ABSTRACT
As it rewrites the canonical hypotext that is Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea seeks to give its main female protagonist, Antoinette aka Bertha, a life, a voice, an image and a capacity to gaze at the male protagonist in a way that makes him uncomfortable. This chapter argues that, as Antoinette is made to enter the visual economy of the novel, she is turned into an icon, i.e. a visual representation that is widely acknowledged, of female resistance to male oppression. Thus, her character is used by Rhys in order to revisit the Victorian canon and give it a more saliant critical edge. In her prequel to Jane Eyre, Bertha, the “madwoman in the attic” (Gilbert and Gubar), becomes an emblem of courageous opposition to arbitrary and perverse forms of control of the female self.
