Flipped Learning

Flipped Learning: Prose Writers and Poets 

Hello friends

I am Nidhi Dave, a student of Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. This blog is response of my thinking Activity given by professor Yesha Ma'am. Here i discuss about the Prose Writers and Poets. 

What is Flipped Learning? 

Flipped learning is a “a pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space, and the resulting group space is transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter.” 

Task 1: The Three prose Writers

1, Write a note on S. Radhakrishnan's perspective on Hinduism. 

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888—1975)

Radhakrishnan_SAs an academic, philosopher, and statesman, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) was one of the most recognized and influential Indian thinkers in academic circles in the 20th century. Throughout his life and extensive writing career, Radhakrishnan sought to define, defend, and promulgate his religion, a religion he variously identified as Hinduism, Vedanta, and the religion of the Spirit. He sought to demonstrate that his Hinduism was both philosophically coherent and ethically viable. Radhakrishnan’s concern for experience and his extensive knowledge of the Western philosophical and literary traditions has earned him the reputation of being a bridge-builder between India and the West. He often appears to feel at home in the Indian as well as the Western philosophical contexts, and draws from both Western and Indian sources throughout his writing. Because of this, Radhakrishnan has been held up in academic circles as a representative of Hinduism to the West. His lengthy writing career and his many published works have been influential in shaping the West’s understanding of Hinduism, India, and the East.

In 1896, Radhakrishnan was sent to school in the nearby pilgrimage center of Tirupati, a town with a distinctively cosmopolitan flavor, drawing bhaktas from all parts of India. For four years, Radhakrishnan attended the Hermannsburg Evangelical Lutheran Missionary school. It was there that the young Radhakrishnan first encountered non-Hindu missionaries and 19th century Christian theology with its impulse toward personal religious experience. The theology taught in the missionary school may have found resonance with the highly devotional activities connected with the nearby Tirumala temple, activities that Radhakrishnan undoubtedly would have witnessed taking place outside the school. The shared emphasis on personal religious experience may have suggested to Radhakrishnan a common link between the religion of the missionaries and the religion practiced at the nearby Tirumala temple.

It is in this historical and hermeneutic contexts and with these experiences informing his worldview that Radhakrishnan encountered a resurgent Hinduism.

What Vivekananda, Savarkar, and Theosophy did bring to Radhakrishnan was a sense of cultural self-confidence and self-reliance. However, the affirmation Radhakrishnan received from this resurgence of Hinduism did not push Radhakrishnan to study philosophy nor to interpret his own religion. It was only after Radhakrishnan’s experiences at Madras Christian College that he began to put down in writing his own understanding of Hinduism.

2, According to Radhakrishnan, what is the function of philosophy? 

Radhakrishnan located his metaphysics within the Advaita (non-dual) Vedanta tradition (sampradaya). And like other Vedantins before him, Radhakrishnan wrote commentaries on the Prasthanatraya (that is, main primary texts of Vedanta ): the Upanisads (1953),Brahma Sutra (1959), and the Bhagavadgita (1948).

As an Advaitin, Radhakrishnan embraced a metaphysical idealism. But Radhakrishnan’s idealism was such that it recognized the reality and diversity of the world of experience (prakṛti) while at the same time preserving the notion of a wholly transcendent Absolute (Brahman), an Absolute that is identical to the self (Atman). While the world of experience and of everyday things is certainly not ultimate reality as it is subject to change and is characterized by finitude and multiplicity, it nonetheless has its origin and support in the Absolute (Brahman) which is free from all limits, diversity, and distinctions (nirguṇa). Brahman is the source of the world and its manifestations, but these modes do not affect the integrity of Brahman.

In this vein, Radhakrishnan did not merely reiterate the metaphysics of Śaṅkara (8th century C.E.), arguably Advaita Vedanta’s most prominent and enduring figure, but sought to reinterpret Advaita for present needs. In particular, Radhakrishnan reinterpreted what he saw as Śaṅkara’s understanding of maya strictly as illusion. For Radhakrishnan, maya ought not to be understood to imply a strict objective idealism, one in which the world is taken to be inherently disconnected from Brahman, but rather mayaindicates, among other things, a subjective misperception of the world as ultimately real. 

Task- 2: The New Poets

1, “An Indo-Anglian poet strives for self-expression in English.” Explain. 

Indian Poetry reflects different spiritual traditions within India. These were written in a variety of Indian languages such as Sanskrit, Classical Sanskrit, Hindi, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali and Urdu. Persian and English language also has a strong influence on Indian poetry. Many Indian poets have been inspired by spiritual experiences. Poetry is the oldest form of literature and has a rich written and oral tradition. 

There is a popular misconception that Anglo-Indian (a term used for people of British origin living in India) poetry began with Rudyard Kipling and his works written in the late nineteenth century. But poetical works written in and about India are as old as Britain's history with India.

The British presence was established in the Indian subcontinent by the early eighteenth century. The East India Company was dominant in the Bengal region by the 1760s and in the majority of India by the early nineteenth century, followed by the formation of the British Raj in the 1850s. With the East India Company came soldiers, civil servants, lawyers, and others trying to make a fortune for themselves. These ex-patriots would have found India exotic and strange, which in turn inspired some to write poetry about their new surroundings and experiences.

This small group of colonial literati published their individual poems in local journals or had whole volumes printed by publishing houses in Calcutta or Bombay. They tried to emulate their more famous poet counterparts back in England, and in some cases dedicated their works to them. For the first half of the nineteenth century Anglo-Indian poetry was seen as amateur and not taken very seriously by either the writers themselves or the critics; as shown in the dedication of John Malcolm's Miscellaneous Poems, "The Author of this short Poem is aware, that he repeats a very common-place Preface ... when he states, that it was written without the remotest view to Publication." In the second half of the nineteenth century, attempts were made to categorize "British-Indian poetry" but it was still viewed as amateurish and sentimental. It was not until the twentieth century that Anglo-Indian poetry was systematically described and studied as a literature.

2, Write a critical note on the poems by Nissim Ezekiel.

Nissim Ezekiel is said to be essentially an Indian poet writing in English. He expresses the essence of Indian personality and is also very sensitive to the changes of his national climate and he voices the aspirations and the joys and sorrows of Indians. It has been opined, that the Indo - Anglian poets are of two factions. The neo-modernists and the neo-symbolists. The outlook of the former is coloured by humanism and irony and that of the latter is imbued with mysticism and sublimity, but a perfect blend is achieved by the two groups in the realms of beauty. A perfect example, of anlndo - Anglian poet, who was able to arrive at a synthesis between the two factions of poetry, is none other than Sarojini Naidu, for she took her stance in the neutral, middle ground, between the sacred and profane sphere of poetry4 she was at home in both the worlds and found them united in the realms of poetry.

Its possible to gain a proper perspective of the development of Indian feminine poetic tradition, only if it is considered with reference to the changing position of women in India. The very term Women poets implies an attempt to isolate women poets from men poets, and consider them in a group only on the basis of sex, some critics have wondered as to whether there is anything like feminine sensibility, feminine experiences and feminine ways of expression. The feminine character is made up of certain psychological traits as well as certain socially conditioned ones. All these features set them apart as a group. They moreover do not accept the duties which are traditionally allotted to women, in the male dominated society, and assert their new identity as independent, individualistic and conscious participants in experience. Thus these women poets do mark' the evolution of the Indian feminine Psyche from the tradition to modernity.

Nissim Ezekiel occupies an important place in post-Independence Indian English literature. He has wielded a great influence as a leading poet, editor and an occasional playwright. Besides, he is a well-known critic. Sometimes he also emerges as a politician in the guise of a fighter for cultural freedom in India. Ezekiel held many important positions. He was for many years a Professor of English in Bombay University. He is a noted name in the field of journalism. In this capacity he was editor of many journals including Poetry India (1966-67), Quest (1955-57) and Imprint (1961-70), He was an Associate Editor to the Indian P.E.N., Bombay.

As a man of letters Nissim Ezekiel is a 'Protean' figure. His achievements as a poet and playwright are considerable. K. Balachandran writes, "The post-Independence Indian poetry saw its new poetry in the fifties. Among the new poets A.K. Ramanujan, R. Parthasarathy, Shiv K. Kumar, Kamala Das, Monica Verma, O.P. Bhatnagar, Gauri Deshpande, Adil Jussawalla, Ezekiel occupies a prominent place. His versatile genius can be found in his poetry, plays, criticism, journalism and translation." Nissim Ezekiel has done a good work in Indian writing in English. He has written many volumes of poems—A Time to Change (1952), Sixty Poems (1953), The Third (1959), The Unfinished Man (1960), The Exact Name (1965) and others. His plays Nalini, Marriage Poem, The Sleep-Walkers, Songs of Deprivation and Who Needs No Introduction are already staged and published. He has also edited books Indian Writers in Conference (1964), Writing in India (1965), An Emerson Reader (1965), A Martin Luther King Reader (1965) and Arthur Miller's All My Sons (1972). His literary essays published in magazines and papers are innumerable. The notable among them are 'Ideas and Modern Poetry' (1964), 'The Knowledge of Dead Secrets' (1965), 'Poetry as Knowledge' (1972), 'Sri Aurobindo on Poetry' (1972), 'Should Poetry be Read to Audience?' (1972), 'K.N. Daruwalla' (1972), 'Poetry and Philosophy,' 'Hindu Society' (1966). He has written essays on art criticism 'Modern Art in India' (1970), 'How Good is Sabavala?' (1973), and 'Paintings of the Year 1973' (1973). His essays on social criticism Thoreau and Gandhi' (1971), 'Censorship and the Writer' (1963), 'How Normal is Normality' (1972), 'Tradition and All That a Case Against the Hippies' (1973), 'A Question of Sanity' (1972) and 'Our Academic Community' (1968) are varied and auto telic of his wide interest.

Ezekiel is an editor of several journals encouraging writing poetry, plays and criticisrm He also asked many writers for translation, affecting the theory and practice of the young poets. The writers like Rilke and W.B. Yeats influenced Ezekiel. Like Yeats, he treated poetry as the 'record of the mind's growth.' His poetic bulk indicates his growth as a poet-critic and shows his personal importance. Chetan Karnani states, "At the centre was that sincere devoted mind that wanted to discover itself. In the process, he managed to forge a unique achievement of his own.". 

Nissim Ezekiel- English is his mother tongue, has published five volumes of verse so far:

• A time to change (1951),
• Sixty poems (1953)
• The Third (1959)
• The Unfinished Man (1960) and
• The Exact Name (1965)
• He also edited for the for time Poetry India.   

The poet Ezekiel has already published several volumes of poems. A Time to Change (1952) was his first book of poems. For him poetry-writing was a lofty vocation, a way of life. He treated life as a journey where poesy would be the main source of discovering and organising one's own self. In a sense, poetry to Ezekiel became a way for self-realisation. He calls life a texture of poetry. He identifies himself with poetry. So all of his volumes of verse are well-knit and they are in the poet's view, a continuation of each other. Ezekiel's experiments in prose rhythms and his fine sense of structure and metrical ability. The verse rhythms of T.S. Eliot seem to haunt his mind. Ezekiel's Sixty Poems (1953), his second volume of poems was published in 1953. But these poems are loose in structure and they are less appealing.

Task 3: The Conclusion

1, Write a note on the changing trends in Post-Independence Indian Writing in English.

Post-Independence Indian English fiction is virtually synonymous with Post-colonial Indian English fiction. The visibility of Indian English fiction dates back to the fourth decade of the twentieth century when Mulk Raj Anand, R.K.Narayan and Raja Rao published their novels in English. 

If we take a look at the trends in Indian English fiction, we will be struck by realism that underlies this genre in the post-Independence period. We come across five broad types of realism – social realism, psychological realism, historical realism, mythical realism and magic realism in Indian English fiction. Women novelists like Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sehgal and Shashi Deshpande lay emphasis on social realism and family relationship. Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve and A Handful of Rice deal with stark social realism depicting how the transition in the society affects family relationship. The women in women’s fiction seeks an identity of her own, independent of her husband. Shiv K. Kumar has rightly observed this with reference to Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence:

In That Long Silence, Jaya the protagonist, resents the image of a wife ‘yoked’ to her husband – ‘a pair of bullocks yoked together’. This is the image that haunts her all the time. So married to Mohan – a sedate, well-placed business executive – she secretly wishes to savour existential freedom through some disaster befalling him. So she feels ‘relieved’ when he is charged with embezzlement and they have to live in a sort of hide-out. She now feels redeemed as a woman with an identity of her own, seeing her husband rudderless and pathetically dependent upon her – this man whose ‘fastidiousness, passion for neatness and order had amazed me when married’.

Indian English novelists have experimented with magic realism following Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1980). Amitav Ghosh is very successful in handling magic realism in his fiction. His best known novel Shadow Lines (which won Sahitya Akademi Award in 1989) re-creates history in fictional terms. For him ‘History is Textuality/Textuality is History’. His Glass Palace and The Hungry Tide are well known novels. Gita Hariharan makes use of magic realism in her novel, The Thousand Faces of Night (1992) and When Dreams Travel (1999). 

Indian English novelists writing in India or abroad or those who write both in India and abroad, are essentially writing in the same way and producing national literature in English language. This new national literature in English is not very much different from Bhasa literatures written in different regional languages of our country. Bruce King emphasizes this point when he says that, “Just as there is no clear dividing line between the new national literatures in English and their overseas branches in the United States or England, so there is no clear division between the new national literatures in English and in local languages”.

Post-Independence Indian English fiction is post-colonial Indian English fiction because it continues to evoke colonial legacies in the contemporay society and seeks to compete with English language fiction for international prizes like the Commomwealth Fiction Prize, and the Booker Prize, etc. In sum, post-Independence Indian English fiction is rich in thematic content and it has acquired as idiom of its own which can be called, ‘Indian English Idiom’. It is immensly readable. 

2)“India is not a country”, says Raja Rao, “India is an idea, a metaphysic.” Explain with examples. 

Raja Rao (Kannada: ರಾಜ ರಾವ್) has long been recognised as "a major novelist of our age." His five earlier novels—Kanthapura (1932), The Serpent and the Rope (1960), The Cat and Shakespeare (1965), Comrade Kirillov (1976) and The Chessmaster and His Moves (1988)—and three collections of short stories—The Cow of the Barricades and Other Stories (1947), The Policeman and the Rose (1978) and On the Ganga Ghat (1989)—won wide and exceptional international acclaim.

Raja Rao was awarded the 1988 Neustadt International Prize for Literature which is given every two years to outstanding world writers. Earlier, The Serpent and the Rope won the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award, India's highest literary honour. More recently, Raja Rao was elected a Fellow of the Sahitya Akademi.

Born in Mysore in 1909, Raja Rao went to Europe at the age of nineteen, researching in literature at the University of Montpellier and at the Sorbonne. He wrote and published his first stories in French and English. After living in France for a number of years, Raja Rao moved to the US where he taught at the University of Austin, Texas.

• Notable work:

• Kanthapura (1938)
• The Serpent and the Rope (1960)

• Notable award: 

• Sahitya Akademi Award (1964)
• Padma Bhushan (1969)
• Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1988)
• Padma Vibhushan (2007)

India is not a country," writes Raja Rao, "it is a perspective." And this book explores the perspective which he calls India, its metaphysic, the philosophical underpinning that sets India apart, uniquely distinguishes its civilisation. Through fable and real-life encounters, descriptions of journeys and events, or in discussions with contemporaries, Raja Rao's quest is unceasing and single-focused: how this perspective alone can give meaning to man's daily action. He draws on a wide range of sources, including the Vedas, Upanishads, teachings of Sankara, the writings of Bhartrihari, and the poetry of Valéry and Mallarmé. There are essays that describe his meetings with Gandhi and Nehru, so too with Forster and Malraux, westerners who drew close to India. This book grew over several decades during which Raja Rao created his unique body of fiction. His readers are familiar with the philosophical quest which runs through his novels and stories. The Meaning of India paints and details the essential metaphysical backdrop of his acclaimed writing. Written in rhythmic, sparkling style which Raja Rao has made his own since Kanthapura, both simple and eclectic, expansive and precise, this book holds that India's civilisation and meaning can only be known by understanding the truth about one's own existence and that of the world. 

The meaning of India advances the view that India is not just a geographical entity, or even a civilizational state, Bhārat, above all, is a chariot leading the world towards truth. Shri Raja Rao's book helps reader to understand the deeper significance of India.

Nationalism has been a very controversial term and using it always raised eyebrows in post world war 2 europe, rightly so. Also, one needs to acknowledge that definitions change with place and time and in case of post- colonial societies like india and Africa, it has different meanings, that of consolidating and asserting there identies in front of imperial powers. 

Raising above identities of ethnicity, language and purity of race, which in case of europe leads to wars and hatred towards other nationality. The very foundation of indian nationalism, as rao explains in his book, lies in advait philosophy of non-dualism, which joins people instead of deviding them.

Rao's views on nehru, gandhi and white man also help us understand how indian thought during and after independence movement. This selection of nearly six decades of raja rao's non-fiction. A must recommended modern classic for anyone interested to know about deeper significance of bharat. 

Thank you 😊

Assignment

Assignment writing: Paper 205A: Cultural Studies.

This blog is Assignment writing onPaper 205A: Cultural Studies assigned by Professor, Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

• Name: Nidhi Dave 
• Roll no: 16
• Enrollment no: 4069206420210005
• Email ID: davenidhi05@gmail.com
• Batch: 2021- 23( MA Semester 3)
• Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media Culture:

Introduction 

Cultural studies of different societies reveal how media culture brings forth common norms, socio-political ideologies and issues in the current period. For instance, media in different countries are often expressing their views in a liberal or conservative manner. Notably, one can deduce the identities and opinions of the world from the media performances and actions.Some of the media platforms that instill cultural behaviors on their audiences include films, radios, newspapers, and televisions. Media have significant influence on society, as they influence people’s understanding, interpretation, and criticism of different messages; they help in giving meanings to different information.

The Media and Cultural Studies (MCS) program emphasizes the study of media in their historical, economic, social, and political context. We examine the cultural forms created and disseminated by media industries and the ways in which they resonate in everyday life, on the individual, national, and global level. Focusing primarily on sound and screen media — television, new media, film, popular music, radio, video games — but reaching out across boundaries, MCS encourages interdisciplinary and transmedia research. MCS courses draw on a broad range of cultural theories spanning a spectrum of concerns all centrally relevant to the functioning of sound and screen media in a diverse and globalizing cultural environment.

Definitions of Culture

Different sociology scholars have tried to come up with various definitions of culture, with many of them having a lot of contradictions. The media has been instrumental in explaining to the public its meaning and enabling everyone to have a cultural identity. The well-being of people can only be guaranteed if they have a strong and definite identity that influences their sense of self and their relationship with other people who have a different cultural identity.

The difference in beliefs and backgrounds helps people from different societies to relate and negotiate well. Intercultural relations have continued to fail because many people are not aware of their cultural identity. The internet and mass media have been instrumental in promoting globalization which has led to many positive influences on the culture of different societies and races across the world.

Many societies have been able to add new aspects to their cultures as a result of globalization that is greatly facilitated by the internet and the mass media (Purvis 67). Globalization enables us to have an overview of different cultures across the world and in the end be in a position to copy some positive aspects. These papers will highlight the importance of media in culture construction and how the media has led to intercultural socialization.

Multiculturalism, and Media Culture: 

Radio, television, film, and the other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our very identities; our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of "us" and "them." Media images help shape our view of the world and our deepest values: what we consider good or bad, positive or negative, moral or evil. Media stories provide the symbols, myths, and resources through which we constitute a common culture and through the appropriation of which we insert ourselves into this culture. Media spectacles demonstrate who has power and who is powerless, who is allowed to exercise force and violence, and who is not. They dramatize and legitimate the power of the forces that be and show the powerless that they must stay in their places or be oppressed.

Evidently, the media gives suggestions on one’s view or perception of the world even though there is indispensable need for thinking for oneself or independent thinking. Through cultural studies, one is able to critically examine and scrutinize issues from different cultures without anticipated discrimination.

Currently, the media have promoted the concept of multiculturalism where all cultures have their worth and the same recognition. In terms of gender and race, cultural studies have ensured that people alter their earlier perceptions on these groups. For example, media culture has made it possible for equal representation of female-gendered members and other marginal voices among the divergent races of the world.

Clearly, cultural studies sensitize all persons on how to encode discriminative acts, thus empowering individuals to develop resistance to such operations. Since media encourage divergent opinions, it has informed society on all frameworks and components of life.

On production and political economy, media firms have tended to produce systems in a specified format. For instance, they have inculcated special features like talks and shows, which have dominated the US television production. On the political economy, Capital Cities, GE, and Tisch Financial Group adopted Reagan’s slogan of conservatism and military adventures in managing their newly acquired media houses in the 1980s.

In this context, media culture reflects the ideologies of the ruling economic class, albeit intense struggle among the social classes. On textual analysis, media culture assigns different symbols and tags to their films and comedies.

In, practices, and institutions. Consequently, the gaining of critical media literacy is an important resource for individuals and citizens in learning how to cope with a seductive cultural environment. Learning how to read, criticize, and resist socio-cultural manipulation can help empower oneself in relation to dominant forms of media and culture. It can enhance individual sovereignty vis-a-vis media culture and give people more power over their cultural environment.

The potential contributions of a cultural studies perspective to media critique:

 In recent years, cultural studies has emerged as a set of approaches to the study of culture and society. The project was inaugurated by the University of Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies which developed a variety of critical methods for the analysis, interpretation, and criticism of cultural artifacts. Through a set of internal debates, and responding to social struggles and movements of the 1960s and the 1970s, the Birmingham group came to focus on the interplay of representations and ideologies of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality in cultural texts, including media culture. They were among the first to study the effects of newspapers, radio, television, film, and other popular cultural forms on audiences. They also focused on how various audiences interpreted and used media culture differently, analyzing the factors that made different audiences respond in contrasting ways to various media texts.

 Those who uncritically follow the dictates of media culture tend to "mainstream" themselves, conforming to the dominant fashion, values, and behavior. Yet cultural studies is also interested in how subcultural groups and individuals resist dominant forms of culture and identity, creating their own style and identities. Cultural studies insists that culture must be studied within the social relations and system through which culture is produced and consumed, and that thus study of culture is intimately bound up with the study of society, politics, and economics. Cultural studies shows how media culture articulates the dominant values, political ideologies, and social developments and novelties of the era. It conceives of U.S. culture and society as a contested terrain with various groups and ideologies struggling for dominance (Kellner 1995). Television, film, music, and other popular cultural forms are thus often liberal or conservative, or occasionally express more radical or oppositional views.

Type of Cultural Studies

Components of a Critical Cultural Studies

   At its strongest, cultural studies contains a three-fold project of analyzing the production and political economy of culture, cultural texts, and the audience reception of those texts and their effects. This comprehensive approach avoids too narrowly focusing on one dimension of the project to the exclusion of others. To avoid such limitations, I would thus propose a multi-perspectival approach that (a) discusses production and political economy, (b) engages in textual analysis, and (c) studies the reception and use of cultural texts.

Production and Political Economy

   Because it has been neglected in many modes of recent cultural studies, it is important to stress the importance of analyzing cultural texts within their system of production and distribution, often referred to as the political economy of culture.Inserting texts into the system of culture within which they are produced and distributed can help elucidate features and effects of the texts that textual analysis alone might miss or downplay. Rather than being antithetical approaches to culture, political economy can actually contribute to textual analysis and critique. The system of production often determines what sort of artifacts will be produced, what structural limits there will be as to what can and cannot be said and shown, and what sort of audience effects the text may generate.

Textual Analysis

  The products of media culture require multidimensional close textual readings to analyze their various forms of discourses, ideological positions, narrative strategies, image construction, and effects. There have been a wide range of types of textual criticism of media culture, ranging from quantitative content analysis that dissects the number of, say, episodes of violence in a text, to qualitative study that examines images of women, blacks, or other groups, or that applies various critical theories to unpack the meanings of the texts or to explicate how texts function to produce meaning. Traditionally, the qualitative analysis of texts has been the task of formalist literary criticism, which explicates the central meanings, values, symbols, and ideologies in cultural artifacts by attending to the formal properties of imaginative literature texts ã- such as style, verbal imagery, characterization, narrative structure and point of view, and other formal elements of the artifact. From the 1960s on, however, literary-formalist textual analysis has been enhanced by methods derived from semiotics, a system for investigating the creation of meaning not only in written languages but also in other, nonverbal codes, such as the visual and auditory languages of film and TV.

Audience Reception and Use of Media Culture

      All texts are subject to multiple readings depending on the perspectives and subject positions of the reader. Members of distinct genders, classes, races, nations, regions, sexual preferences, and political ideologies are going to read texts differently, and cultural studies can illuminate why diverse audiences interpret texts in various, sometimes conflicting, ways. It is indeed one of the merits of cultural studies to have focused on audience reception in recent years and this focus provides one of its major contributions, though there are also some limitations and problems with the standard cultural studies approaches to the audience.

Toward a Cultural Studies that is Critical, Multicultural, and Multiperspectival

 To avoid the one-sidedness of textual analysis approaches, or audience and reception studies, I propose that cultural studies itself be multiperspectival, getting at culture from the perspectives of political economy, text analysis, and audience reception, as outlined above. Textual analysis should utilize a multiplicity of perspectives and critical methods, and audience reception studies should delineate the wide range of subject positions, or perspectives, through which audiences appropriate culture. This requires a multicultural approach that sees the importance of analyzing the dimensions of class, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexual preference within the texts of media culture, while studying as well their impact on how audiences read and interpret media culture.

Conclusion:

In short, a cultural studies that is critical and multicultural provides comprehensive approaches to culture that can be applied to a wide variety of artifacts from pornography to Madonna, from MTV to TV news, or to specific events like the 2000 U.S. presidential election (Kellner 2000), or media representations of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. and the U.S. response. Its comprehensive perspectives encompass political economy, textual analysis, and audience research and provide critical and political perspectives that enable individuals to dissect the meanings, messages, and effects of dominant cultural forms. Cultural studies is thus part of a critical media pedagogy that enables individuals to resist media manipulation and to increase their freedom and individuality. It can empower people to gain sovereignty over their culture and to be able to struggle for alternative cultures and political change. Cultural studies is thus not just another academic fad, but can be part of a struggle for a better society and a better life.

Work Cited

• "Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media Culture." IvyPanda, 30 Aug. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/cultural-studies-multiculturalism-and-media-culture/.

• "How Does Media Influence Culture and Society?" IvyPanda, 1 Aug. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/how-our-culture-is-affected-by-the-media/.

• Kellner, Douglas . "CULTURAL STUDIES, MULTICULTURALISM, AND MEDIA CULTURE." https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/papers/SAGEcs.htm. pages.gseis.ucla.edu. Accessed 5 Nov. 2022.

• "Department of Communication Arts." https://commarts.wisc.edu/graduate/media-cultural-studies/. commarts.wisc.edu. Accessed 5 Nov. 2022.

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Assignment

Assignment writing: Paper 204: Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies.

This blog is Assignment writing on Paper 204: Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies assigned by Professor, Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

• Name: Nidhi Dave
• Roll no: 16
• Enrollment no: 4069206420210005
• Email ID: davenidhi05@gmail.com
• Batch: 2021- 23( MA Semester 3)
• Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Marxist feminist theory

Introduction

From the last 200 years, efforts have been constantly made to protect and uphold the rights of women all over the world through various movements. It started as early as the year 1789 when the suffragette movement was introduced to fight for women’s right to vote. From thereon, the feminist movements have only gained more and more prominence and recognition to inspire the current feminist movements. From the beginning of the 20th Century with rapid Industrialization taking place, there was further a need to protect the workers more specifically the women from facing any form of exploitation or discrimination in the workplace. As a result, during that time several thinkers or reformists laid down their own theories on the rights of women concerning several areas in the different economic systems. This article specifically aims to focus on the Feminist Theory devised by Karl Marx, a staunch proponent of communism. 

What is the Marxist feminist theory

Feminism is a term used very widely in recent times and its definition has continuously been changed over the years to accommodate the changing needs of society. It essentially refers to any movement or a given set of movements to protect and uphold the various social, political, economic, or cultural rights of women and to provide them with equal opportunities to progress. The Marxist, Socialist, and even Capitalist feminist theories aim to achieve the same outcome but follow different paths. While Marxist feminism aims to liberate women by preventing them from being oppressed through some radical utopian demands, socialist feminism focused on liberating women by removing the patriarchy in society. Capitalist Feminist Theory on the other hand aimed to empower women by focusing on their economic freedom. 

The Marxist feminist theory was focused on the exploitation women were subjected to under the Capitalist System with the amount of work they had to put in. They were forced to work in the industries for longer periods and were paid extremely low wages as compared to men. Even the working conditions were extremely dismal for them. Its main idea was that the women could be liberated only by eliminating the Capitalist System wherein the women were not paid sufficient wages for their labour. There are several aspects which Marxist feminism focuses on which are as follows:

Classless society

The primary objective of Marxist feminist theory was to create a classless society wherein both the upper class and the lower class people are treated equally. At that point in time, women were considered to be inferior to men and didn’t enjoy equal rights. Further, the women in poor households were discriminated against in the field of labour and employment. On the other hand, the upper-class women or the Bourgeoisie enjoyed certain privileges without putting in any labor. By creation of a classless society, the vision of Marx and Engels was to ensure that there was collective ownership and the basic dignity of women in society.

Equal pay

Karl Marx’s theory focused on providing equal wages to both men and women for the equal amount of work they were putting in. There shall be no gender-based discrimination in terms of wage payment. In several books introduced in the 1970s, women were stated as the reserve army of labour which was however unrecognized many times. As a result, they were not provided with equivalent wages for their efforts. Hence, they should also be provided with adequate protection for their labour.

Reproductive labour

Marx and Friedrich Engels under this theory also focused on the unpaid reproductive labour in which the women were involved.\ Women performed a very important role of bearing children or procreation which helped in carrying forward the future generations, but for which they weren’t paid anything. They also didn’t have an equal opportunity for carrying out productive labour. Being highly critical of Capitalism, Marx also held the opinion that capitalism was responsible for the state having control over a woman’s sexual desires or even their bodily integrity. The family eventually became a place where the women were oppressed and were considered to be subordinate to men thereby creating this gender gap in wages and status in society.

Social wages

Social wages essentially refer to the amenities that are provided to the persons in the society. At that point of time, a large number of women all over the world were landless and were not allowed any social participation. Hence the focus of the Marxist Feminists was to shift the attention to the rural women who despite working on the lands were landless because of male domination and the erasure of the work carried out by them on the family farms for self-production or self-subsistence. This had two outcomes at large:

a) Firstly, the labour of women in the subsistence farms fell within the purview similar to that of reproductive labour as they were not paid the wages for the work which they did on their own piece of land.

b) Secondly, the rural household was now considered as one economic unit and eventually led to the erasure of the value and the labour of rural women.

Wages for household work

As stated before, the women were not encouraged to engage in productive labour in the industries and were largely subjected to housework. Hence under Marxist feminism, there was a demand for the inclusion of the household work as well as for the determination of the wages. Further, there was also an opinion that private property was the main reason for such an exploitation of the women and there was a dire need to improve their working conditions be it their own house or their workplace.

Inter-sectionality

The Intersectional (interconnection between different sections of society on basis of gender, caste, or race) organizing of the women from the different castes, communities, or regions is a very important feature of Marxist Feminism. It essentially means that there shall be a wide coalition on the basis of the differences among the people. As a result, it would facilitate the interaction among the people with different identities and communities having different facets as a result of their continuous oppression. Such intersectional organizing of the people which focuses on the oppressions in recent times has played a vital role in promoting the social movements with the labour movements and facilitating increased cooperation between the agricultural labourers and industrial workers.

Emotional labour

Under the Marxist Feminist Theory, emphasis was also laid on the emotional labour of the women. It refers to the labour that women have to be involved in for keeping their family members emotionally stable. Though it didn’t directly create any product or service which is expected from all forms of labour, it was equally important to ensure the well-being of the entire family. Even in the field of employment, there was an emphasis on emotional labour on part of women to fulfill the job requirement which however used to go unnoticed. 

Affective labor

The women were also involved in a form of labor that was byproductive in nature i.e., fulfilled two purposes. This was known as Affective Labor and was discussed by certain scholars such as Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Shiloh Whitney. These were all the thinkers who believed in Marxist feminism. It focused on the fine line that was there between the personal and the economic life of the women. While the women were involved in domestic labor, their work was also to be economically appreciated by including it in the overall production. 

These were some of the important features of Marxist feminist theory which aimed to free the women from the clutches of Capitalism and provide them with the rights and dignity which they deserve.

These were all the major aspects of the Marxist Feminist Theory which despite its limitations played a significant role in shaping the modern Feminist Ideologies. 

Marxist feminists

Marxist feminist perspective adapts the principles of Marxism to emphasise how capitalism uses the family oppresses women, and the harmful consequences of the family to women’s lives.

Marxist feminists look on class and gender inequalities as dual systems of oppression, with both being very powerful and independent systems. Marxist feminists often argue that class and gender inequalities reinforce each other and create groups that are doubly oppressed.

Margaret Benston’s (1972) Marxist feminist study: ‘The political economy of women’s liberation’ emphasises the value of the unpaid labour women perform within the family. This labour, which sustains the current labour force and nurtures the next generation, comes at no cost to the owners of the means of production. Additionally, the responsibility of the male breadwinner to support his wife and children fetters his ability to withdraw his labour power in defence of his class interests. In so doing it helps reinforce the inequitable capitalist economic system.

As Rosemarie Tong (1989) notes in her book Feminist Thought: A Comprehensive Introduction, Marxist feminists identify how work shapes consciousness, and women’s work shapes her status and self-image. Therefore Marxist feminists are primarily concerned with the division of labour that keeps women in the domestic sphere of the family and men in the workplace.

Woman’s position within the family may help explain the problem of developing working class consciousness. As with exchange relationships in general in capitalism, underlying these seemingly equal exchange relationships are power relationships. Various relationships, such as those between males and females, relationships in the family, prostitution, surrogate mother hood, etc. may appear to express equality, but because of the underlying unequal power relations conceal great inequalities.

Toward a Feminist Synthesis

Folbre notes that there are a number of problems created by the conventional neoclassical and Marxist views.

1. Models of the economy and society are incomplete and inadequate. The conventional economic approach examines only production in the economy, devaluing the contribution of any necessary labour in the household. Measures of production such as gross national product (GNP) are misleading measures of economic activity because only certain forms of economic activity are valued.

2. Models of economic development are inadequate, because they consider only production, not reproduction and the social arrangements surrounding these. These issues are especially important for the poorer countries today. The manner in which women, family and households are affected by economic changes, and the constraints and opportunities faced by them will have a lot to do with whether and how economic development occurs in these countries. 

3. Analysis of political debates and conflicts over social welfare programs may be misleading. Among the questions that need to be asked are how were these programs initially achieved, and in whose interests were they implemented? For example, excluding women from factory work during the nineteenth century is often treated as a great gain for the working class and for society. But this may have had serious long run negative effects for women. Today, when social welfare programs are under attack, who will be hurt by the decline of these? How can coalitions be developed to maintain and restore these programs?

4. In the Marxian approach, the lack of attention to unpaid household labour has led to an inadequate theory of population and labour force. There is little in the Marxist model that deals with the reasons for fertility decline, and neoclassical explanations (costs and benefits) are probably superior in that regard. As well, why women have entered the labour force in such large numbers, and why the feminist movement emerged are not adequately explained in the Marxian model.

What kind of philosophy is Marxist feminism based on

Karl Marx was a renowned socialist, reformist, thinker, and economist. He was clearly against capitalism and aimed to eliminate the class society or the hierarchy which existed at that point wherein some communities were superior (bourgeoisie) such as the industry owners and the others inferior such as the industrial workers who were exploited by the superiors. Owing to his ideologies, his theories on feminism and economics were also against the Capitalist practices and rather focused on communism i.e. collective sharing or ownership of resources. His Feminist Theory was also based on this premise. It is a social, economic as well as a political philosophy that aimed to view communism through the lens of Feminism.

The very philosophy of Marxist Feminism is that there should be no private property or private ownership because it causes greater discrimination against the women and reduces their role in society. Both men and women should be treated equally in society and for achieving this there was a need for revolution. At that point in time, there were gender-specific roles that were assigned to both men and women. While men worked outside, women used to work at home and raise their children for which they weren’t provided any wages. As a result, the males were considered superior and had the power to redistribute the income among family members. This was clearly disregarding the labour a woman carried out at her home and also led to a distinction between the bourgeoisie (Males) and the Proletariats (women). This was the concept upon which the Marxist theory was based. It aimed to lay emphasis on the recognition of women and the contributions which they used to make in society.

Limitations of Marxist feminism 

The Marxist theory of feminism had a few drawbacks and certain issues which it failed to address. Due to this, it failed to cover and justify the aspects relating to women’s exploitation under the Capitalist system in an exhaustive manner. A few of the limitations are as follows:

Though the Marxist Theory involves a very exhaustive analysis of the exploitation of women under the Capitalist System, it strictly divides the industries between the public and private sectors. While in the Public sector it is possible to carry out such an analysis of the economic and the social exploitation of women but the private sector wasn’t considered worthy enough for it.

The feminist theory under Marxism was based on the fact that women constituted the Reserve Industrial Army. It explained the expansion and the contraction of the unemployment cycle. However, it failed to cover the aspects regarding the decline in fertility and the change in the value of labour while considering the same.

The Marxian Theory was largely economic in nature and focused on commodity production, class exploitation due to industrial labour, and other related aspects. However, it failed to take into consideration the social factors of inequality and discrimination such as race, gender, or sexual autonomy and hence doesn’t provide a systematic explanation of these. 

The labour which is generally not sold to the master or the employer doesn’t hold any economic value under Marxist Feminism. As a result, at that given point the reproductive labour or the emotional labour in which the women were involved but received no wages was not to be considered. Hence it was believed that the housewives were unproductive which was certainly not the case. They played a vital role in any household and reproductive labour but which was not included in production.

These were the major limitations of the Marxist feminist theory which had to be addressed later on by the various thinkers such as Max Weber and other feminists in the future. It was suitably modified to accommodate such changes. Hence is very much relevant in the current times and has inspired a lot many feminist movements in recent times.

Applicability and significance of the Marxist feminist theory in current times

Marxist feminism was focused on empowering women by creating a classless society. This holds a lot of relevance even to this date. Several countries follow Communism defined by Karl Marx and even the Feminist movements worldwide are inspired by it. However, after the fall of the USSR in 1990, the feminist movements based on Communism haven’t been very successful. The theories stated by Karl Marx were highly generic with regard to feminism and failed to draw any relations between the variables discussed under his theory such as Patriarchy and Capitalism and how the former leads to the latter in any society.

In the current times, Marxist feminist theory acts as a tool to understand the relationship between the social order, women’s labor, and the ownership of property. His theory goes a step ahead to emphasize the consideration for the reproductive labour of women by payment of wages. In the current times, this becomes even more important because the number of working women is increasing and there is a need to facilitate their work-life balance. In the current times, the Feminist movements put forth the demands for the development of a political system under which women’s liberation, class politics, issues of gender identity, and sexual preferences are given paramount importance. This is what Marxist Feminism directly emphasizes. 

In India, Marxist feminism holds a lot of relevance for removing this perception of the gender-specific roles given to the male and the females in society. It reduces the employment opportunities available to women in the labor market. However, Marxist feminism focuses on the identification of Reproductive labor but nowhere did Marx mention how to achieve it. Still, in India, women’s work at home is considered inferior and they have no economic independence. They are dependent on the income of their husband and would be treated at their Husband’s whims and fancies. Yet in several other countries, the influence of this theory has been quite positive such as in Ukraine, Russia, the USA, etc.

Conclusion

Marxist feminist Theory, despite all its drawbacks proved to be vital in igniting a sense of revolt among the women to fight for their rights. It gave a direction to feminist movements and if not all, questioned certain aspects of capitalism to hold the system prevailing at that point of time accountable. Now what remains to be seen is the effectiveness of Marxist Theory in the coming years towards the growth of feminism and feminist movements at large.

Work Cited: 

• Stefano, Christine Di . "Marxist Feminism ." Wiley Online Library . 14 Sep. 2014. doi.org/10.1002/9781118474396.wbept0653. Accessed 5 Nov. 2022.

• Verma, Parth. "Marxist Feminism ." iPleaders . 6 July 2022. blog.ipleaders.in/marxist-feminism/?amp=1. Accessed 5 Nov. 2022.

• Thompson , Chris . "Marxist feminists ." sociologytwynham.com. 1 July 2013. sociologytwynham.com/2013/07/01/marxist-feminists/. Accessed 5 Nov. 2022.

• Gingrich, Paul. "Feminist Critique of the Marxian Approach." Sociology 304. 10 Mar. 1998. uregina.ca/~gingrich/mar1098.htm. Accessed 5 Nov. 2022.

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Assignment

Assignment writing: Paper 203: The Postcolonial Studies.

This blog is Assignment writing onPaper 203: The Postcolonial Studies assigned by Professor, Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

• Name: Nidhi Dave
• Roll no: 16
• Enrollment no: 4069206420210005
• Email ID: davenidhi05@gmail.com
• Batch: 2021- 23( MA Semester 3)
• Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Racism in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea is both a response and a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, set in the West Indies and imagining the lives of Bertha Mason and her family. Bidisha describes how Jean Rhys’s novel portrays the racial and sexual exploitation at the heart of western civilisation and literature.

✴️Introduction: 

The novel Wide Sargasso Sea is written by Jean Rhys in order to highlight multiple issues like gender discrimination, the opposite nature of male and females, how the desires of the central characters not fulfilled and how all these things lead to the madness. The entire identity of the main character has been shattered and taken away from her. Antoinette was a Creole girl and Rochester was an English white man, but they got married and the consequence was so dangerous that Antoinette had to suffer for a lifetime. Wide Sargasso Sea is a novel written by Jean Rhys is a novel that is written with special purpose as to describe the earlier life of Bertha Mason of Jane Eyre, whose original name is Antoinette in the novel. It shows her life from the very beginning of her life, how she is married to Rochester and how her psyche gets worse and worse. The entire process is described here and the reasons responsible for that are also described at lengths.

✴️Title:

The title of the novel is very important. The Sargasso Sea is a large area where there is a huge attention of seaweeds (sea plants) in the North Atlantic Sea. Just like these weeds, the characters here also are tangled in the web of emotions and ideas- they seem to be drowning each other. Thus, the title of the novel is actually the showcase of what it actually is.

🔆Wide Sargasso Sea: 

Wide Sargasso Sea is a visceral response to Charlotte Brontë’s treatment of Mr Rochester’s ‘mad’ first wife, Bertha, in her classic Victorian novel Jane Eyre. Jean Rhys reveals the horrifying reality that might lie behind a man’s claim that a woman is mad, and humanizes Brontë’s grotesque invention, the now-archetypal and heavily symbolic ‘madwoman in the attic’. The novel is a vindicating howl of rage and injustice, and a skin-flaying revelation of personal sadism.

Wide Sargasso Sea is also a valuable historical work, written in the 1960s but set in the early 1800s, which explores Victorian paternalism, sexualised racism and the complex social and political history of the West Indies. Rhys vividly imagines Rochester’s time there when he met Bertha, who is a Creole – a naturalized West Indian of European descent. The Emancipation Act freeing slaves but compensating slave-owners for their ‘loss’ has been passed, England and France are the dominating and competing colonisers while Spanish colonial exploration is a past influence, and many formerly profitable estates are in decline because of the absence of exploited labour and a slump in the sugar market.

🌟Racism in Wide Sargasso Sea 

🔆What is racism?

Racism is most commonly used to name a form of prejudice in which a person believes in the superiority of what they consider to be their own “race” over others. This most often takes the form of believing that those with other skin colors—especially darker skin colors—are inferior physically, intellectually, morally, and/or culturally, and mistreating and discriminating against them because of this. Such a belief typically promotes the notion that white people are “the default”—that whiteness is “normal” and that people with other appearances are the ones who are “different” (and “inferior”).

The word racism is also used to mean a system of oppression based on this kind of prejudice that is thought to be embedded into the fabric of society and its institutions, resulting in ongoing mistreatment and injustice in many, many forms. This is often called systemic racism, institutional racism, or structural racism. These terms imply that such racism is upheld by laws, policies, traditions, and institutions—and the people who keep them in place.

✴️Definition:

"The belief that races have distinctive cultural characteristics determined by hereditary factors and that this endows some races with an intrinsic superiority over others."

"Abusive or aggressive behavior towards members of another race on the basis of such a belief."

Racism is most commonly used to name a form of prejudice in which a person believes in the superiority of what they consider to be their own “race” over others. This most often takes the form of believing that those with other skin colors—especially darker skin colors—are inferior physically, intellectually, morally, and/or culturally, and mistreating and discriminating against them because of this. When used in this way, racism typically refers to a system that has oppressed people of color all over the world throughout history. Such a system is often thought to operate through white people using the advantages that the system gives them (often called white privilege) to maintain their supremacy over people of color (often called white supremacy).

✴️Race and Gender issues in Wide Sargasso Sea 

Antoinette was a Creole girl and Rochester was an English white man. So there is clearly a difference between them in terms of race and gender as well. The novelist shows us that Antoinette is a weak character mainly because of her being female and black. Rhys finds herself caught up in two different cultures and is not sure about her own identity that she reflects in her heroine. Like Rhys, Antoinette is a sensitive and lonely young Creole girl who grows up with neither her mother’s love nor her peers’ companionship. In school as a young woman, Antoinette becomes increasingly lost in thought and isolated, showing the early signs of her inherited emotional vulnerability. Moreover, Antoinette’s passion contributes to her melancholy and implied madness. Her arranged marriage to an unsympathetic and controlling English gentleman worsen her condition and pushes her to fits of violence. Eventually her husband brings her to England and locks her in his attic, assigning a servant woman to watch over her. Fearful, Antoinette awakes from a vivid dream and sets out to burn down the house. 

Wide Sargasso Sea is constructed following the terms of a literary and historical discourse which takes Europe, and precisely England, as origin and reference. The starting point of the novel is Jane Eyre; consequently, it bears the features of the English classical literary canon which celebrates western standards while looking down upon non-Western values. The relationship which is at stake in Wide Sargasso Sea is that of the Creoles, Black or White, and women, to the colonizer. It foregrounds the issue of race.

✴️Race: 

After the secession of the British rule over India, Britain passed the sovereign power to the two newly formed countries – the Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The Partition of India did not only bring the creation of the new countries, but also brutal conflicts which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. “Never before had anything even remotely like it been attempted. Nowhere were there any guidelines, any precedents, any revealing insights from the past to order what was going to be the biggest, the most complex divorce action in history, the breakup of a family of four hundred million human beings along with the assets and household property they had acquired in centuries of living together on the same piece of earth.”Its consequences were also the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war over Kashmir and the 1971 conflict over Bangladeshi independence. 

In Wide Sargasso Sea, the white characters cannot see coloured people as human beings who are capable of thought and reasoned determination. They are stereotyped as children and the ignorance associated with them is usually read as the source of their laziness and passivity. They cannot make deductions or come up with sound conclusions. That is why in the scene of the burning of Coulibri, the racist planters portray the white Creoles as victims of a malevolent mob of Blacks. Yet, the episode preceding Antoinette’s depiction of the collective face sheds light on the seemingly unjustified and unreasonable violence of the ex-slaves. Myra, one of the servants, overhears Mason saying in the course of a conversation, that he intends to bring indentured laborers from India to replace the newly emancipated black Creoles he considers as too lazy people. These laborers are called “coolies”, an Indian word meaning hired worker or burden carrier. The narrator says:

My stepfather talked about a plan to import laborers – cookies he called them – from the East Indies. When Myra had gone out Aunt Cora said, ‘I shouldn’t discuss that if I were you. Myra is listening.’

……Do you mean to say –‘.

I said nothing, except that it would be wiser not to tell that woman your plans – necessary and merciful no doubt. I don’t trust her.’‘Live here most of your life and know nothing about the people. It’s astonishing. They are children – they wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

In the Wide Sargasso Sea, the white race is not one cohesive and homogeneous whole. On the contrary, it is characterized by a deep fracture which divides the group into two separate entities: the British who were born in England, on the one hand, and the British who were born on the island, on the other hand. The second group is called the white Creoles. The two entities do not have the same approach to life and consequently their mutual social relationships are not constructed on an egalitarian basis. On the contrary, they are based on power and a sense of superiority endowed to those who were born in England. As a matter of consequence, the relationships are also tinted with disdain, particularly when they go from the first group to the second one.

✴️Rochester as a new type of Colonizer: 

We all know that the British had colonized many countries and the Caribbean is one of them. But here the character of Rochester is shown as a different and new type of Colonizer who had colonized a Creole Antoinette. So, here we find an oppressor who neither respects creoles nor the black ones. Rochester’s dominated identity is reflected in Antoinette’s capture and his domination over her. There is nothing like identity for the poor woman as Rochester destroys it and changes her name as well. By the end of Part 2 of the novel, where he is leaving Caribbean and going to England with Antoinette, he utters that:

“I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain...

 She had left me thirsty...”

These lines mean that he does not love the Caribbean people and their lifestyle and therefore he is willing to go to England and to satisfy the thirst that he had.

✴️Identity of Black and white 

Here, blackness appears as an essential identity, a foundational category. The black Creoles are depicted as an undifferentiated and unreasoning mass of people, physically alike and full of hatred.

🌟The black individual has no personal identity, no distinctive psyche; he is just a portion of a whole body of non differentiable people.

🌟The same objectivising and derisive use of “they” to talk about the black creoles is recurrent in the narrative. The young narrator offers an illustration: referring to her mother standing in the glacis and visible to anybody who could pass by, Antoinette says: “They stared, sometimes they laughed." 

🌟Another illustration is given by her mother Annette, two years after her second marriage. Mason, Annette’s second husband, looks at the Blacks the same way. 

🔸In Wide Sargasso Sea, the British racial classification equates ex-slaves with poverty or lack of economic resources. 

 

🔸In the novel, black Caribbean own nothing, which, according to colonial history, is not a distortion of the past. The imperialist ideology which has structured the West Indies has set the categories of representation.

🔸The legal castes of slaves are replaced by a race-colour system of stratification.Consequently binary oppositions which are at work in the diegesis assign the lower level of the society to the black characters, deprive them of any power, consider them as subaltern and ultimately reduce them to silence. The dominant white characters make up the hegemonic group while black Creoles form the landless rural proletariat.

✴️Unequal Power Between Men and Women:

"Long, sad, dark alien eyes. Creole of pure English descent, but they are not English or European either.” 

• In a place like Coulibri (and many other places similar where there were slaveries), white men have the sexual license to be with any women. The offspring with light colors seen in this island were proof of white men domination. But a white woman with a black man? It is seen as a disgrace. 

• There was a scene related to interracial sex, of Antoinette’s mother with a black man that she accidentally witnessed when she was a child.

• Her mother was mentally ill and her husband sent her to be looked after by a black couple, and she saw how her mother surrendered in the black man’s kiss and into his arms. 

A white man does not really degrade himself with a black woman, because the male is assumed to dominate the female as white dominates black. But a white woman who submits willingly to sex with a black man is seen as degrading her race as well as herself.

🔶Racism in Wide Sargasso Sea

🔅The first example I want to dissect is at the very beginning of the book, when the horse dies. Godfrey, a black servant that stayed at Antoinette’s house, is known for being somewhat untrustworthy and morose. After the horse dies in part one, he mentions, “The Lord made no distinction between black and white, black and white, they are the same for Him”. At first glance, we may think he is talking about the death of the horse. Although there is an argument for that, if we compare the Lord’s idea of life and death to black and white, there may be a racial meaning behind it. There is cause to believe that he is using these words to support himself, because Annette initially backhandedly blamed him for the horse dying. His savage remark was a reminder to not hold his race inferior. Godfrey’s attitude was further proved to be very morbid towards the white people, as he later said: “ this world doesn't last so long for mortal man”. Even though his character’s role was small, Godfrey emulates key points on racism in Wide Sargasso Sea.  

🔅The second example we are going to look at is when Antoniette makes “friends” with the little girl named Tia, who actually bullied her. As Antoniette walked home one day, Tia called her a “white cockroach”. This comment precedes an odd formation of friendship between the two girls, but a nasty round of comments follows at a playdate at the pool. When Tia takes Antoinette’s pennies, Antoniette snaps “Keep them then, you cheating nigger,” and Tia replies with a rant on how “Real white people, they got gold money”. I would have never expected such a heavily loaded conversation to happen between two children, but it reflects well on the current racial tension in the west indies in the late 1830’s. The emancipation of slavery for Jamaica was passed in 1834, so the tensions between the black people and the white people were still deflating. Instead of the previous reality of the white people being able to overpower people of color, the black people were able to fight back, and often used it aggressively to expose prejudices.

✴️Conclusion:

Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea foregrounds a West Indian community in which the social relationships between the characters are entirely determined by race and gender. These two social axes are the sources which foster and nurture the controlling process which attributes power to the White group and silences the Blacks considered as subaltern. England and nineteenth-century racial assumptions are the main referential of the narrative. Consequently races are addressed from an essentialist and nativist perspective. The colonialist discourse at work in the narrative is reinforced by a patriarchal ideology which confers supremacy to men over women. Such a social structure cannot but breed tensions and frustrations which impede mutual understanding and harmony in the community. In the face of this colonialist and phallocratic system, some characters choose to comply with the prevailing order and conventions, whereas others display defiance and resiliency. In this confrontation, what must be retained is not the outcome, but the intention. 

🔆Works cited:

• Senegal, de Dakar. "Race and Gender in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea," LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research , vol. 6, no. 1, 2009, p. 16, Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.

• Patel, Ripal . "Racism in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea ," International Journal of Social Impact , vol. 1, no. 1, 2016, p. 4, Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.

• , Chita. "Book review: ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys." https://herotherstories.wordpress.com/2020/06/14/book-review-wide-sargasso-sea-by-jean-rhys/. 14 June 2020.herotherstories.wordpress.com. Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.

• 18, Joyame . "Analyzing Racism in WSS ." ENGL 123, Section 003 Introduction to Fiction: Adaptation, Intertextuality, and Fidelity. 30 Oct. 2018.introtofictionf18.web.unc.edu/2018/10/analyzing-racism-in-wss/. Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.

• "Racism ." https://www.dictionary.com/browse/racism.

•  Bidisha. "An introduction to Wide Sargasso Sea ." Discovering Literature. 25 May 2016. www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/an-introduction-to-wide-sargasso-sea. Accessed 4 Nov. 2022.

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