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).