A couple of talks recently presented:
Danielle Coriale
"'Thought Coloured by Feeling': Mill, Brontë, and the Pleasures of Natural History"
Modern Language Association Covention
Chicago, IL
29 December 2007
The Essex LiFTS Ph.D. Conference
University of Essex
5 May 2007
Anne Schroder
'There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about': Reading Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea as a Zombie Narrative
Jean Rhys's novel Wide Sargasso Sea tells the story of Antoinette Cosway, the first Mrs Rochester, who is destined to die a spectacular death in the flames of Thornfield Hall as prescribed by Charlotte Brontë's earlier novel Jane Eyre. Rhys's narrative ends moments before Antoinette is due to set Thornfield Hall on fire, and readers are forced to consider whether her imminent death is inevitable or whether Rhys's text offers other options. Antoinette herself believes that there are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about, expressing the novel's preoccupation with the boundary between life and death. If Antoinette's 'publicly known' death is not her 'real' death, when does the latter occur? Is it before or after she arrives at Thornfield Hall? And how are we to understand the difference between the two types of death?
This paper addresses these questions by employing the figure of the zombie as a focalizer for the story of Antoinette. The zombie is a living dead who has lost the ability to define itself: raised from the dead by a sorcerer who has stolen its memory and identity, the zombie now becomes the property of the sorcerer. Antoinette is repeatedly compared to a zombie, while other characters show similar symptoms of powerlessness and lack of self-determination. This paper produces a reading of Wide Sargasso Sea which foregrounds the interrelated notions of zombification, possession and dispossession central in the Caribbean voodoo/obeah belief system in which the zombie originates.
Categories: Scholar, Talks, Wide Sargasso Sea
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