A Bhabhaesque Approach To Hybridity In Jean Rhys’s Wıde Sargasso Sea And Caryl Phıllıps’s The Fınal Passage
Özet
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.
