Contribution to Book
Burning Down Her Master’s House (Again): Marlon James Responds to Jean Rhys
Wide Sargasso Sea at 50: Assessing the Journey
(2020)
Abstract
Fifty years after its publication, Wide Sargasso Sea has pride of place in a postcolonial canon and thus is open to inter-textual interventions itself. One of these is Marlon James’s The Book of Night Women (2009) which, set at a Jamaican plantation at the turn of the eighteenth century, acts as a prequel to Wide Sargasso Sea. James’s novel reminds us that although Antoinette Mason was victimized in a number of ways, she was the daughter of a planter and her family’s life on the island was supported by victimization of enslaved African women to an incomparably more horrific extent. James’s novel provides the supplement needed to read Wide Sargasso Sea today. Lilith, the novel’s protagonist and a potent Obeah woman, embodies a possible backstory for the character of Christophine and helps today’s readers understand the full revolutionary potential of Rhys’s most powerful female character who laughs when told that slavery had ended.
Keywords
- Jean Rhys
Disciplines
Publication Date
November 4, 2020
Editor
Elaine Savory, Erica L. Johnson
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan
Series
New Caribbean Studies Series (NCARS)
ISBN
978-3-030-28222-6
Publisher Statement
This is a link to the chapter "Burning Down Her Master’s House (Again): Marlon James Responds to Jean Rhys" by Ania Spyra published in Wide Sargasso Sea at 50: Assessing the Journey, edited by Elaine Savory, Erica L. Johnson published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020. All Rights Reserved.
Citation Information
Ania Spyra. "Burning Down Her Master’s House (Again): Marlon James Responds to Jean Rhys" New YorkWide Sargasso Sea at 50: Assessing the Journey (2020) p. 233 - 246 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ania_spyra/40/