Good Job Guys

Pats on the back all around.

To A haha

Hey ! The skits/write-up are coming along slowly but surely. I'll finish it all by tonight. I agree that the literary hybridity is interesting, but I am already packed w/ skits/editing which is why I was gunna leave it out. If you'd do it that would be AMAZING.

Much Love,

M

Tomorrow at 8 a.m sounds perfect... I also got someone to cover my shift tomorrow so I'll have time in the evening to go to VV and get some costume stuff. We can discuss costumes tomorrow.

Sunday meeting

Ok so we will meeto tomorrow at 8am! Same place as last time?

Aly

to M

Cool with it, i might insert the literary hybrid part, because it is an interesting piece of aha! other than that go for it, i'll schmick it up, and bobs your uncle. how's the skits coming along by the way?

K

Stuff

I'm editing the presentation. I've inserted information about the author and the contextualization of the novel. I'm going to omit the "literary hybridity" part because it's kind of vague and not really relevant. If anyone else wants this included in the presentation feel free to write it up and I'll paste it in.

Khalid, As I'm going along, I'm laying out the slides. I'm getting my hair done at 1:45 but after that I'll finish this and send it to you. I'm placing the slides in places that make the most sense. We can also talk about this tomorrow if you'd like. U cool with this?

-M

Write Up

hey Guys!

Thank you Ally & Lids for getting the write up done.

I'm looking over it right now. I'm having a difficult time finding the "flow" .. it seems like just a bunch of quotes without much analysis. I will try to edit it to help this problem... Also, Antoinette's hybridity isn't divided into the categories we discussed. Should I divide it?

-Martyna

let's not be silly

haha 6 a.m is crazy. Let's meet at 8.

- Martyna

Write-up

Hii team!

6a.m is quite early for me as well XD, but I will come if that is the time we agree upon.

Also, Aly and I have posted the write-up on the engl391 gmail account. If you guys have any problems opening it up, please give Aly an email and she will send you a copy.

-Lid

6 am!

Sounds a little early! If we need that much time I suppose I could do 6 am. What about 8 am?

Aly

Sunday Morning

So how does 6am meeting sound to everyone?

Sunday meeting

Hi everyone,

I work on Sunday from noon until 8pm so the only times I am available are before and after that.

If we absolutely cannot figure out a way to make this work we can perhaps rehearse at the yoga studio where I work while classes are in session, but I would prefer if we did not have to go down that road.

:)
Aly

linguistic Hybridity?

This is not organized, it is more or less a list of quotes showing linguistic hybridity

"Much Love peeps" (quoting myself there just to check if the quotation marks are working, they are and so we begin)

"'Adieu.' Not adieu as we said it, but à dieu, which made more sense after all. The loving mang was lonely, the girl was deserted, the children never came back. Adieu." (18)

Creole |ˈkrēˌōl| (also creole)

noun

1 a person of mixed European and black descent, esp. in the Caribbean.

• a descendant of Spanish or other European settlers in the Caribbean or Central or South America.

• a white descendant of French settlers in Louisiana and other parts of the southern U.S.

2 a mother tongue formed from the contact of two languages through an earlier pidgin stage : a Portuguese-based Creole.

adjective

of or relating to a Creole or Creoles.

ORIGIN from French créole, criole, from Spanish criollo, probably from Portuguese crioulo ‘black person born in Brazil, home-born slave,’ from criar ‘to breed,’ from Latin creare ‘produce, create.’

 a touch of the hybrid can be seen in the broken manner most of the island inhabitants speak 

"I never see you do it...only talk."(21)

"She hear all we poor like beggar"(21)

"Old time white people nothing but white nigger now, and black nigger better than white nigger"(21)

 the language broken as it where by hybridity (as our favorite character would prove to be).

I have taken all these quotes from a single page, as there are hundreds of references to how the natives speak, on almost every single page, the expanse is better illustrated with a single page

this excerpt could be considered a case of the linguistic hybrid albeit one that occurred before the importation of englishman to the Caribbean

"he opened the door leading to the glacis and walked out."

glacis |ˈglāsis; ˈglas-|

noun ( pl. same or -cises)

a gently sloping bank, in particular one that slopes down from a fort, exposing attackers to the defenders' missiles.

ORIGIN late 17th cent.: from French, from Old French glacier ‘to slip,’ from glace ‘ice,’ based on Latin glacies.

interesting term to use for ones porch

"Qui est là? Qui est là?...Ché Coco, Ché Coco."

An Island bird that only speaks the singular french phrase (very suspect indeed)

"your mother walk around with no shoes and stockings on her feet, she sans culottes." 

what's interesting is that while we could infer based on context that Christophine here is referring to the lack of feet covering of Antoinette's mother (also called Antoinette) the word culottes in french today means  season, and in English Breeches. now we can't assume that Antoinette's mother was walking around bare bottomed but the litterary translation would be such (even more preposterous to be walking around without season). However if we go to the historic translation of the term 18th century england so named the lower class plebeian masses sans culottes because they did not wear the upper class breeches. that such a term of class discrimination be adopted by a colonized land is indeed peculiar, especially so being used by an islander in reference to a white colonial.

I introduce the frequent injections of patois into the scene thus:
"talking not English but the debased French patois they use in this island"

"in the street another called Bon sirop, Bon sirop, and I felt peacefull."(58)

"Doudou, ché cocotte"(61)

"They call this fashion à la josephine."(67)

"Not those. The fer de lance of course, but there are none here"(73)

"Every evening we saw the sun go down from the thatched shelter she called the ajoupa, I the summer house."

"Ma bell ka di maman li. My beautiful girl said to her mother"(76)

Speaking specifically of Antoinette, we see her throughout the novel going between english and patois, addressing Christophine in patois when in the presence of the un-named rochester.
Do note that the linguistic hybridity is not simply the bilingual or quadlingual abilities of our favorite character but rather in the way she blends the different languages (predominantly Patois & English) and moves between them. her interaction between both creating moments refusing translation.

"Adieu Foulard, Adieu Madras, or Ma belle ka di maman li. My beautiful girl said to her mother (No it is not like that. Now listen. It is this way). She'd be silent, or angry for no reason, and chatter to Christophine in patois."

We wouldn't talk about the religious hybridity, it seems like a one liner at best. there's the part at the beginning in which Antoinette's father talks about the islanders being penitent in the morning (after burning down their house) which suggest christianity, and then there's Obeah the black magic religion. we could suggest in the Islanders there is a hybrid between the christian faith and black magic (pagan) beliefs, thins being also suggested by the inset from The Glittering Coronet of Isles in which the islanders are said to refuse to talk about black magic though they believe in it.
"I have noticed that negroes as a rule refuse to discuss the black magic in which they believe"

Anything else comes to mind that I've missed?
oh yeah! Tits!

Go team!
K

Write up and Presentation Time

Alrighty, so far, for the write up, I have approximately 8-9 pages (not double spaced), and this does not include contextualization.  Since the professor reserves the last half of the class for the rest of lecture, and we are splitting the first portion of the class with another group, we have about 40min for our presentation.  That means that we will have to cover the material for each page, on average, in 4mins or so.  We may not need that much time for each page anyways, since we tend to talk faster than we can read.  I'm just wondering what everyone else thinks of this.

P.S. I will upload a new version of the write-up on the engl391 gmail account.

-Lid

Antoinette Cultural and Racial Hybridity

Hey Guys,

I think my earlier posts have quite a bit on Antoinette's racial hybridity. (Please include the ants/flowers... I really like that quote :) )

Here's a few things on her cultural (or maybe racial... kind of a grey area) hybridity:

As a daughter to former slave owners, it might have seemed natural for her family

to belong to the white community, rather than the black, but as the very opening words of the novel

suggest, they were not in their ranks due to the Cosway's Creole background. The white community

did not accept them, but neither were they welcome among their former slaves: “They hated us.

They called us white cockroaches” (Rhys 8). Antoinette finds herself in a gray zone between the

dominant blocks of power, not belonging to any of them, but instead forced to become a hybrid.

http://hig.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:218975

Instead of crossing a physical border, and having to deal with the questions of belonging

from a traditional immigrant perspective, the Cosways are immigrants within a society, forming

their identity through the crossing from one system of power to another. Indeed they are second and

third generation immigrants, now sharing a Creole background, which is even intensifying the

questions of identity and belonging because of the difficulty they have in identifying themselves as

either white nor black. These questions were perhaps not as pressing in colonial times when the

Cosways could grow wealthy and powerful through the abuse and slavery they occupied themselves

10

with and even were dependent on. But as the social structure changed and they no longer were by

default on the top, new questions of identity arise. They were suddenly not in the white people's

ranks due to their loss of economic status, their racially mixed, and allegedly mentally unstable

background, but neither were they in the favor of their former slaves. It is this crossing from one

system to another that changes the way they perceive their identity, and also changes the way they

are seen by others. (10)

^^ This except also comes from the essay in the above link.

Antoinette's relationships are severly affected by her unclear identity. She can't seem to connect fully with anyone because she is an 'other' to everyone. If anyone let's Antoinette get too close to them, they risk confusion of their own identity. Perhaps this is why Rochester refuses to emotionally connect with Antoinette. If he let's her in, he might risk the integrity of his 'Englishness'. From a cultural perspective, a lack of relationships leaves Antoinette completely alone. We shape our cultural identity by observing and learning from those around us. Since Antoinette doesn't have this option, she ends up in-between cultures, but more importantly, she ends up alone.

At one point, Tia says to Antoinette,

'That's not what she hear, she said. She hear all we poor like beggar. We ate salt fish – no

money for fresh fish. That old house so leaky, you run with calabash to catch water when it

rain. Plenty white people in Jamaica. Real white people, they got gold money. They didn't look at

us, nobody see them come near us. Old time white people nothing but white nigger now, and

black nigger better than white nigger'. (Rhys 9)
When reading this passage, one must remember that Antoinette is the narrator. She is recreating this scene for the reader. She doesn't argue or oppose Tia's comment. Instead, she recounts it in third person for the reader. This suggests that Antoinette has internalized her identity as a 'white cockroach'.

The next quotation I'm going to post is pretty long but it's got really good content about Antoinette's attempt to dress like an English lady:

Antoinette tries to please Edward by acting as English and as appealing to him as she

possibly can, her view of the woman he would desire, but in many cases her efforts are interpreted

as the opposite: when she tries to behave like an English lady, Edward only sees the untidy

blackness in her, reassuring him of his suspicions that she is nothing like him. Mardorossian

discusses a scene in the novel where Antoinette tries to simulate a girl from a painting she was very

fond of when she was young, “The Miller's Daughter”. The painting represents a “lovely English

girl with brown curls and blue eyes and a dress slipping off her shoulders” (Rhys 19). This image

Antoinette seems to remember when she later tries to win her husband's heart, Mardorossian argues.

To Antoinette, “The Miller's Daughter” is a representation of how an English woman should look

and be, one of the few clues she has on how to appeal to Edward, but instead of appealing to

Edward he now finds her even stranger and pushes her further away: “She was wearing the white

dress I had admired, but it had slipped untidily over one shoulder and seemed too large for her. I

watched her holding her left wrist with her right hand, an annoying habit” (Rhys 97). Mardorossian

summarizes: “Antoinette herself is incapable of realizing that in Rochester's eyes, her attire actually

associates her with (black) female wantonness and prostitution” (Mardorossian 1076). When

Edward is faced with the problem of his wife not living up to the standard of his view of an English

woman, he chooses to push her aside as an other and also remarks on her annoying habit of holding

her wrist with her hand. (17-18) _The essay above

I know this post has just been a lot of quotes... but I don't have time to keep working on this :( I think I'm going to leave my part (of the research) at this and pass over the ball.

Literary Hybridity is just a matter of looking at that essay I posted earlier on the blog.

Cheers Guys! I'm looking forward to writing our skits on Saturday! Let's also decide on a time for our meeting on Sunday. I work at 4 p.m.

Martyna G

The NEW and IMPROVED sweet Presentation!!!

Hello Group,

I'm writing to outline what we've decided last class as our final (and awesome) presentation layout.

FOCUS: Exploring hybridity in the characters (primarily Antoinette), and cultural/physical setting of Wide Sargasso Sea.

Itinerary: introducing ourselves and an index for our presentation

Introduction:  (The Itinerary and Introduction can be written when the presentation is written)
1) Contextualizing the novel/introducing the author.
2) Introducing hybridity and its five sub-categories (i.e. cultural, racial, linguistic, literary, and religious)
3) Presenting our focus to the class

THE BODY: 

1) Characters:
Antoinette (we will discuss Antoinette's hybridity by breaking it into the five sub-categories - each person is responsible for finding quotes/research which support two of the following categories.
               Antoinette's cultural hybridity - Martyna, Lidia
               Antoinette's racial hybridity - Martyna, Lidia
               Antoinette's linguistic hybridity - Khalid, Ally
               Antoinette's religious hybridity - Khalid, Ally (consult on this... might not use it; possible obeah (or however you spell it) references.
               How Antoinette is affected by the hybridity - ALL

We will finish "characters" off by looking at a couple other significant hybrid characters within the novel. 

2) Setting (Cultural and Physical) - Ally and Lidia will finish doing the research for this (Ally you're on this because you already did most of it for the previous lay out. We figured you'd know best what you're doing). In this category we're NOT breaking hybridity into the sub-categories.
             Physical Setting - the hybridity as portrayed in the landscape and setting/ what affect this has on the characters/reader.
             Cultural Setting - choose 3 most significant cultural setting elements (i.e. food, clothing ect.) and discuss their hybridity + how this affects the characters/novel.

3) Literary Hybridity - The book as a hybrid. Martyna will finish the research for this.

4) Conclusion - Tieing it all together

DUE DATES:

1) By Thursday night all of the above research is to be done.
2) Friday Lidia and Ally will write up the presentation using the research provided by everyone + they will mail it out
3) Saturday Martyna will do the skits and Khalid will do the presentation slides according to the write up
4) Sunday morning we meet for rehearsal. What time are we meeting?
5) Monday we meet if necessary.

Go Team!
Martyna G

Presentation Update

Hello team!

I have started to compile everything together for the write-up and handout.  I will also be adding things as we go along.  For now, I've basically put everything that we have posted into one document and have started to move things into their respective categorizations.

If anyone is interested in how it looks so far, I will leave a draft in the engl391 gmail account for you to look at.

-Best,

Lid

Linseed oil and Koala's

The layout i propose incorporates all the work you've done for your initial proposed demarcation. the main idea behind it is for flow and legibility. I feel (and i do admit normative judgements in this regard) that the initial sectioning while it might be good for analysis of hybridity might not do the novel itself justice. but certainly if you feel strongly about it with skits and segues in mind, please do not let it fall upon a democratic process that does not take into consideration what you have in mind for these interludes.

K

One more thing...

We have also already done a TON of work on the first proposed layout... which considering the time crunch might be a big bonus as well. Also, considering the initial layout only has three essential categories - cultural, racial, and linguistic hybridity... (literary being a small category mentioned in relation to the book as a whole) it would be much easier to do the skits. Because this would mean we'll only have 3 skits to do.

Oupsie

Khalid I didn't notice your post when I wrote my last post! The one about Ally that is .... I like the layout you've proposed. I think we can incorportate pretty much everything either way... The five sub-categories seem to outline hybridity a bit better... while the second way might be a bit easier to incorporate everything we would need.. I'm not sure. Let's have a team vote!

-Martyna

Ally is Brilliant

You are amazing. That is all :)

: a rope of sand

Sorry about the criticism guys, seems like i've been confronted on my stance as a negative critic a fair few times on the course of this weekend, unfortunately my dislike for the current state of academia has left me a bitter cynic more readily criticizing than aiding any betterment. that said I'd like to propose the following as a sequence of information / outline.

slide 1: Wide Sargasso Sea: a treatise on hybridity
(i see the sub-title floating in on a bed of pixels peering at a hollow moon, hollowed by the cryings of despondent janitors clad in blue coveralls, forever dancing with wooden brooms, turned a disgusting brown from grubby hands)


fade to a blank screen, which holds for 30 seconds. we all stand dead-pan glaring at the audience. 


screen returns with a sunset behind us, a black-hawk helicopter off in the distance growing bigger as it gains in distance, exploding just before it fills the field of vision.

slide 2: Introduction: concept of hybridity (textbook definition & Bhaba's hybridity)

slide 3: Introduction: The novel & author

slide 4: Introduction: Our Modus Operandi. Hybridity broken into Characters & Setting. Characters not being simply the individual persons in the novel but all persons (further explained later in this rigmarole of mine) and setting being the instances of hybridity of place, the zeitgeist if you will.

if we can work in the phrase haecceity of the zeitgest anywhere into the presentation i'd be delighted. it is essentially a nonsense phrase which basically means the thingness of the placeness, but for some reason given the current state of academics it is heralded as a deep and meaningful saying much like the word zen

slide 5: characters ie the effects of hybridity upon persons. here we can talk about racial hybridity,
linguistic hybridity, cultural hybridity (this being in reference specifically to things people do, manners, or more along the lines of the stipulates for Aristotle's moral virtues,  can't think of the appropriate term) and possibly literary hybridity (though i must confess i am unable to see the demarcation between linguistic and literary, not to be misread, the difference between the terms i understand, with the literary being the written and the linguistic being the spoken, but do we have any examples in which the literary is referenced in the book itself? on second thought we can add the litterary hybridity at the end as a little whammy, as we talk about the book itself being a literary hybridity) so, just racial, linguistic, and (until further betterment of terms) Cultural

subsections: individual characters and how they exemplify hybridity. we can also talk about the conflict that arises from hybridity of the individual characters in this section, internal struggles, inability to find a place (Aly's quote, Martyna's examples etc)

slide 6: settings, moments of hybridity in the novels setting.

subsections: architecture (english houses without chimneys, appalling recreations of english houses alys example). the forest with old cut paths and remnants of previous settlements.  We can also talk about the culture as it relate to the zeitgeist of the place and of course the hybrid foods. there's also the hybridity in comparison that occurs as places are spoken about in the manner in which they differ or are like european places (Paris & London being forever referenced)

slide 7: literary hybridity, the novel itself being a hybrid

slide 8: Concluding remarks, summation of all the ideas as presented. a narrative perhaps to relax the wondering minds in which we talk about a young man known by many as 50cent, upon seeing his grandmother (suffering from crippling arthritis mind you) knitting him a pair of socks, exclaims "gee, you knit!"


Hope it is clear that the demarcation / notation "slide" does not indicate singular powerpoint slides but rather more appropriately section markers.


Also it seems unavoidable that we use a good  deal of text in the presentation, predominantly because what we are dealing with remains the literary work, while we might include images it seems in terms of remaining true to the novel and not falling under the lure of speaking to the movie, it would behoove us to augment our discourse predominantly with text. not to worry i am of the belief that text can certainly be made more appealing than the most rambunctious of images. 


exit stage right in a straight line formation, all mounted on tiny tricycles (I'm of the belief that we can steal these from little kids in fenced neighborhoods) 
Jjust in case anyone was wondering what the rope of sand thing is, it's a clone high reference, makes me chuckle each time i write it, and i've been using it for everything professional or academic for the past couple of weeks without anyone actually calling me on it.


Thoughts and Suggestions?

P.S.

Khalid, I think using the font from the cover would work well. Also if you could somehow incorporate laying text over imagery like we see on the cover of the book I think it would look really polished.

Martyna, I really like the idea of using those subcategories to focus our presentation (As you can probably tell from my post) :-)

Aly

Cultural Hybridity (+ a little Literary)

Architecture:

The house at Granbois is an excellent example of cultural hybridity, it is described as "... an imitation of an English summer house - four wooden posts and a thatched roof" (60).  I'm not sure of this but to me the thatched roof is out of place, an aspect of Caribbean architecture placed atop a mimicry of the English summer home. (Khalid your input on this one would be great, maybe you have learned something about the architecture of English summer houses or traditional Caribbean homes in one of your courses.) On page 63 it is mentioned that the kitchen outbuilding has no chimney, it looks English but is missing the chimney the would be used when heating the home on cold days in England.

The house is trying desperately to  remain english but is being overtaken by the island as illustrated in this excerpt:

"At the top a badly cut, coarse-grained lawn and at the end of the lawn a shabby white house. 'Now you are at Granbois'. I looked at the mountains purple against a very blue sky. 
     Perched up on wooden stilts the house seemed to shrink from the forest behind it and crane eagerly out to the distant sea. It was more awkward than ugly, a little sad as if it knew if could not last." (60)

This threat of being swallowed up is reminiscent of Antoinette's struggle as an English child surrounded by the culture of the Islands. The house seems unsure of it's true identity, and so is Antoinette.


Fashion:

"She seemed pleased when I complimented her on her dress and told me she had it made in St. Pierre, Martinique. 'They call this fashion a la Josephine.'
     'You talk of St Pierre as if it were Paris.' I said.
     'But it is the paris of the West Indies.'"(67)

Naming the fashion "a la Josephine" demonstrates a hybridity of french language with Caribbean style. The centre of fashion among the islands is St Pierre, a french named town imitating Paris. To Antoinette's English husband St Pierre is not near equal to Paris, illustrating his rejection of the hybrid in another dimension.

Food:

I feel that these excerpts are relevant but I don't know what to do with them at the moment:

"The food, though too highly seasoned, was lighter and more appetizing than anything I had tasted in Jamaica. We drank champagne."(67)


"We boiled green bananas in an old iron pot and ate them with our fingers out of a calabash and after we has eaten we slept at once." (20)


"She hear all we poor like beggar. We ate salt fish - no money for fresh fish. That old house so leaky, you run with calabash to catch water when it rain. Plenty white people in Jamaica. Real white people, they got gold money. They didn't look at us, nobody see them come near us. Old time white people nothing but white nigger now, and black nigger better than white nigger." (21)

cal·a·bash

 noun \ˈka-lə-ˌbash\

1: a tropical American tree (Crescentia cujete) of the bignonia family; also : its large hard-shelled globose fruit

2

: gourd; especially : one whose hard shell is used for a utensil

3

: a utensil (as a bottle or dipper) made from the shell of a calabash

Music:

A song sung by Amelie as she exits Antoinette's room:

"'The white cockroach she marry
The white cockroach she marry
The white cockroach she buy young man
The white cockroach she marry.'"

Antoinette's response to the song:

"It was a song about a white cockroach. That's me. That's what they call all of us who were here before their own people in Africa sold them to slave traders. And I've heard English women call us white niggers. 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." (85)


"Adieu - like all those old-time songs she sang. Always adieu (and all the songs say it). If she too says it, or weeps, I'll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She's mad but mine, mine. What will i care for gods or devils or for Fate itself. If she smiles or weeps or both. For me."(136)

____________________________

Literary Hybridity:

I found a good example of literary hybridity as I understand it on pages 126-127. Christophine is confronting "Mr. Rochester" and after each sentence her speech is repeated in his mind. The voice repeating her words seems to be a combination of Christophine's direct speech, Antoinette's experience, and Mr. Rochester's own thoughts.

"'...all you want is to break her up.' 
(Not the way you mean, I thought)
'But she hold out eh? She hold out.'
(Yes, she held out. A pity)
'So you pretend to believe all the lies that damn bastard tell you.'
(That damn bastard tell you)
Now every word she said was echoed, echoed loudly in my head.
'So that you can leave her alone.'
(Leave her alone)
'Not telling her why.'
(Why?)
'No more love eh?'
(No more love)
...
'...I don't meddle in that for beke. I tell her its foolishness'
(Foolishness foolishness)
'And even if it's no foolishness, it's too strong for beke'
(Too strong for beke, too strong)
'But she cry and she beg me.'
(She cry and she beg me)
'So I give her something for love.'
(For love)
'But you don't love. All you want is to break her up. And it help you break her up.'
(Break her up)
'She tells me in the middle of all this you start calling her names. Marionette. Some word so.'
'Yes I remember, I did.'
(Marionette, Antoinette, Marionette, Antoinetta)
'The word mean doll, eh? Because she don't speak. You want to force her to cry and to speak.'
(Force her to cry and to speak)
'But she won't. So you think up something else. You bring that worthless girl to play with next door and you talk and laugh and love so that she hear everything. You meant her to hear.'
'Yes, that didn't just happen. I meant it.'
(I lay awake all night long after they were asleep, and as soon as it was light I got up and dressed and saddled Preston. And I came to you. Oh Christophine. O Pheena, Pheena, help me.)" (126-27)


In this excerpt the italicized voice is at first replying to Christophine with "Mr. Rochester's" thoughts, around the line "(Foolishness foolishness)" it transforms to mimic Christophine's voice, and the very last statement in brackets; "(I lay awake all night long after they were asleep, and as soon as it was light I got up and dressed and saddled Preston. And I came to you. Oh Christophine. O Pheena, Pheena, help me.)" is an interjections from Antoinette herself. This interjection of thought is hybrid in meaning, occupying a space that combines white, black, and Creole voices, but it is also physically hybrid as it occurs between lines of spoken dialogue from two opposing parties.

Another example of literary hybridity is the novel itself. It is a hybrid of Jane Eyre and an entirely new narrative.

____________________________

On another note, I think this quote is really crucial to understanding Antoinette's inner life. I don't know where we can use it in the presentation but it seems so important to me!

"Then, not so far off, I saw Tia and her mother and I ran to her, for she was all that was left of my life as it had been. We had eaten the same food, slept side by side, bathed in the same river. As I ran, I thought, I will live in Coulibri. Not to go. Not. When I was close I saw the jagged stone in her hand but I did not see her throw it. I did not feel it either, only something wet, running down my face. I looked at her and I saw her face crumple up as she began to cry. We stared at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers. It was as if I saw myself. Like in a looking glass." (38)

______________________________

Aly

Linguistic Hybridity

I meant to include this is my previous post about Racial hybridity:

Cre·ole

  /ˈkrioʊl/ Show Spell{{[kree-ohl] Show IPA

–noun

1.

a person born in the West Indies or spanish America but of European, usually Spanish, ancestry.

2.

a person born in Louisiana but of usually french ancestry.

3. ( sometimes lowercase ) a person of mixed black and European, esp. French or Spanish

** the parrot speaking french could be a hint at this ^^. Also, I think the parrot speaking French is more linguistic hybridity than racial hybridity.

I found the following passages on linguistic hybridity:

         All day she'd be like any other girl, smile at herself in her looking-glass . . . try to teach me her songs, for they haunted me. 
         Adieu foulard, adieu madras, or Ma belle ka di maman li. My beautiful girl said to her mother (No it is not like that. Now listen. It is this way). She'd be silent, or angry for no reason, and chatter to Christophine in patios. 


In this passage, the initial language is Maltese, then the second language mentioned is Patios. Maltese is a from or Arabic with borrowings from Italian, while Patios is a form of language that differs from the norm (generally French). Both the languages used are 'hybrid' in essence. There are many other languages references in the novel. All of which are essentially hybrid.


Also, Antoinette's husband describes Christophine talking as, "She began to mutter to herself. Not in patois. I knew the sound of patois now" (132). Again, another lanuage is incorborated but liked to a "muttering" - i.e. not a valid form of communication. 


There is a passage somewhere in the book that says something about Christophine shifting between three different languages. I found it once, then I lost it, and now I can't seem to find it again even though I've looked forever.... Can anyone find it?

There's a lot more on Linguistic Hybridity but I think i'll leave it at this for now  :)

Cheers, 
Martyna G.

Research

Hellloo everyone,

First off, Khalid, you are very quick to criticize other ideas but you don't offer any alternatives. Just saying that all the sub-categories fall under "cultural" doesn't get us anywhere. Our presentation is a week out so we need actual research and solutions. So if you're going to reject my idea of five sub-categories you need to support that by providing research on the broad idea of hybridity in the novel. In my opinion, and after reading several essays and arguments on the topic, I believe exploring hybridity itself is too loose and ambivalent. By breaking the presentation into those five categories, our presentation will be focused and concise.

That being said, I'm going to begin providing examples and research for the categories as they apply to the book (admittedly I don't think "religion" has much to do with anything... we could leave it out... Ideas on that?):

1) Racial Hybridity in Wide Sargasso Sea:

The complexity of racial identity is a prominent theme within this novel. I checked out spark notes and found something great!

Subtleties of race and the intricacies of Jamaica’s social hierarchy play an important role in the development of the novel’s main themes. Whites born in England are distinguished from the white Creoles, descendants of Europeans who have lived in the West Indies for one or more generations. Further complicating the social structure is the population of black ex-slaves who maintain their own kinds of stratification. Christophine, for instance, stands apart from the Jamaican servants because she is originally from the French Caribbean island of Martinique. Furthermore, there is a large mixed-race population, as white slave owners throughout the Caribbean and the Americas were notorious for raping and impregnating female slaves. Sandi and Daniel Cosway, two of Alexander Cosway’s illegitimate children, both occupy this middle ground between black and white society.

"the middle ground between black and white society" -- this is the fundamental essence of racial hybridity.

Tia, Antoinette's childhood friend, introduces the idea of racial hybridity in the opening pages of the novel. She declares that Antoinette and her family are 'white niggers': " Plenty white people in Jamaica. Real white people, they got gold money. They didn't look at us, nobody see them come near us. Old time white people nothing but white nigger now, and black nigger better than white nigger" (21).

Antoinette's fixation on race in evident in her portrayal of the ants/flowers she encounters on a walk: "I went to parts of Coulibri I had not seen, where there was no road, no path, no track. . . . Black ants or red ones, tall nests swarming with white ants" (24 emphasis added). It is interesting that she chooses to distinguish between the differently colored ants. From this passage, one gets the impression that these ants are mixed and varied in the forest; however, they are still distinctly one color. The following phrases come right after the mention of distinctly colored ants: "All better than people . . . Better. Better, better than people" (24). This gives the impression that the distinct color of the ants is superior to the mixed/hybrid identity of humans. Further, Antoinette addresses flowers in a similar way, "Watching the red and yellow flowers" (24). Lastly, the descriptive colors Antoinette uses are all colors of differently origined skin: Black, white, red, and yellow.

Anette's racial hybridity is revealed in the following passage, "I looked across the white tablecloth and the vase of yellow roses at Mr. Mason, so sure of himself, so without a doubt English. And at my mother, so without a doubt not English, but no white nigger either" (30).  Anette is somewhere between English and "white nigger". She is lost between the two cultures and does not relate to either fully. Antoinette is the same way, this isolation leads to the demise of both characters.

**Notice how many nouns are described using colors that apply to different skin hues.

It's interesting that the parrot speaks french: "Our parrot was called Coco, a green parrot, He didn't talk very well, he could say Qui est la? Qui est la?" (35).

As Antoinette and her family are running away from their house, someone yells, " 'But look at the black Englishman! Look the white niggers!', and then they were all yelling. 'Look the white niggers! Look the damn white niggers!' "

I think these quotations clearly establish Anette, Antoinette, and their family as racially hybrid - somewhere between white and black. They also draw attention to Rhys' intended inclusion of racial hybridity as a large component within the novel.

As earlier mentioned, slave owners raped and impregnated female slaves. The following passage describes the girl and boy who were taunting Antoinette on her way to school. The boy is the epitome of racial hybridity: "There were two of them, a boy and a girl. The boy was about fourteen and tall and big for his age, he had a white skin, a dull ugly white covered with freckles, his mouth was a negro's mouth and he had small eyes, like bits of green grass. . . . his hair was crinkled, a negro's hair, but bright red, and his eyebrows and eyelashes were red. The girl was very black and wore no head handkerchief. Her hair had been plaited and I could smell the sickening oil she had daubed on it" (41).

re:Brachiation : "a rope of sand"

hey team
Martyna, I have to commend you for you research thus far, you seem to be taking quite a lead on the research and the project as a whole here. I'd say the breakdown is pretty sweet, though I think the racial, linguistic, literary and possibly even religious sub-categories all fall under the banner of cultural. and I must admit i can't recall enough instances of the individual sub-categories occurring in the novel (think its big enough to be considered a novel) to warrant a separate section, plus there's the possibility due to overlap of looping back to the same if not similar references in presentation. I guess it all hinges on if we are sticking with our decision to limit the projected slides to predominantly images. With the prevalence of images these demarcations would be hard to make. Though certainly breaking it down as you've mentioned would be perfect in introducing the concept of hybridity, and i do think the background in brief of Said & Bhaba's concept are better placed at the start, in the sense of referencing them and not speaking extensively about them especially if we are going to use the concepts in summation.
Thanks for all the work guys seems like we got one hell of a presentation on our hands.
Any ideas on the skits yet?
Considering going with the font on the cover of the book (above) for the slides, any thoughts?

Further Research and Fun

Good Morning Crew!

I just read an interesting essay which brought up a very valid point : "it may not be that useful to speak of hybridity in general. What might be more helpful is thinking about different hybridities –- a set of differentiated sub-categories: 1) racial, 2) linguistic, 3) literary, 4) cultural, and 5) religious".

This link is where I found the paper:

http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/mimicry_and_hybridity_in_plain_words/

So I'm thinking a minor revision for our presentation.... In the "Body" what if we discuss these hybridities as mentioned above. The characters and setting will all fall into one category or another. This way, even according to our textbook which explains hybridity in a similar way, we'll be covering all the bases of 'hybridity'. 

The above link also discusses the literary hybridity of Wide Sargasso Sea... which is amazing because we can even tie the novella itself in as being of hybrid form. 

Opinions? 

(I don't know why but I can't unbold anything after the link... hence the bolded post. Sorry :-) ) 

- Martyna G.

Research and Such

Hello Team!

Thank you Ally for setting up the blog so promptly. I love the photos :)

Hybridity:

Hybridity commonly refers to the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization. In horticulture, the term refers to the cross-breeding of two species by grafting or cross-pollination to form a third, 'hybrid' species. Hybridization takes many forms: linguistic, cultural, political, racial. etc.
- Class Text: Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts

Homi K. Bhabha's hybridity:

The term 'hybridity' has been most recently associated with the work of Bhabha, whose analysis of colonizer/colonized relations stresses their interdependence and the mutual construction of their subjectivities.
- Class Text: . . . The Key Concepts

 Presentation Focus: An analysis of hybridity in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea. More specifically, examining the hybridity of characters and setting within the novel and the effect of hybridity on these people/places. Hybridity is the product of intertwining the cultures of the colonizer and the colonized. It creates people (and potentially places) that are in-between the two cultures. Since the hybrids are neither one culture nor the other, they become marginalized and excluded. They are a danger to the integrity of either culture and thus remain isolated and 'othered'.

Let us focus a lot of effort on Antoinette, since she is the epitome of hybridity and the main character of the novel. I have found a very helpful Essay on Antoinette's hybridity (which leads to her isolation):

http://hig.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:218975

I included that brief excerpt about Bhabha because it talks about a relationship of interdependence between the Colonizer and the Colonized. A similar interdependence is seen in Wide Sargasso Sea between Antoinette and the servants. Since this directly correlates with Bhabha's ideas on hybridity we should incorporate it when discussing Antoinette 

A few words about the organization of our presentation:

1) Itinerary
             Where we can introduce ourselves, and the layout of our presentation. Almost like a "index". 

2) Introduction - Khalid
             The introduction of our presentation should include a contextualization of the novel, a brief few words about the author, and our "focus" as outlined above. I no longer think we should have Bhabha's and Said's laid out in the introduction. I think this would be appropriate if we were doing a complete reading of the novel from these perspectives; however, since we're only focusing on small parts of the critics' doctrines I think we should bring these ideas up in the body of the presentation. What do you guys think? That being said, Khalid can still prepare a break down of each critic (the parts that are relevant, since we will only be using fragments from each doctrine) to make it easier on those writing the body of the presentation

3) The body: Discussing hybridity as seen in characters/setting and the reactions of these characters/setting to their in-between state.

4) The conclusion
             This is pretty straight forward....

Other elements:
         We will have the skits (introducing new ideas), key note for visual appeal, a handout for clarity, and a large elephant in the corner ....


I have to run as I'm working at 6:00 tonight. I plan on working on further research ASAP.

- Martyna G.

Contextualization: The author's intent

Hello everyone!
Thanks for making this blog Aly =)

http://books.google.ca/books?id=3svWhdtsfzoC&pg=PA110&dq=The+Other+Stage:+From+Jane+Eyre+to+Wide+Sargasso+Sea&hl=en&ei=w7_ETI6TC4q-sQPW7uj0Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CFEQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=The%20Other%20Stage%3A%20From%20Jane%20Eyre%20to%20Wide%20Sargasso%20Sea&f=false

The above link has a bit of info on the author's intent, you can do a quick skim from page 110 onwards.  Maybe we can quote from it?  It also argues why Rochester's attitude towards Antoinette can be seen from a colonial perspective versus feminist.

-Lid

A few photos

De Scott Evans (1847-1898)  Spanish Town, Jamaica


De Scott Evans (1847-1898) Homage to a Parrot


Emancipation in Spanish town


Jean Rhys in her youth


...and a bit older

The blog is born!

I think we should all sign our posts, and that every post should have a title.
If anyone has any other guidelines we should follow, you can edit this post and add them in!

Post away!

Alyssa

P.S. I just thought of another one, we should provide links to images and sources!