Abstract As Jean Rhys’s creative rewriting of Jean Eyre, Wide Sargesso Sea has drawn much critical attention since published in 1960s。 The critical studies employed in the novel mainly include the intertextuality between Wide Sargasso Sea and Jean Eyre, postcolonialism and African Caribbean perspectives。 This thesis explores the theme of “power and insanity” in Jean Rhys’s story Wide Sargasso Sea, from the perspective of Foucault’s theories about madness and power。 Firstly, it centers on the nature of Antoinette’s madness to prove that her madness is not a kind of illness but the product of social civilization。 Secondly, the thesis focuses on the cause of madness through the interactions of power and discourse, power and discipline as well as power and resistance, thereby pointing that Antoinette’s madness is produced by complex power mechanism。 75974

Key words: madness; power; Foucault; Wide Sargasso Sea

摘要琼·里斯的《茫茫藻海》是对《简·爱》的一种创造性改写，自上世纪六十年代出版以来，引起评论界极大关注。学界的研究多围绕《茫茫藻海》与《简·爱》的互文性关系、后殖民zhuyi和非洲-加勒比视角展开。本文从福柯的疯癫与权力理论出发，细察琼·里斯作品《茫茫藻海》中的“权力与疯癫”这一主题。论文首先对小说主人公安托瓦内特的疯癫本质进行探究，指出她的疯癫不是生理上的疾病而是社会文明的产物；然后通过分析权力与话语、权力与规训以及权力与反抗的相互作用，剖析疯癫形成的原因，进而指出安托瓦内特的疯癫是复杂的权力机制运作的必然结果。

毕业论文关键词：疯癫；权力；福柯；《茫茫藻海》

Contents

1。 Introduction 1

2。 Literature Review 2

3。 Normality or Madness 4

3。1 Foucault’s interpretation of madness 4

3。2 The nature of Antoinette’s mandess 5

4。 Interpretation of Antoinette’s Madness from Power Perspective 7

4。1 Foucault’s power theory 7

4。2 The manipulation of power in Wide Sargasso Sea 8

5。 Conclusion 13

Works Cited 14

1。 Introduction 

Jean Rhys (1890-1979), born in Roseau, Dominica, is regarded as a great Caribbean writer in the 20th century。 With striking gift and significant innovation in literary writing, Rhys gains her international reputation mainly for advocating gender equality, satirizing the merciless interracial discrimination and condemning western cultural hegemony。 Wide Sargasso Sea is her last and representative work。

Her father was a Welsh doctor and her mother a white Dominican Creole。 Jeans Rhys lived the there since childhood。 At the age of sixteen, she left her hometown and moved to England。 She had to terminate her schooling in the Royal Academic of Dramatic Art after the death of her father。 In 1919, she married a French-Dutch journalist Jean Lenglet, and then they moved to Paris where they began an unsettled and impermanent life。 In 1927, she published her first collection of stories The Left Bank and Other Stories。 Then over the following years, she successively published some novels, such as Quartet (1928), After Leaving Mr。 Mackenzie (1931), Voyage in the Dark (1934), Good Morning, Midnight (1939)。These early works are mainly based on her own life experience and focus on those marginal women living under a cold and dark social system。 These novels received some critic notice, but they did not arouse much attention。 Until in the 1960s, she reappeared with her last novel Wide Sargasso Sea。 In it, Jean Rhys tells a story of madwoman, Bertha, vaguely outlined in Jean Eyre。 Wide Sargasso Sea is her best novel and wins her the Royal Society of Literature Award。 论文网