Lutchmee and Dilloo: A Story of West Indian Life by Edward Jenkins was the first attempt to influence public opinion against the indenture servitude system by making the victims into characters that the reader could empathize with. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys explores the one-dimensional character, Bertha Mason of Bronte’s Jane Eyre. In her version Rhys attempts to develop Antoinette into an individual and portray her not as the Madwoman from the attic, but as a victim of the external forces of a patriarchal society. Both texts plead for the humanity of their female protagonist, with the intent of having the reader see them as full human beings. Where in one text the writer successfully portrays the protagonist as a human being deserving of sympathy, the other has aspects of form and literary elements that threaten and ultimately fails to provide the objective stated by the writer himself.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys gives new life and identity to Bronte’s Bertha Mason as the protagonist Antoinette Cosway. The novel opens to Antoinette’s narration, “They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks. The Jamaican ladies had never approved of my mother, ‘because she pretty like pretty self’ Christophine said”. In those first sentences, Antoinette faces issues of identity within two cultures. She distinguishes herself from the white people, referencing that in that society there is a hierarchy of power among the white creoles. Her rank limits her ability to claim whiteness, for she is the daughter of a now impoverished family. However, in noting Christophine, who serves as the only mother-like figure hints that Antoinette’s beliefs are shaped by those of the black society she...
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...tchmee and Dilloo: A Story of West Indian Life . Vol. 1. London: W. Mullan & Son, 1877. Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine . Web. 29 Mar. 2012. .
Jenkins, Edward. Lutchmee and Dilloo: A Story of West Indian Life . Vol. 2. London: W. Mullan & Son, 1877. Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine . Web. 29 Mar. 2012. .
Jenkins, Edward. Lutchmee and Dilloo: A Story of West Indian Life . Vol. 3. London: W. Mullan & Son, 1877. Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine . Web. 29 Mar. 2012. .
Rhys, Jean, and Francis Wyndham. Wide Sargasso Sea . New York: Norton, 1992. Print.
Cutchins, Dennis. " `So That the Nations May Become Genuine Indian': Nativism and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony." Journal of American Culture 22.4 (1999) : 77-89.
Both Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and John Smith hold different attitudes regarding their accounts of Indian life. The difference in attitudes may have resulted from the difference in treatments that each man received while in captivity.
Seale, Doris. Through Indian Eyes: The Native Experience in Books for Children. New Society Publisher, Philadelphia, PA: 1992.
Calloway, C. G. (2012). First peoples A documentary survey of American Indian history (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
The purpose of the study was to comprehend how urban Indians put meaning to of their American Indian cultural identity.
...744,” in The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America, ed. Colin G. Calloway (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994), 101
Utley, R., Wilcomb, W. The American Heritage History of The Indian Wars. New York: American Heritage.
Hunt, Lynn, et al. The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's,
Brown, Dee, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, New York, Bantam Press,1970
Morgan started his work with the extensive ethnographic study of the Iroquois. Although, as Langness informs us, the driving force behind Morgan’s “devotion” to the field was due to a chance meeting with a young, educated Seneca Indian, named Ely Parker (1974:20). Morgan is best known for his work on kinship and social structure. He also fought to protect various Indian causes and to preserve Indian traditions. Lewis Henry Morgan’s work has gone past the fields of anthropology and ethnology. His works on social structure inspired the writings and ideas of Karl Marx and, through Marx, Frederick Engels (Stern 1946).
Swanton, John S. “The Indian Tribes of North America.” Americanindian.net, n.d.. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. .
Calloway, C. G. (2012). First peoples A documentary survey of American Indian history (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Doxtator, Deborah. Excerpts from Fluffs and Feathers: An Exhibit on the Symbols of Indianness, A Resource Guide. 1988. Revised edition. Brantford, Ontario: Woodland Cultural Centre, 1992. 12-14. Print.
According to Deloria, there are many misconceptions pertaining to the Indians. He amusingly tells of the common White practice of ...
Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre depicts the passionate love Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester have for each other, and as Bertha Mason stands in the way of the happiness of Brontë's heroine, the reader sees Mason as little more than a villainous demon and a raving lunatic. Jean Rhys' serves as Mason's defendant, as the author's 1966 novella Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel to Jane Eyre, seeks to explore and explain Bertha's (or Antoinette Cosway's) descent into madness. Rhys rejects the notion that Antoinette has been born into a family of lunatics and is therefore destined to become one herself. Instead, Rhys suggests that the Cosways are sane people thrown into madness as a result of oppression. Parallels are drawn between Jane and Antoinette in an attempt to win the latter the reader's sympathy and understanding. Just as they did in Jane Eyre, readers of Wide Sargasso Sea bear witness to a young woman's struggle to escape and overcome her repressive surroundings. Brontë makes heavy use of the motif of fire in her novel and Rhys does the same in Wide Sargasso Sea. In Rhys' novella, fire represents defiance in the face of oppression and the destructive nature of this resistance.