Postcolonial-Studies - 203

COMPARISON OF PORTRAYALS OF FEMININE VOICES IN J.M. COETZEE’S FOE AND JEAN RHYS’ WIDE SARGASSO SEA

Name: Dhruvita Dhameliya

Roll no : 03

Semester: 3

Year:- 2021 to 2023

Subject:- Postcolonial-Studies

Topic :-COMPARISON OF PORTRAYALS OF FEMININE VOICES IN J.M. COETZEE’S FOE AND JEAN RHYS’ WIDE SARGASSO SEA

Email ID:

dhameliyadhruvita24@gmail.com

Submitted to: S. B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

J.M.Coetzee:-

John Maxwell Coetze is a South African–Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language.He has won the Booker Prize (twice), the CNA Prize (thrice), the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina étranger, and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and holds a number of other awards and honorary doctorates.

Coetzee has received numerous awards throughout his career, although he has a reputation for avoiding award ceremonies.

Coetzee was the first writer to be awarded the Booker Prize twice: for Life & Times of Michael K in 1983, and for Disgrace in 1999. As of 2020, four other authors have achieved this, J.G. Farrell, Peter Carey, Hilary Mantel, and Margaret Atwood.

Introduction of Novel:-

Foe is a novel by J.M. Coetzee that was written in 1986, 267 years after the publication of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Foe was written in response to DeFoe’s Robinson Crusoe and, through the words of J.M. Coetzee, the character of Susan Barton describes her life during and after her time on the desolate island with Cruso. The major difference between the two novels is that Foe assimilates a woman’s voice into the highly masculine story of Robinson Crusoe. Barton’s time on “Cruso’s island” is spent in preoccupation with Cruso’s way of life, and life after her rescue is spent in reflection of her relationships with Cruso, Friday, and Foe. This female voice is presented through the words of a male author, J.M. Coetzee, who presents Barton as a submissive supporting actress to the extremely dominant character of Robinson Crusoe. Coetzee’s Foe bestows a voice on the female castaway but fails to award her a voice of strength because Robinson Crusoe dominates not only the island they are both stranded on, but also the whole story itself.

Now I would like to compare the mediums and effects of voice and silence in the lives of the female characters of the re-written postcolonial texts Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea and J.M. Coetzee's Foe. I want to show that Rhys and Coetzee used the names of Antoinette and Susan to show women's treatment during the 19th century. Treated as inferiors to men and lacking the freedom to do or say as they pleased, the treatment of women and their struggle to find a voice was a focus of both novels. 

 Introduction:-

"Woman' is only a social construct that has no basis in nature, that 'woman, in other words, is a term whose definition depends upon the context in which it is being discussed and not upon some set of sexual organs or social experiences. This renders the experience women have of themselves and the meaning of their social relationships problematic."

Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea and J.M. Coetzee's Foe are both postcolonial re-written texts having strong female characters as the narrators. Rhys tried to give the silenced Bertha in Jane Eyre a voice of her own with Antoinette. Coetzee changed the whole notion of adventure stories by having a female adventurer, Susan Barton, narrating her experiences instead of a male character, as shown in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Both novels attempted to give voice to women, a representation of the postcolonial times in which women were starting to find their individuality. The research will analyze the similarities and differences from the discussion started in the previous chapters in the representation of the feminine voice in the two postcolonial novels,

The female characters narrated both novels in different ways. In J.M. Coetzee's Foe, Susan Barton believed that language played a big part in expressing oneself. Without proper language, one can never communicate one's true self to its fullest to society. She frequently lamented the fact that Friday could not speak, even though he communicated with music - "There are times when I ask myself whether, in his earlier life, he had the slightest mastery of language, whether he knows what kind of thing language is." It seemed to Susan that speech was an irreplaceable form of communication to achieve the freedom of individuality as Susan states referring to Friday - "He does not know what freedom is. Freedom is a word, less than a word, a noise, one of the multitudes of noises I make when I open my mouth." This implies that for Susan, language is the essence of freedom, and if one doesn't have the medium of speech, he or she won't be able to understand the meaning and significance of freedom as well.

However, in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, the female character Antoinette never focused so much on the usage of language to express her voice. What mattered the most was conveying her thoughts and emotions in an accessible medium, which would get her the most attention. Antoinette uses a wide range of communication mediums and talks in metaphors, dreams, and madness. For example, while in the convent, she talks about her dream and says, "I dreamed I was in Hell." This could be a metaphor for her future entrapment in a palace in England.

While in Wide Sargasso Sea, a female writer, Jean Rhys, attempts to give another female Creole character, Bertha, a voice of her own through Antoinette and succeeds to a certain extent in allowing the readers an opportunity to hear Bertha's side of the story. Even though she still needs a male character, Rochester, to define Antoinette in the many crucial parts of the novel. By taking Antoinette's voice away in essential parts, Jean Rhys raises the question of whether she could bring Bertha out of the patriarchal notions that Bronte had made her a victim of in Jane Eyre.

On the other hand, in J.M. Coetzee's Foe, Coetzee attempts to create a strong female persona who is willing to tell her own story. The author fails to maintain the boldness and independence in the character as Susan Barton's story ended up depending on men, both in context and writing. It can be argued that Coetzee was deliberately playing with the character of Susan by giving readers the idea in the beginning that he was creating a strong female voice. Even though, in the end, he took the narrative authority away from her and proved that Susan never really had the power to tell her own story. It is a clear representation of the times when women were starting to find their feet as individuals; however, they had still not completely moved on from the ideas thrust into them as children of a patriarchal society.

The stories allow us to look at the same stories done before, from the previously voiceless female's perspective, in a society that views women differently and more powerfully than ever before in human history. The novels focus on not only the female characters' voices but also their silences as it satirically portrays the silencing of women. Thus, these novels are good representations of how far forward the voice of women has come in literature.

Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea is an attempt to rewrite the story of Bertha, whose voice was completely overpowered by that of Bronte in Jane Eyre. Antoinette, in Wide Sargasso Sea, portrays the character of Bertha from Jane Eyre. As the chief narrator of the novel, Antoinette's perspective allows readers to see Bertha's side of the story. Through Antoinette, Rhys gave Bertha a voice to express her feelings, thoughts, and emotions that went unspoken in Jane Eyre. Thus, Wide Sargasso Sea provides readers with a much more feminine perspective, representative of the postcolonial times, of the story of Jane Eyre.

Similarly, in Foe, Coetzee, despite being a male author, tried to give a female character a chance to tell her story in the context of the hugely popular tale of Robinson Crusoe that Daniel Defoe previously told. While the thought of this famous adventure story being told from a female perspective would have been impossible before, postcolonial literature is not limited by such boundaries Coetzee tried to use the character of Susan to represent the newly empowered feminist of the era, allowing readers to gain an idea of an intimate picture of the obstacles, conflicts, powers, and freedom of a woman in a postcolonial society.

Comparison of "Silence":-

The use of silence is another area in which the two novels differ. In Coetzee's Foe, Susan Barton is seen eventually having to resort to silence to avoid conflict and confusion when Foe starts to overpower her in the novel's third part. Foe's statements, opinions, and manipulations confused Susan's beliefs and emotions so much that she decided to become silent even though she had been narrating the story from the beginning,

"Silence is generally deplored because it is taken to be a result and a symbol of passivity and powerlessness: Those who are denied speech cannot make their experience known and thus cannot influence the course of their lives or history." A point to be argued in this is that sometimes Susan Barton deliberately chose silence over speech as she did not want the readers of Foe to know everything that was going on in her mind. She says to Foe while defining the difference between her and Friday's silence - "Whereas the silence I keep regarding Bahia and other matters is chosen and purposeful." 

"Allowing individuals to make of her what they will, she retains her sense of

superiority "I smiled at them at all, allowing them to think little of her, she retains her privacy in a novel where there is much isolation but little of that valuable commodity."

In this regard, one may argue that Susan expressed little about her authentic self. holding her emotions, she was able to keep an upper hand over others sometimes, as other By holding her emotions, she was able to keep an upper hand over others sometimes, as other individuals might get confused about her authentic personality and opinions regarding things, and this made her come out as a mysterious lady in front of others who had a secret heart and mind.

However, this compromise completely goes against her original intention as she feels that the expression of her voice is entirely dependent on Foe's writing and silence is the best way to deal with this helpless state. Susan's innate desire to tell her story is there; however, she is unable to put her thoughts into words without the validation of Cruso, which contributes to her silence.

This silence is not a choice as she is compromising her voice and letting Foe's version dominate just so she can have her story told; even if it is not the version, she will write it herself. On the other hand, in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, the silence was Antoinette's method to get noticed, as she could not affect her husband through her speech. When Christophine tries to talk her out of her marriage, she says, "I am not rich now, I have no money of my own at all, everything I had belongs to him". She could have rebelled, but it appears as if she has internalized her silenced and submissive existence. But even though Antoinette's complete silence gave her attention, it was not in a positive manner as, in her husband's opinion, the silence was a sign of her impending insanity as Rochester stated - "She's as mad as the other, I thought, and turned to the window." Antoinette's silence, even though may have been intentional, didn't get her a positive response from Rochester; instead, it made her look even more insane in the eyes of Rochester as he continually keeps referring to her as insane- 

"My lunatic. My mad girl."

As Rochester continues to refuse to acknowledge Antoinette's voice, she decides to push herself into a world of silence. Her silence soon becomes overpowered by madness as she starts expressing her deepest thoughts and desires through her silent actions, which in Rochester's eyes is mad silence. She chooses to be seen as a madwoman in front of society as her mad silence succeeds in providing her curiosity and attention from her husband and society and, thus, the feeling of being significant.

Moreover, Rochester objectified Antoinette by referring to her as a doll numerous times in his narration, which shows that Rochester has downgraded Antoinette to a simple doll because of her mad silence. Here one can notice the indirect use of ventriloquism as in ventriloquism, one is merely a puppet in the hands of the ventriloquist, and again, For Rochester, Antoinette's eyes, voice, smile, and everything else are as unexpressive as those of a doll. He is unable to see the struggle and pain behind the doll's face. Throughout her life, no one understood her; no one heard her silent cries -

"Antoinette is a child of silence, to whom communication, words, speech bring only unhappiness and rejection...She is silenced first by her mother, who denies her existence, and then by Rochester, who refuses to be the reader of her story." 

Submissiveness Towards the Male Counterpart:- 

Another consistent idea in both the novels is that of females being given attention and importance because of their bodies and succumbing to the desires of males, "sexual appetite was considered one of the chief symptoms of moral insanity in women" .

In Foe, the character of Susan Barton, who came across as a strong-willed individual woman, driven towards her goal of publishing her own story, is seen physically surrendering to both the male characters, Cruso and Foe.

Foe and Cruso both see Susan as a physical object and desire her sexually. At the same time, Susan seems to have an innate need to please both men, eventually giving up her body per their wishes to create a place for herself in a world where men overpowered her. Her sexuality characterizes Susan. Susan's sexuality is first displayed at the beginning of the novel. The fact that she excuses his actions of degradation to an impulse of desire solidifies her role as an accessory in the novel; she not only lets Cruso use her but excuses it as a right of his male desires. One can argue that Susan's lack of resistance against the men's physical urges came from the fact that she realized and accepted the male domination that prevailed and thought that the physical union was a duty. However, she was confused about the whole notion of the physical union, as she stated:

"Was I to regret what had passed between Cruso and me? Would it have been better if we continued to live as brother and sister, host and guest, master and servant, or whatever it was we had been? Chance had cast me on his island, and luck had thrown me in his arms. In a world of possibility, is there a better and a worse? We yield to a stranger's embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of an eyelid, our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep, and when we awake, we have lost the direction of our lives."

Susan's intuitive submission to a dominant man proves that she wants to see herself as "a free woman," but in her heart, she cannot get herself out of the tendency to bow down to a robust, masculine figure. Coetzee makes Barton the woman behind the man, defining her as a "free and autonomous being like all human creatures that finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other"

Quest for "Identity"

Both the novels focus on the search for individual identity and end up defining the female protagonist in relation to other males' treatment of her. Foe's main protagonist, Susan Barton, is seen as depending on the male characters to define her identity. At the story's start, Susan Barton lives with Cruso and Friday on Cruso's island, obeying Cruso's orders; she sleeps with Cruso as it makes her feel more significant to Cruso. She also defines her voice in relation to Friday by comparing his muteness to her speaking ability. Even though she works as Friday's ventriloquist, he helps her realize the importance of speech and expressing oneself with words. Similarly, when Susan meets Foe, she starts to define herself according to his views of her, and she becomes a confused individual who bends to Foe's every whim and opinion. She ends up sleeping with him to gain his acceptance and starts to define her freedom and voice in relation to how much creative freedom Foe chose to give her.

Similarly, Antoinette defines her identity by relating it to her husband Rochester's treatment of her, which decides what she thinks about herself. To gain Rochester's notice, she resorts to any means and mediums, such as madness, silence, sex, etc... Antoinette is seen requesting Christophine, a motherly figure to her, to help Antoinette gain her husband's love and affection. Eventually, Rochester's influence became so severe that Antoinette's emotions and expressions are entirely defined by his behavior toward her, and when his ignorance reaches extreme levels, it results in Antoinette losing her mind and going mad as Anja Loomba stated, "within the framework of psychoanalytic discourse, anti-colonial resistance is coded as madness."

One more significant matter to consider hereis that in both the novels, the lack of freedom and voice affected the individuals so much that it became a matter of existence for both Antoinette and Susan. The insecurities, doubts, and helplessness were created in their hearts and minds mostly from their interactions with the male characters, which eventually took away their sense of self and existence. The belief in their existence depends on the freedom, voice, and validation that they seek to receive throughout the story.

While Susan and Antoinette both search for their voices throughout the novels, their journeys pass through different paths. In Foe, Susan Barton starts as a strong and confident individual, believing in her individuality as a free woman and looking to share her story with the world. However, as the story progressed, she ended up compromising on her ideals more and more and bowing down to the dominating male voices. Foe's power as a writer and his knowledge and skills of manipulation succeeded in confusing Susan about her identity, individuality, and freedom. She ended up losing her essence and substance, as a woman, to Foe.

Conclusion:-

The presence of women has affected every culture and society in human history, whether they were oppressed or liberated. Throughout most of history, women were forced to suppress their voices and be subservient to men in each crucial aspect of life, including the one place where true expression of oneself is of utmost importance - literature. Countless years of discrimination in literature, full of male writers who portrayed women as the weaker gender dependent on men, hindered the women's liberation movement even more. The fact that women could not even truly express themselves in literature resulted in them having little power over their representation for hundreds of years. As a consequence, the female voice had been lost for ages. However, The feminist voice, suppressed for so many years before, also found its way to literature in the 20th century. The postcolonial age has seen more feminine writers, stronger feminine characters, and the true power of the feminine voice. Postcolonial novels like Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea and J.M. Coetzee's Foe are two hugely influential pieces of work that tried to capture this latest definition of what it means to be a woman in this era. In every aspect of their lives, the presence of men was not only constant but also influential in how Susan and Antoinette felt, how happy they were and how they expressed themselves. Their voices were more powerful and expressive than those of women in the literature previously, but they were still affected by men in a significant way. Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea and JM. Coetzee's Foe are reflective of the fact that, even though women were coming out strong and putting their perspectives and opinions quite courageously forward during the postcolonial era, they still could not completely liberate themselves from the power of men that had overwhelmed them for centuries previously.

Word Count:- 3436

Works Cited

Azam, Nushrat. “A Feminist Critique of “Voice” and the “Other” in J.M. Coetzee’s Post-colonial Novel “Foe.”” ResearchGate, December 2018, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331840804_A_Feminist_Critique_of_Voice_and_the_Other_in_JM_Coetzee's_Post-colonial_Novel_Foe. Accessed 2022.

DeBuck, Katie. “Susan Barton: The Woman on “Cruso's Island” | Magnificat.” Marymount Commons, https://commons.marymount.edu/magnificat/susan-barton-the-woman-on-crusos-island/. Accessed 4 November 2022.