized, binary extremes – good/bad, civilized / primitive, ugly / excessively attractive, repelling- because-different / compelling-because-strange-and-exotic. And they are often required to be both things at the same time! (“The Spectacle of the ‘Other’”229) In addition to Hall’s comments, Philomena Essed notes that racism hides prejudices and discrimination in the name of racial or ethnic group membership. What is more, she points out that everyday racism is related to continuous disrespect which leads to alienation from society (203- 204). In line with Essed, Gary Younge says that racism can be observed in employment, housing, equality, safety, education and human rights (“Given Britain’s history”). Given the racism experienced by the immigrants, as can be seen above, Phillips illustrates this by referring to his own experiences as follows: “Ever since I was a kid, I had been stopped by the police on the street asking me where I was going, where I had been. If I was running, they would want to know where I was running to and what I was running from” (Bell 580). In a word, hybridity remains complex and problematic as an in-between space where the term Third Space tends to offer a sense of inclusion. While Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea deals with the nineteenth century hybridity and hybrid identity, Caryl Phillips’s The ２４ Final Passage explores hybridity and hybrid identity in the 1950s; thus the changes in the concept of hybridity and hybrid identity which take place in these two different eras can be observed. This dissertation focuses on these two novels that reflect the emergence and formation of hybrid identity. The first chapter will dwell upon Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys in order to explore how hybrid identity is depicted through Antoinette, a white Creole heiress, from the time of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage with the English husband and relocation to England. Struggling with her hybrid identity, being called “white cockroach” by the blacks and “white niggers” by the English (Wide Sargasso Sea 63), Antoinette belongs neither to the white Europeans nor to the black Jamaicans, and finds herself in the Wide Sargasso Sea, in the Third Space. Her long and complicated name, Bertha Antoinette Cosway Mason Rochester, draws attention to the extent to which Antoinette’s hybrid identity is always being redefined in perpetual motion, in relation to the men who come into her life. In this chapter her hybridity and identity transformation will be examined. The second chapter will focus on The Final Passage by Caryl Phillips in order to examine the concept of hybrid identity through Leila, a 19 year-old girl with a lighter skin who is neither black Caribbean nor white European, but a passenger, in perpetual motion in the Third space. Leila in The Final Passage (even the title of the book carries a colonial implication) is a mulatto girl, a hybrid, who is alienated for either being too white on the Caribbean island or too coloured in England. She struggles with her feeling of unbelonging, in-betweenness, which is the core of her hybrid identity. Leila is an alien, both in the Caribbean and in Britain. While she is different as a mulatto girl or hybrid in the Caribbean, she is an alien in Britain as an in-between character. In addition, the differences between Leila in The Final Passage and Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea will be explored, the differences between the two generations in these novels will be examined. The concluding chapter of this dissertation illustrates that these novels, which use the concepts of hybridity and hybrid identities, challenge the grand narratives of the ２５ imperial past which relate to the highly problematic and complex discourses of the politics of history, regimes of identity and the consequent formation of the Third Space. They question and challenge the naturalisation of the complexity of hybridity and hybrid identities. In other words, being inspired and offered new alternatives and prospects in the Bhabhanian Third Space, hybrid characters are prepared to negotiate and gain new ground in terms of redefining their identity while dealing with the complexities and problems of hybridity. ２６ CHAPTER I HYBRID IDENTITIES IN JEAN RHYS’SWIDE SARGASSO SEA In this chapter four hybrid characters in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette, the English husband, Daniel and Christophine will be explored based on cultural, racial, class, economic and religious levels. While concentrating on hybridity and hybrid identity within the concepts defined by Homi Bhabha such as in-betweenness, mimicry and the Third Space, naming, creolisation, mulatto, class system, emancipated slaves and colonial assumptions will be examined. Wide Sargasso Sea is a rewriting by Jean Rhys of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Set in the 1840s in the West Indies, Wide Sargasso Sea deals with colonialism focusing on Antoinette as a hybrid character. Teresa F. O’Connor describes the Sargasso Sea, which inspires the title of the novel, in these words: The Sargasso Sea, situated in the North Atlantic between the West Indies and the Azores, both divides and unites the opposite worlds of the old and the new hemispheres; in Rhys’s novel it stands between the world of the whites and blacks, the colonizers and colonized, the English and the West Indian Creoles […]. ( 145) She also describes the Sargasso Sea as a hybrid, being “neither land nor sea” (157). In her book titled Letters 1931-66, in a letter Jean Rhys details the process of choosing the title for her novel as follows: I have no title yet. “The First Mrs Rochester” is not right. Nor, of course is “Creole.” That has a different meaning now. I hope I’ll get one soon, for titles mean a lot to me. Almost half the battle. I thought of ‘Sargasso Sea’ or ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ but nobody knew what I meant. (154) The novel lends itself to a variety of critical approaches, including postcolonial theory which can be observed in the framework of the concept of hybridity. It is set in Jamaica ２７ and Dominica between 1839 and 1845, and presents a world of changing power relations among the English, the Creoles, and the newly emancipated slaves. The novel portrays the West Indies after the emancipation of the slaves in 1838, depicting a society which is in a state of decay epitomised by Antoinette’s family. The physical and historical setting of Wide Sargasso Sea is important. “Wide Sargasso Sea is completely West Indian,” Cheryl M. L. Dash argues, “not only because of the setting but primarily because of Rhys’s way of seeing the events, resulting from a knowledge of the West Indies which comes from having lived there and having absorbed the essence of the place. There is an authenticity and a sense of felt reality” (120). Wide Sargasso Sea was a huge success, winning “the Royal Society of Literature Award and the W. H. Smith Award” (Angier 581), and has not stopped growing in popularity ever since. There are various reasons for the success Wide Sargasso Sea enjoyed: it deals with some of the late twentieth-century preoccupations, such as place and belonging, and spaces between cultures. It has also become a significant novel, raising questions and discussions in terms of literary theory, including postcolonialism. For a long time Jean Rhys’s writing was regarded as limited because she was a woman writer, writing mostly about her own life. When Wide Sargasso Sea was published, critics started to take her novels more seriously; however, she found it difficult to be treated as a woman writer, who wrote only about passive female victims. Some critics such as Walter Allen refer to Antoinette as a “passive victim” as follows: “She is a young woman […] who is hopelessly and helplessly at sea in her relations with men, a passive victim doomed to destruction” (qtd. in Mellown 106). Like Walter Allen, Coltte Lindroth states that [e]ven more than Rhys’s other women, Antoinette is a victim’s victim. Isolated from her neighbors by her white skin, increasingly estranged from her mother, she moves from alienation to paranoia. Her very identity seems to slip away from her as her name is changed to suit others’ needs. When her mother remarries to improve their social and financial situation, she becomes Antoinette Mason, not Cosway; later, Rochester rejects the mother’s name of Antoinette to call her by her second ２８ name, so that as the novel goes on Antoinette Cosway becomes Bertha Mason without so much as putting up a struggle. (88) On the other hand, Helen Carr comments on this expression “passive victim” in these words: “‘Passive victim’ is, in any case, as inadequate a description for her heroines as for Jean Rhys herself, and not only because she shows them frequently as angry and as badly behaved as she was” ( 6). In her book titled The Rhys Woman, Paula Le Gallez argues that “many critics [refer] to the ‘Rhys woman’, an ubiquitous creature who turns up in all the novels, ‘the same woman at different stages of experience’” (2) According to her, this woman is portrayed as a “passive victim” who is regarded as “an extension of Jean Rhys’s own personality” (2). For instance, Marcelle Bernstein, who interviewed Rhys, elaborates on this: Her life seems to have been a drifting, haphazard, emotional affair. London, Paris, Vienna, Budapest have all been her homes. Married three times, she describes herself as “passive. I’m not very much a chooser. I’m much more a being chosen. I really don’t know why I’ve had such a restless existence.” The women in her books are mirrors in which she examines herself minutely. They are passive too, soft, sad, uncertain creatures with pretty faces and a liking for liquor. Their sexual generosity is seldom repaid and their hearts and beds are left, in the end, as empty as their purses. (qtd. in Gallez 2) On the other hand, Rhys’s views on being interviewed differ from the view mentioned above. She states that “[t]he question-and-answer game goes on. I realize that I am being gently pushed into my pre-destined role, the role of victim” (qtd. in Gallez 2). In addition, she continues to argue that she was not “a passive person” as follows: I’m always being made into a victim… a passive person…but the fact is I was active. God knows I hardly think I should be copied in the way I lived my life and loves; but I didn’t always make a mess of them, and I wasn’t always the abandoned one, you know. My affairs ended mostly because I wanted them to end or I wanted to leave the place where they’d happened, or just wanted to get away. (qtd. in Gallez 2-3) ２９ In other words, Jean Rhys points out that she was active, making her decisions, and she objects to being stereotyped as the inactive female victim. “‘Rhys woman’, far from being as passive as she looks,” Gallez argues, “is passive only in a culturally determined way, and that underlying this attitude is an ironic awareness that the quality is actually part of the feminine condition in the society in which she lives” (4). A “passive victim” of patriarchialism and colonialism, Antoinette is given a chance to tell her story revolving around her hybrid identity. As Helen Carr comments the “anger against injustice and hypocrisy behind Rhys’s ‘terrific – almost lurid! – passion for stating the case of the underdog’ disappears from view” (7). The Trinidadian V. S. Naipaul implies that all her writing should be studied in the light of her colonial background. He says: She was outside that tradition of imperial-expatriate writing in which the metropolitan outsider is thrown into relief against an alien background. She was an expatriate, but her journey had been the other way round, from a background of nothing to an organised world with which her heroines could never come to terms. This journey, this break in a life, is the essential theme of her five novels. (54) Naipaul also points out her honesty and courage, not her victimhood: Out of her fidelity to her experience and her purity as a novelist, Jean Rhys thirty or forty years ago identified many of the themes that engage us today: isolation, an absence of society or community, the sense of things falling apart, dependence, loss…What she has written about she has endured, over a long life; and what a stoic thing she makes the act of writing appear. (58) In other words, Naipaul notes that Jean Rhys plays a significant role in writing about the themes such as isolation, dependence and loss which are still relevant; what is more, she wrote about what she experienced. ３０ Jean Rhys (1890-1979), originally Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was born into a white slave-owning class in the Caribbean island of Dominica. She moved to Britain when she was sixteen years old in order to continue her education, but kept her ties with the Caribbean. Her sense of belonging to both places was complicated by the circumstances of her birth. Rhys herself experienced in-betweenness: between places and cultures, between classes and races, and not entirely belonging to either the one or the other. Thus her in-betweenness is illustrated in her heroines such as Anna in Voyage in the Dark and Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea. Inspired by Jean Rhys, Caryl Phillips writes a novel based on her life. Caryl Phillips’s A View of the Empire at Sunset tells the story of the woman who took the pen name Jean Rhys. It describes how she was born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams in Dominica in 1890, and then how sixteen years later moved to London, which was Edwardian, then to Paris, and then back to London again. Caryl Phillips portrays her life in these places and also depicts the past in order to illuminate the present, displaying the sense of family and alienation. He demonstrates that her experiences such as relationship, marriage, education and language were based on her hybrid identity. He illustrates her experience at school in England where a pupil called Myrtle is chosen by the headmistress to help her find out about what behaviour is expected: During the course of the next few weeks this Myrtle would one day pretend to be her friend and the following day openly conspire against her with the other girls. “We don’t understand what you are saying.” “Do you speak English?” “Why do you wear such old-fashioned clothes?” “What do you mean you have never ridden a bicycle?” “Snow is white, stupid, and it falls from the sky. Like rain.” “Do you have monkeys in your family? I mean as relatives, not pets?” “Why would you think anybody might be interested in seeing you, of all people, upon a stage?” “Truly you have no singing voice. You screech like one of your parrots.” Myrtle, she suspected, was part foreign, and perhaps that was why the headmistress had chosen the girl, but although Myrtle herself was not much to consider, with her flat chest and funny little screwed-up eyes, the spiteful girl’s habitual taunting made her feel as though somebody was pinching her skin. […] ３１ “Tell me honestly, do you even have a mother or were you hatched from an egg?” (78-9) Phillips depicts the difficulties she experiences at school in England; she faces racism, not being regarded as a human, but likened to a monkey. As for her language experience, “English people seemed to dislike her voice and so she had long accustomed herself to speaking in a whisper, but this meant that her words were often lost in the welter of noise generated by competing conversations” (200). When it comes to marriage, she wants to show her world to her husband Leslie: I will show you the rivers and the mountains, and come evening, as the New World day convulses towards dusk, I will share with you a spectacular elevated view of the empire at sunset. Perhaps, my husband, if I show you the West Indies, then you will finally come to understand that I am not of your world, and maybe then you will appreciate the indignity I feel at not only having to live among you people but possibly die among you, too. (15 ) This is the conclusion she comes to: “She scrutinized her husband and could see frustration giving way to anger, and so she reached out and placed a hand on his knee. She wanted Leslie to see her world, but it was already evident that the more her husband saw, the less he understood” (312). As a result, “[…] she felt sorry for poor Leslie, anchored to her earth and floundering about in his ordered mind, and she understood that never before had the void between her world and his felt so vast” (319). In the light of her Caribbean background, Rhys was interested in Charlotte Bronte’s Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre, with whom she shared some similarities. In her book titled Letters 1931- 66, Jean Rhys writes that when she read about Bertha in Jane Eyre she thought: “That’s only one side – the English side” (297). In another letter she elaborates on this by describing her experience with Jane Eyre in these words: “I read then re-read ‘Jane Eyre’ and was rather taken aback” (153); and she expresses her desire to rewrite it: “It might be possible to unhitch the whole thing from Charlotte Bronte’s novel, but I don’t want to do that. It is that particular mad Creole I want to write about, not any of the other mad Creoles” (153). In addition, in her Paris Review interview in 1979 about ３２ Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys expressed her resentment over Bronte’s treatment of the English husband’s mad West Indian wife: When I read Jane Eyre as a child, I thought, why should she think Creole women are lunatics and all that? What a shame to make Rochester’s first wife, Bertha, the awful madwoman, and I immediately thought I’d write the story as it might really have been. She seemed such a poor ghost. I thought I’d try to write her a life. Charlotte Bronte must have had strong feelings about the West Indies because she brings the West Indies into a lot other books […]. (qtd. in O’Conner 144) Born in Dominica, Jean Rhys was offended to see that Charlotte Bronte had turned Bertha, the first Mrs Rochester, who is a white Creole just like herself, into a monster. Hilary Jenkins argues that “[p]art of her reason for writing the book, therefore, was to expose what she saw as the latent racism at the heart of one of the great novels in the canon of English literature. Another reason was to examine its equally latent sexism: Charlotte Bronte allows Mr Rochester a second chance despite his many faults” (“Introduction” ix). As can be seen above, themes about race and racism seem to underlie the story of Antoinette and the other characters in Wide Sargasso Sea. In Rhys’s version, Bertha’s father, Jonas Mason, a planter and merchant, is a member of the colonising community in Jamaica. Like Bertha’s mother, Rhys’s mother was a Creole. White Creole people in the West Indies are in an odd situation in that “there is often the well-grounded supposition that the Creole may have ‘mixed blood’ ” (O’Connor 21). What is more, like Bertha, Rhys left the Caribbean for England when she was young. What was life like for families and children from Britain, living in the colonies during the colonial time? In her book titled The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset, Philippa Levine notes that at the beginning of colonialism, men had not been encouraged to take their families to live in the colonies of the Empire; however, there was a change in terms of attitude in the mid-nineteenth century; wives began to accompany their husbands who were appointed to colonial positions. As for children, they spent their early childhood with their parents, but parents who could afford education for their children in Britain, sent ３３ them back to Britain for a number of reasons: to guarantee that they were educated in the British way; to root out the influences of local culture on them; and to avoid unknown or uncommon diseases to which they were exposed in colonial environments (109). In his novel titled Cambridge, Caryl Phillips describes the education of the white children in the Caribbean: As to the practice of education, there is little to be done but to send the older children to Europe, for a newly arrived governess will soon marry. Either this or risk the children falling into a slothful state of ignorance. In later years the boys seldom return, and should the girls do so it is generally to enjoy the chivalry of local eligible bachelors, all intent upon marriage to any passing creature with a fair skin. (116) With this information, Wide Sargasso Sea can be described as a novel in which Rhys takes her inspiration from the figure of Bertha Mason, the Jamaican mad woman locked in the attic of an English manor house, and gives her the central role, allowing her the possibility and the opportunity to tell her story, or rewrite her history from her point of view. According to Firdous Azim, Bertha Mason, in Jane Eyre, is a Creole, whose racial origins are vague, and “[h]er blackness, to which her madness is attributed, must be seen along with her possession of colonial wealth and fortunes, which enabled her to marry a white Englishman” (183). Azim argues “[t]he meeting between the two women is presented as a colonial encounter, highlighting and dramatising questions regarding human subjectivity, rationality and civilisation” (178). Neither black nor white, Bertha Mason gives the picture of the colonial encounter in the novel. In Jane Eyre, however, Bertha is described in these words: In the deep shape, at the farther end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human, one could not, at first sight tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face. (321) ３４ This is a significant moment in the novel, depicting Bertha as a degenerate, half-animal or a mixture of beast and human, a hybrid, which can be read as the extension of colonial discourses which, in McLeod words, examine, “the ways that representations and modes of perception are used as fundamental weapons of colonial power to keep colonized peoples subservient to colonial rule” (17). Defined as “the Other,” savagery, sexuality and madness flesh out in Bertha Mason. Bertha’s bestiality and her wild nature are related to her “mixed” Creole background in Jamaica. In McLeod’s words, this assumption in colonial discourses defines the people “born of parents not from the same ‘race’ degenerate beings, perhaps not fully human, closer to animals. Bertha is robbed of human selfhood; she has no voice in the novel other than the demoniac laughter and the discomforting noises that Jane reports” in Jane Eyre (McLeod 152-3). As Frantz Fanon states in his book The Wretched of the Earth: In plain talk, [the colonized] is reduced to the state of an animal. And consequently, when the colonist speaks of the colonized he uses zoological terms. Allusion is made to the slithery movements of the yellow race, the odors from the “native” quarters, to the hordes, the stink, the swarming, the seething, and the gesticulations. In his endeavors at description and finding the right word, the colonist refers constantly to the bestiary. (7) As a result, Bertha’s function in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre can be seen as someone from hell between human and animal. When Rhys retells the scene from Jane Eyre in which Jane hears “a snarling, snatching sound, almost like a dog quarrelling,” and then encounters a bleeding Richard Mason in Wide Sargasso Sea (Wide Sargasso Sea 121),1 she shows Bertha’s humanity. In his essay titled “‘The Other Side:’ Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre,” Michael Thorpe points out the similarities between Jane and Antoinette in these words: Both heroines grow up fatherless and emotionally threatened by those who take charge of them; they live much within themselves and in their imaginations, made fearful by emotional 1 From now onWSS. ３５ and physical insecurity. Jane is an orphan: Antoinette virtually one, losing her father in childhood and seeing her mother marry again, infatuated, only to become insane after the burning of their estate by the emancipated negroes (in the disturbances of the late 1830’s). (181) Antoinette and Jane have similar childhoods; there is, however, a difference in terms of their position: while Bertha is from the edge of the empire, Jane is at its centre. Antoinette’s personal story and/or history is politicised. As the daughter of a former slave-owner in Jamaica, she is hated by the black and the mixed-race people, and also by the wealthier whites. In addition, as a child Antoinette experiences rejection by her mother, which causes lack of confidence, reflecting the core of the relationship between “mother country” and “her children, the colonies” (Raiskin 258). As Judith Raiskin states: [a]t the center of Rhys’s writing is her extremely powerful deconstruction of this “family” – the mother country, England, and her children, the colonies. Rhys’s Caribbean characters returning to the mother country do not find themselves nurtured in the “home” they have been so persuasively educated to expect, but rather find themselves once again in exile, this time not on the frontier, but in the heart of the metropolis. (258) On the other hand, as a wife she is only an heiress to the English husband, who cannot see her as an equal; he keeps his distance from her, thinking that she must be mad, and so robs her of her freedom. There are some political parallels. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar point out that the encounter between Jane and Bertha is an important confrontation in the tradition of women’s writing: “an encounter […] with her own imprisoned ‘hunger, rebellion and rage’, a secret dialogue of self and soul on whose outcome […] the novel’s plot, Rochester’s fate, and Jane’s coming-of- age all depend” (339). They examine the relationship between women and madness, and see that it has layers of reasons. Being under the control of their husbands and/or male relatives, they can be imprisoned, divorced and robbed of their money if they are labelled or diagnosed with madness. ３６ Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar also argue that the English husband’s mad first wife, Bertha Mason, is an image of the suppressed anger which was experienced by many nineteenth-century women. On the other hand, in her essay titled “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism,” Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak disagrees with this psychoanalytical reading of Bertha because of its failure to see the reality of colonial attitudes, and focuses on Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, which concentrates on the story told by the “madwoman.” Bertha Mason is, in Spivak’s words, “a figure produced by the axiomatics of imperialism.” Through her, the white Jamaican Creole, Spivak argues “[…] Bronte renders the human/animal frontier as acceptably indeterminate […]” (247). Rhys renames Bertha Antoinette and denies her husband a name although readers cannot fail to identify him with Bronte’s Rochester. Rhys saves Bertha from the attic in which she is imprisoned by Bronte. The madwoman in the attic is given a voice, a history, an alternative text; as a result, seeing her as a barrier to Jane’s happiness or to the English husband as a hero will not be easy (Innes 54). Jean Rhys reconstructs Jane Eyre from the point of view of Antoinette in Part One, from the the point of view of her husband, the English husband, in Part Two, and from the point of view of both Antoinette and Grace Poole in Part Three. Antoinette tells the first part, recounting her childhood, adolescence and marriage in Jamaica, including her relationships with Tia, the African-Caribbean friend, and Christophine, her black nurse and housekeeper, the burning of Coulibre, and her sense of alienation. In the second part her unnamed husband, namely the English husband, descibes his arrival in the West Indies, his honeymoon in Granbois, and their interactions with Amelia, a servant, Christophine, the housekeeper, and Daniel Cosway, who claims to be Antoinette’s half brother. Part three concerns Antoinette’s imprisonment in the attic of the Great House in England, and her fatal jump, but the end is ambiguous. Rhys’s fiction displays the sense of hybridity and hybrid identity of those who live in- between, experiencing the ambivalent and dislocated existences which have become part of the postcolonial and postmodern times. For example, like Jean Rhys who is from the Caribbean, Stuart Hall made a comment on his own situation in The Real Me? Postmodernism and the Question of Identity: ３７ Thinking about my own sense of identity, I realise that it has always depended on the fact of being a migrant, on the difference from the rest of you… Now, in this postmodern age, you all feel so dispersed, I become centred. What I thought of as dispersed and fragmented comes, paradoxically, to be the representative postmodern experience… Welcome to migranthood… Young black people in London today are marginalized, fragmented, unenfranchized, disadvantaged and dispersed. And yet they look as if they own the territory. Somehow, they too, in spite of everything, are centred, in place. (qtd. in Carr 24) Drawing on his sense of identity, Hall describes young black people in England who are hybrids; although they experience difficulties, they seem to be centred. However, the complexity of their hybridity can be observed. Similarly, the vulnerability, multiplicity of identity and hybridity are central themes in Jean Rhys’s writing: Who am I? What am I? What are they making of me? are the questions her heroines such as Anna and Antoinette ask, trying to find an answer : “I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all,” Antoinette says in Wide Sargasso Sea ( 85). Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedgwick point out that “[t]he notion of the self is invoked as soon as one asks a question like ‘Who am I?’ At first glance, this might not seem very difficult to answer, and you might respond by just giving your name. But giving your name does not adequately answer the ‘Who am I?’ question if you also take it to mean ‘What am I?’” (Cultural Theory 302). Frantz Fanon also focuses on the “Who am I?” question in relation to colonialism in The Wretched of the Earth, and argues that “[…] colonialism forces the colonized to constantly ask the question: “Who am I in reality?” (182). “The problem with the white West Indians was,” Helen Carr argues, “that […] they had gone native: they were no longer quite English, nor going native even […] ‘quite European’” (14). As the English husband says of Antoinette, “Long, sad, dark alien eyes. Creole of pure English descent she may be, but they are not English or European either” (WSS 56). ３８ The crisis of identity, creolisation, in particular hybrid identity, revolving around the protagonist Antoinette, is an important theme in Wide Sargasso Sea. Chris Barker defines hybridity as “[t]he mixing together of different cultural elements to create new meanings and identities. Hybrids destabilize and blur established cultural boundaries in a process of fusion or creolization” (385). As was seen earlier, the term “hybridity” is associated with Homi K. Bhabha, who argues that all cultural statements are constructed in a space called the “Third Space of enunciation” (37). “Cultural identity always emerges,” Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin argue, “in this contradictory and ambivalent space, which for Bhabha makes the claim to a hierarchical ‘purity’ of cultures untenable” (Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts 108). They further argue that “[i]t is the ‘in-between’ space that carries the burden and meaning of culture, and this is what makes the notion of hybridity so important” (108). Hybridity is employed in postcolonial discourse to imply “cross-cultural exchange” (108). They often question this expression of the term as it suggests “[…] negating and neglecting the imbalance and inequality of the power relations it references” (108). In the novel there are different kinds of hybrid identities, presenting their own complexities on various levels such as cultural, racial, religious, class and economic. Like hybridity, the term “Creole” is generally employed to define indigenous peoples or languages. Since Antoinette’s family has lived in the Caribbean for generations, Jean Rhys defines them as white Creole in order to illustrate typical racial and cultural hybridity. Coral Ann Howells argues that in Wide Sargasso Sea Antoinette reveals “Rhys’s personal crisis of identity” while asking the question, ‘So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all?’ (WSS 21). In her works, both fiction and non-fiction, Rhys examines the complexities of the white Creole condition in the West Indies in the nineteenth century. In her unpublished book entitled Black Exercise Book, she states: I was curious about black people.They stimulated me and I felt akin to them. It added to my sadness that I couldn’t help but ３９ realise they didn’t really like or trust white people – white cockroaches they called us. Sick with shame at some of the stories of the slave days… Yet all the time knowing that there was another side to it. Sometimes seeing myself powerful… sometimes being proud of my great grandfather, the estat