Cultural Studies and Cyberfeminism

Cyberfeminism

Hello friends, in this blog I'm going to discuss Cyber Feminism and the bias we see on the internet platform. First of all we need to understand what cyber feminism is.  According to Wikipedia source,

Cyberfeminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. 

According to Oxford Reference, 

It is a movement that began in the 1990s utilizing cyberculture and feminist ideas to re-theorize gender, the body, and identities in relation to technology and power. 

The term was coined in the early 1990s to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, exploring and re-making the Internet, cyberspace and new-media technologies in general. It is a community, philosophy and set of practices concerned with feminist acts in cyberspace. Cyberfeminism is a postmodernist keyword used to describe the philosophies of a contemporary feminist community whose interests are cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. The term was coined by Sadie Plant to describe the work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, and exploiting the Internet, cyberspace, and new-media technologies in general. Cyberfeminism is considered a predecessor to networked feminism. The dominant Cyberfeminist perspective takes a utopian view of cyberspace and the Internet as a means of freedom from social constructs like gender and sex difference. Cyberfeminism views technology as a vehicle for the dissolution of sex and gender as well as a means to link the body with machines. For better understanding watch the video:

It is a term of any illicit activity that involves the use of a computer as its elementary means of the commission. It is a wrongdoing which is committed against a single individual or a group of them with a criminal mind to intentionally cause harm to the dignity of the sufferer or to cause physical or mental trauma to the victim in any manner, direct or indirect, by way of modern telecommunication networks like the internet. 

If we see in society we find females are not much connected with cyber space and technology. But males are all much familiar with all this technology. Why did it happen ? Because there are the reasons like,

• Culture

• Gender Stereotypes

• Growth of baby and their Sports equipment

If we talk about culture, we find that in our society boys are much familiar with technology and cyberspace. Slowly and steadily girls are starting to use technology and doing work with technology. Because of the patriarchal society, we see most things were not taught to girls. We find most of top companies and their founders are men. For example, if we look at the big tech companies and their founders :

• Microsoft - Bill Gates and Paul Allen

• Apple - Steve Jobs

• Facebook - Mark Zuckerberg

• Amazon - Jeff Bezos

• Google - Larry Page and Sergey Brin

All are men ! We find very few women who are founders of companies. Because they are not connected with technology. The girl was also restricted from using this heavy work, like repairing. So the mindset of girls has been narrow in this field of technology since childhood. 

Since technology became important, we used to fill out the online forms and all these works,and that was done by our father, brother or friend (boy), because they know much about it and we don't know how to do all the things. Why does it happen ? Because from childhood we divide babies into genders. If the baby is a boy then we give him toys like, car, airplane, machine etc. and if we have a baby girl we give them toys like, kitchen equipment, Barbi doll etc. So they learn the things which we are giving them. So that is why women are not much aware about technology.

On the internet many female writers publish their work with male names. Because the work is judged by people with gender discrimination. We find many examples from the past. If women write anything, people will question her abilities. But if a man writes anything, their work easily overcomes the question of ability. So gender biases are also created in AI. And this AI was created by humans, so we have to input equality into them also. 

But now the situation is changing. Women got space in using technology. But the threats are also rising for women. Cyber crime has become an easy weapon to abuse women. So what are the reasons behind that ? Let's see. 

• MAJOR REASONS FOR THE GROWTH OF CYBER VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN :-

The usage of the internet for criminal activities causes big threat to the society in the form of cyber violence and the major victims of this crime are females of all age groups. According to studies, it has been shown that the number of users which were 52 million went up to 71 million in 2009. In these users, 8% of the users were working women and 7% of the users were non-working women in 2009 and 37% of all the users used the internet by way of cyber cafés. What commonly happens is that the cyber café owners leak the personal and essential data of the internet surfer which is then used for illicit activities. And that is why families are not allowing females to use these technologies. 

What are the reasons in this cyber violence against females against women are following:

(1) Easily available information of the victims:- 

Social networking websites are made for people to connect to each other even at long distances and also to let people know each other. To show the presence of a profile, the users have to put their personal data like age, phone number, residential address, marital status, and so on. 

(2) Ignorance and carelessness of the users:-

The social networking websites provide for several options to keep the profiles secure and keep oneself protected from being harassed in numerous ways such as putting up security measures and giving options to lock the personal photos, albums as well as messages. A user can also block a harasser which permanently hides the profile and cannot be found on the website by the harasser. Further, there are options like with whom to share information, a user can select to share it with only the members or with the public or with just oneself. Even after all these security measures provided by the social networking websites, women are prone to all types of cyber violence such as stalking, morphing, hacking, cheating, defamation and sexual abuse on the online platform. Some females had oral arguments with their group mates and they suspected that their user profiles on the website were hacked by some people. Very few women are aware of their legal right to protect their privacy from any outside intervention on the social networking website although many women experience cybercrime more or less and in some or the other way. 

(3) Hiding one’s real identity under fake profiles:-

The fundamental right of freedom to speech and expression has encouraged the right to be unidentified on the social media. These websites provide space for changing names, addresses and other personal details regularly. This was done by social networking websites to allow a user to change their physical condition and geographical location from time to time so as to get in contact and interact with the other member on that website but, this has resulted in the other way around where the perpetrators commit crimes and get a blanket to hide under different identities which are fake. These fake account users have put females in more danger and risk on the social media. 

• TYPES OF CYBERCRIMES COMMITTED AGAINST WOMEN :-

(1) Cyber Harassment:

This is a form of harassment, including blackmailing, threatening and continuous sending of love letters by fake names or constant sending of embarrassing emails to the mailbox of some other user. This behaviour is intended to disturb a person through the usage of the internet. Sexual harassment is a specific type of harassment which is particularly sexual in nature, among several other types of them, it vitally takes into consideration constant and undesirable sexual activities. 

(2) Cyber Stalking:

Cyber stalking is one of the most talked about cybercrimes in the modern day. It takes into account following the movements of a person all over the internet by sending messages which are sometimes threatening on the bulletin boards and going into chat-rooms frequently visited by the victim, constantly bombarding the mailbox of the victim, etc. The offence of cyber stalking is generally committed by men who stalk women or by adults who stalk the children. 

(3) Cyber Pornography:

It is defined as the posting of sexual substances on the internet. This is again a threat to female internet users as they don‟t even know which of their activities are being recorded and might then go viral all over the web. It is a non-consensual activity wherein pictures and videos of the victim are obtained by certain ways such as hacking into the computer or phone of the victim, via social media accounts, etc. and these harm the life of the victim in the real world. This offence has been covered under the IT Act, 2000 to some extent under Section 67.

(4) Cyber Defamation:

Defamation is a tort and cyber defamation is when the defamation is committed by the use of computers and on the internet. It happens when people start publishing defaming statements or obscene material on various social networking websites on the online platform. The bulletin board of a user is open to be accessed by all other users which means that anyone can post a defamatory statement on their board and then it is visible to everyone. Cyber defamation is also called cyber smearing.

(5) Morphing: 

It is to make a picture look different completely or partially from what it originally looks like by a fake identity. The offenders download photos of women from their social media accounts and edit (morph) them and then again upload the new picture in the name of a fake account. Morphing is generally done with two pictures wherein one picture is mixed with another picture and shown in a compromising situation or position which make it look like the women is indulging in the act portrayed in the picture. After this comes blackmail, where the woman is threatened to do something and if not, the pictures would go viral all over the web which will lead to embarrassment of the woman in the community and her status will be diminished too. The offenders committing this crime are booked under Section 43 and Section 66 of the IT Act, 2000.

(6) Email Spoofing:

Email spoofing is to change the real origin of an email in a fraudulent and illegitimate manner. The header part of the address and the sender‟s address is changed in such a way that it is not possible to recognize that the email has been spoofed and looks like that it as been sent from a different source. Men generally send their obscene and vulgar photographs to women via such emails, glorifying their beauty, demanding favours for them and asking for a date or for the price the woman would take for a night with them. 

So, in this way cyberfeminism works. If want to reduce the cyber crime  we have to educate women more, because the knowledge make them aware about the technology and it will easy to Artificial Intelligence for them.

The Culture of Speed and the Counter Culture of Slow Movement

Our lives become very fast with passing time. In every work we need more speed and want to complete all the things in less time. But by running behind the time something is lacking, something we are leaving behind us. And it is connected with society and society is subject of cultural studies. That is why the slowness has become a part of study here in cultural studies.

We can say that, 

Slowness is a new way of thinking about time

When we can do everything on time, then why should we hurry ? In the speed, we forgot to balance things. But in slowness, we can balance everything. So if you must hurry, hurry slowly ! We find lots of works also written about slowness. Let's discuss about it. 

In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore.

In this works Honore discuss about slow movement and the importance of slowness. In a way it is as the title, praise of slow and it's effect on the world. Here is TED talk about slowness by Carl Honore. Here is the video link of that TED talk, 

https://www.ted.com/talks/carl_honore_in_praise_of_slowness?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare 

In the video we find interesting things that praising the slow movement and the importance of slowness. Honore said that, A world obsessed with speed, with doing everything faster, with cramming more and more into less and less time. Every moment of the day feels like a race against the clock. We're so marinated in the culture of speed that we almost fail to notice the toll it takes on every aspect of our lives like on our health, our diet, our work, our relationships, the environment and our community.  

Honore discussed about two questions. The first was, how did we get so fast? And the second is, is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down? Now, if we think about how our world got so accelerated, the usual suspects rear their heads. We think of, we know, urbanization, consumerism, the workplace, technology. But he said if we cut through those forces, we get to what might be the deeper driver, the nub of the question, which is how we think about time itself. In other cultures, time is cyclical. It's seen as moving in great, unhurried circles. It's always renewing and refreshing itself. Whereas in the West, time is linear. It's a finite resource; it's always draining away. You either use it, or lose it.

 "Time is money," 

-Benjamin Franklin

So the talk makes the things clear about slowness and it's importance. According to Honore,

The purpose of the Slow Movement, or its main goal, really, is to tackle that taboo, and to say that yes, sometimes slow is not the answer, that there is such a thing as "bad slow."

-Carl Honore

So we can say that Honore believes the Western world's emphasis on speed erodes health, productivity and quality of life. But there's a backlash brewing and all people started to taking break. 

Here are some other works also about slowness. One of them is Paul Virilio's work on 'Dromology'. Dromos is an Ancient Greek noun for race or racetrack, which Virilio applied the activity of racing (Virilio 1977:47). Meaning of this Dromology is "science (or logic) of speed".  He noted in his work, that the speed at which something happens may change its essential nature, and that which moves with speed quickly comes to dominate that which is slower. 'Whoever controls the territory possesses it. Possession of territory is not primarily about laws and contracts, but first and foremost a matter of movement and circulation. 

So at the end we can say that this movement makes aware people about the slowness, it's different aspects and it's impect on our life. There are the questions that were answered in the video talk also. If we want to balance the things we can be slow and that helps us to do things correct, because in our busy life we were damaging our relationship and other things that can be a serious problem for us.

Why we scared from Robots / AIS

Why are we scared of Robots / Artificial Intelligence ? 

We know that technology is growing so fast. All the things are going faster. The invention of robots is the major part of invention. Human beings will face some difficulties because of the invention of robots. Because what if they took the place oh human ? 

• They are smart in comparison to humans. 

• They learn very fast. 

• They work very fast. 

• They need batteries only. 

• They work without exhaustion

So in that way we can say that robots are better than humans. In every way they are better in comparison to human beings. But should all prefer to stay with robots ? No. Why is it happening ? There are reasons that we should prefer to stay with humans rather than robots. 

So first if we talk about the advantages of robots we can say that robots are better than humans at work. They can do everything that humans are doing. But we see we are scared of robots and artificial intelligence. So let's understand what a robot is and what Artificial Intelligence is first. 

According to dictionary of Oxford language,

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.

According to Wikipedia,

Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, as opposed to

 the natural intelligence 

displayed by animals including humans. 

It is a transformative technology that is currently remaking how businesses operate and stay competitive. Although AI is unlocking tremendous business potential, it also imposes new risks and liabilities. 

We know what robot is. So now come to the point that why we are so scared of robots ? So are some reasons:

• They take our jobs

• They harm the humans

• They are not safe

• They are powerful / strong

There are some examples of video and movies:-

These movies shows us how the robots become uncotrolable. And kill the people. And that is why we have fear of them.

Here is one video also,

So we have some wrong things about the robots and artificial intelligence. Because that is not truth. Yes, in some of the movie we seen that type of things, but it is not true. Robots are not that type of cruel and harmful. Because cinema potryaed robots in that way we started believing that is true. We have seen in some of the movie and videos, where robots are hurting and killing people. But that's not so. So all that things are wrong, that robots can hurt people ? Yes, now we must think how ? So,

• Robots are made by human, so they have control over it

• Robots have not emotions, so they can't feel revenge and all the things. 

• Human add all the features in robot, so they can work in that way.

So here is nothing like fear of robots. But yes still if you give choice to people, with whom they want to stay ? They will choose human beings. If I ask you,

With whom would you like to stay ? What will be your choice ? Robot or human ? 

I think most of people choose human beings. Even if they are enemies ! But the thing is robots are not harmful. They can perform better, they can be our good friend. 

So at the end I would like to say that, there is no worry about robots and artificial intelligence because they are surve to people. Humans have control over it and humans are their operator so they can only add the features of how robot and artificial intelligence will work.

The Final Solution by Mahesh Dattani

 Have you seen any film adaptations ? Which is taken from any novel, story, play, drama etc. Well this is my fourth or fifth experience of watching a film adaptation. We have seen a film adaptation "The Final Solution" directed by Mahesh Dattani, which is based on his play "The Final Solution". This adaptation is available on the Zee5 app also. We had a screen of the play on 29 September, 2021. So let's discuss it more. 

"The Final Solution" is a play by Mahesh Dattani. Mahesh Dattani (born 7 August 1958) is an Indian director, actor, playwright and writer. He wrote such plays as Final Solutions, Dance Like a Man, Bravely Fought the Queen, On a Muggy Night in Mumbai, Tara, Thirty Days in September and The Big Fat City. To read more about Mahesh Dattani click here. Let's see a brief summary of the play. 

Final Solutions has taken the issues of the majority communities in different contexts and situations. It talks of the problems of cultural hegemony, how Hindus had to suffer at the hands of Muslim majority like the characters of Hardika/Daksha in Hussainabad. And how Muslims like Javed suffer in the set up of the majority Hindu community. This all resulted in communal riots and culminated in disruption of the normal social life, and thus hampered the progress of the nation. Here is the poster of film adaptation.

Now let's think about the question answers : 

Here are some questions to ponder upon. To know more about task visit teacher's blog, click here.

👉Does the movie help you to understand the narrative structure of the play?

Well, any adaptation helps us to understand the structure of the literary work, if they are truthful with the original work. In The Final Solution, we see the story is told by the perspective of Daksha in diary form. She wrote a diary and tells us what and how everything has happened. The other perspective is Javed. His experience and his story also shown in flashback mode. Bobby's story also shown different perspective. So this all Techniques are used in the play, which we understand better through screening of a film. 

👉What do you think about women’s situation during the time of communal riots? 

The situation of women during the time of communal riots very bad. Even in common situation it is not good. They don't have freedom of speech, not right to do what they wanted, and also they don't have right to choose her hobby. So slowly and steadily the situation is changing nowadays. In the movie and play we see that Daksha wanted to be a singer, but her father in law and mother in law denied to do so. Even she haven't right to listen songs also. 

👉Does the women characters like Daksha, Aruna etc. have helped you in understanding it.If you were the director of the movie, what kind of changes would you make in the movie. Does the movie do justice to the play? 

All women characters helps us to understand the play. If I was the director, I will end the play with solution. And all we know the solution is to be aware about what others says about other religions. We should not conclude any point without knowing everything about the matter. We have to see that we should not provoked by other peoples. 

So overall this adaptation is good and it helps us to understand the concept of the play by Mahesh Dattani. The play is also portrayed in a very interesting way, and also it presents the harsh reality of society. We have to be careful while watching and listening to those nusense. Because many times it's happened that we don't know anything, but we join the groups of those people who are violent and provoke us against other religions. 

Comparison between Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea

Making comparisons between two texts is quite an interesting task for students. We have to see both the texts, their narrative, style, character, theme and lots of other things also. So now you understand today's topic. And it is about the comparison between "Jane Eyre" and "Wide Sargasso Sea". So let's start,

First see the brief introduction of Jane Eyre. "Jane Eyre" (originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography) is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë, published under the pen name "Currer Bell". The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. Jane Eyre is a Bildungsroman which follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr. Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall. 

Widely considered a classic, this novel gave new truthfulness to the Victorian novel with its realistic portrayal of the inner life of a woman, noting her struggles with her natural desires and social condition. 

Now see a brief introduction of "Wide Sargasso Sea". Wide Sargasso Sea, novel by Jean Rhys, published in 1966. A well-received work of fiction, it takes its theme and main character from the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

The book details the life of Antoinette Mason (known in Jane Eyre as Bertha), a West Indian who marries an unnamed man in Jamaica and returns with him to his home in England. Locked in a loveless marriage and settled in an inhospitable climate, Antoinette goes mad and is frequently violent. Her husband confines her to the attic of his house at Thornfield. Only he and Grace Poole, the attendant he has hired to care for her, know of Antoinette’s existence. The reader gradually learns that Antoinette’s unnamed husband is Mr. Rochester, later to become the beloved of Jane Eyre. 

Comparison between Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea

We have basic information now. So let's compare both the novels. Wide Sargasso Sea is both a response and a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, set in the West Indies and imagining the lives of Bertha Mason and her family. Bidisha describes how Jean Rhys’s novel portrays the racial and sexual exploitation at the heart of western civilisation and literature. 

∆Intertextuality :-

Reference of a text which is mirrored and reflected in another text, is call intertextuality. So an author influences by a text and creates a new original work of literature by using another existing text. It puts two texts in an interdependent situation so in order to produce meaning, these two texts stand in relation to one another. Intertextuality becomes one of the central ideas of cultural postmodern and contemporary literature. 

Jean Rhys writes Wide Sargasso Sea as a prequel to a nineteen century classic, Charlotte Bronte's Jean Eyre, which has always been one of the greatest novels in English Literature and most popular love stories. Rhys extrapolates events that earlier occurs in Bronte's Jean Eyre. She uses the idea of intertextuality in her novel in order to tell an alternative story of a later novel although she comes from a very different background and presents her novel in a different century in contrast to Bronte. It can be better said that 

Wide Sargasso Sea is a hypertext of Jean Eyre. 

∆Characters :-

As we all know, 'Wide Sargasso Sea' is a prequel to Jane Eyre. So we connect both the main characters with each other. 

Jean Rhys' reinterpretation of Rochester’s and Bertha’s relationship is not at all times compatible with Brontë’s Jane Eyre. As soon as her narration adds depth to Bertha’s personality and transforms her into a human being with a background and feelings, the beast in the attic is no longer a tenable concept. Therefore, Wide Sargasso Sea achieves more than a mere filling in the blank of Bertha’s history. It makes a reader who is familiar with both novels, challenge Rochester’s personality, and inevitably Jane’s judgement as his admirer. Rhys' novel is not so much a prequel to Jane Eyre, as an alternative version of the story. It focuses on the profound differences between Rochester and his wife, who has lived a life so alien to him that communication between the two proves almost impossible. It questions whether Bertha (in this novel Antoinette) carries indeed the sole responsibility for Rochester’s unhappiness. Wide Sargasso Sea suggests that he himself and various external influences contributed to the disastrous ending of their marriage which would eventually drive Bertha into madness.  

∆Themes :-

Another thing that Rhys takes from Bronte's Jane Eyre and uses it in Wide Sargasso Sea is the idea of dream which is a prevalent theme in both novels and it foreshadows the future and reflects the suppressed desires and fears of the two heroines in these two works. 

Bronte in her novel Jane Eyre uses dreams to express the repressed material in the unconscious mind of Jean as well as foreshadowing a future that finds a way to consciousness. Rhys rewrites Jean Eyre in Wide Sargasso Sea by using its theme of dream and diffuses it in every line of her novel. The two characters who are also heroines in these novels see dreams which foreshadow their future, and their lost identities that both of them repress in their unconscious, finds its way to their consciousness in their dreams. 

In the novels Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, the theme of loss can be viewed as an umbrella that encompasses the absence of independence, society or community, love, and order in the lives of the two protagonists. They deal with their hardships in diverse ways. However, they both find ways to triumph over their losses and regain their independence. 

∆Subject Matter :-

Actually Jean Rhys composes Wide Sargasso Sea as a creative response to Jean Eyre by using one of the postmodern devices, intertextuality. Jean Rhys isn't satisfied with this tragic ending that happens to Bertha and she is not agreeing with the presentation of Bertha Mason, while reading Bronte's novel Jane Eyre. She decides to write a story of Bertha's life. 

So she takes the character of Mr. Rochester's first wife, Bertha Who has a secondary role and a minor character in Bronte's novel and makes her major character in her novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, while she creates a backstory for this major character named her Antoinette also she is sometimes called Bertha by other characters through the course of novel. 

Now this question comes to the reader's mind: how can one know that Antoinette and her husband in Wide Sargasso Sea are the same characters in Jane Eyre who are known as Bertha and Rochester? 

Through reading the novel Wide Sargasso Sea, it can be seen several times that Antoinette is called Bertha, without any pre-information about this name. So if the reader refers to Bronte's novel Jane Eyre, it can be seen that it has a character named Bertha who is imprisoned by her husband Rochester. 

Bronte starts her novel with Jane's life, from her childhood till her maturity, and it is better to say that she writes about the story of Jane. So Rhys takes one of the minor characters of Bronte's novel who named Bertha as the heroine of her novel and gives her another name Antoinette. She starts to write about her life in the form that Bronte did earlier in Jane Eyre, by starting from Antoinette's childhood until her growth to a woman. 

∆Women :-

The women in both novels endure a loss of personal freedom, both mental, and physical. Jane Eyre, in her blind infatuation with Mr. Rochester, allows her emotions to enslave her. She realizes her obsession when she states, 

"My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for his creature: of whom I had made an idol".

(Bronte 241)

By design, Rochester seduces Antoinette and deliberately makes her depend on him. 

Christophine, Antoinette’s servant, in a conversation with Rochester accusingly contends 

“you make love to her till she drunk with it, no rum could make her drunk like that, till she can’t do without it. It’s she can’t see the sun any more. Only you she see. But all you want is to break her up.”

(Rhys 153)

After becoming totally enslaved by her feelings for him, Rochester adds insult to injury by physically abusing Antoinette. Her complete and total love for Mr. Rochester, who is passionless and devoid of any empathy, causes her to lose her mind. 

Jane and Antoinette’s uninhibited desire to please those whom they love becomes detrimental to their peace of mind. Jane does everything she can to please St. John, her cousin, which ends with her completely paying no heed to her own thoughts and feelings.  

Jane similarly leaves Rochester when she finds out about his deceit. When Antoinette realizes Rochester does not love her, she scorns him. Although the two women are fundamentally different people, they face many similar challenges throughout their lives. Jane and Antoinette respond to each type of loss they experience differently, and these choices ultimately demonstrate Jane’s inner strength and Antoinette’s inherent vulnerability, resulting in two very different endings, one happy and the other tragic. 

∆Cultural Differences :- 

The title of Jean Rhys’s last novel is a powerful metaphor for the main problem its protagonists face. An oval shaped area of the North Atlantic, the Sargasso Sea lies between the Azores and the West Indies, 

“dividing and uniting Europe and the Caribbean”. 

(Sternlicht, 104) 

Wide Sargasso Sea clearly focuses on the dividing qualities of the waters and the disparity of its opposite shores. The manifold differences become more and more apparent in the run of Rochester’s and Antoinette’s relationship. 

∆Patriarchy and colonialism :- 

Charlotte Bronte’s famous Victorian novel, Jane Eyre, tells the story of a young plain governess who possesses intelligence, self-confidence, a will of her own, and moral righteousness. Bronte is consistently in her novel concerned with male and female equality, and love which created the pairing of these equals. In Jane Eyre, an apparently hopeless and horrible maniac character is locked in the attic by her husband Rochester. The character is Bertha Mason, Rochester’s West-Indian-born wife. Bertha in the novel is portrayed as an intrusion and a barrier to Jane’s marriage. On first reading, it seems that the character Bertha, so unsympathetically portrayed, is merely used to add to the dramatic tension of the novel. Some critics, however, such as Gilbert and Cubar see a deeper role for the character suggesting in The Madwoman in the Attic that Bertha characterized Jane’s ungoverned passion and rage. She is like the young Jane in the Red Room, early in the novel, locked in solitary confinement, and thus presenting a monstrous equivalent to Jane’s dark self. This is an interesting perspective from which one might view the character, Bertha. 

However, it is also possible to re-consider Bertha’s role from the fresh perspective of patriarchy and colonial society. Kucich says in Jane Eyre and Imperialism that “Jane Eyre represents British Colonialist issues more strikingly than most other 19th century domestic novels”. Every woman in a patriarchal society must meet and overcome oppression. Being not only a woman but also a West-Indian, that is a white Creole, Bertha experienced both women’s oppression and racial prejudice. 

Bertha Mason in the attic served as a warning to other rebelling women against the patriarchy social restraints. Her situation indicated that all women must accept the social restraints in Bronte’s Jane Eyre. However in more recent times, Jean Rhys, a white Creole herself, wrote the story Wide Sargasso Sea from the point of view of Bertha’s view. The story is in many ways a re-evaluation of Jane Eyre. Jean Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea to show how Bronte’s novel excluded the parallel plight of the Creole woman, Bertha Mason. Consequently, Jean Rhys gave a strong voice to Bertha Mason in the story. Bertha is not Bertha in Jane Eyre but Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea. She is no longer a horrible mad woman in the dark attic, instead, she is a very lively Creole girl with her own spirits, thoughts and love. 

Through her portrayal of the relationship between Rochester and Antoinette, Jean Rhys made the implications of patriarchy and colonialism much clearer in Wide Sargasso Sea. The story of Bertha Mason was reconstructed through a perspective of feminism. Wide Sargasso Sea broke the authority of patriarchy and colonialism. Rochester in Wide Sargasso Sea was a villain who was totally opposite to the revering image of Rochester Bronte had portrayed in Jane Eyre. Jennings stated that 

“Bertha is a victim of her husband’s and her society’s double standards as much as and more than Jane”. 

∆Gothic Elements :- 

Another thing which connects wide Sargasso Sea to Jean Eyre is the use of Gothic features. Rhys is inspired by Bronte and powerfully makes use of Gothic elements in her novel, which are prevalent in Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre was published in the middle of nineteen century, before the time of Jane Eyre, in the early nineteen century, Gothic novels were in fashion. So Bronte was influenced by Gothic novels while she was writing Jane Eyre and she uses Gothic Features in her novel. 

All these elements of Gothicism are used in Jane Eyre to create a sense of spooky, horror and psychological suspense in the reader's mind. Rhys, inspired by Bronte's novel, also wants to create this feeling of suspense and frightening in the reader, and she takes gothic elements from Jane Eyre and brings them to Wide Sargasso Sea. Not only Rhys echoes the elements of Gothicism but also she builds them up in her novel. The atmosphere of Wide Sargasso Sea is full of superstitious Caribbean beliefs of Christophine about obeah and magic which gives the reader an idea of the supernatural and this is shown in the novel when Antoinette wants a love potion from Christophine. 

∆Feminism and Postcolonialism :- 

In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys uses the Brontë novel as a pre-text for relocating and reinscribing, to use Bhabha’s terms, Antoinette/Bertha in a story of her own. The narrative is divided into three parts: the first, which covers Antoinette’s childhood and youth up to her marriage to Rochester, is told by the protagonist herself; in the second Rochester describes his arrival in the West Indies, his marriage and the disastrous relationship with Antoinette; the third and final part is again narrated by the protagonist, from her confinement on the third floor of Thornfield Hall. 

By giving voice to both Antoinette and Rochester, Rhys mobilizes two different and opposed subjectivities, thus enacting a dramatic conflict both on the level of male-female relations and on that between the colonizer and the colonized. But this conflict is not as clear-cut as it may at first appear. As Rochester himself remarks about his arranged marriage, 

“I have not bought her, she has bought me, or so she thinks” 

(RHYS, 1966: 59)

In the luxuriant ambience of the West Indies, where the narrative begins, both characters display an unsettling ambivalence. Even though Rochester upholds the masculinist and colonialist discourse of power and domination, as he has after all succeeded in marrying a beautiful rich heiress from the colonies, he is affected by the new and strangely complex environment in more ways than one. Developing a fever immediately after his arrival, the illness makes it even more difficult for him to understand the local social behavior, especially that of the former slaves. 

Antoinette is still more ambivalent, both in racial and in social terms. The daughter of a white father and a Creole mother, she is part of a decaying colonial aristocracy, now threatened by a black majority of freed slaves. The power scheme in West Indian society is, thus, more complex than the opposition colonizer/colonized would allow. As Graham Huggan remarks, Antoinette’s status as a Creole 

“is not only a mark of personal/social instability, but 

also a model for the destabilization of a set of binary constructs (white/black, insider/outsider, and so forth) which provides a spurious rationalization in Wide Sargasso Sea for the self-privileging practices of colonial power” 

(HUGGAN, 1994: 657).

So we can say that both Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea represent the voice of women in any historical period of protesting patriarchy and oppression. No matter whether in the 19th century or in the 20th century, women continue their search for independence and equality with men. Bertha Mason is a typical representation of women as victims of both patriarchy and colonialism. 

Through rethinking Bertha Mason in these two novels, we can understand that there is not only one way to interpret one literary work. It is our ways of seeing and knowing literary work that make things different. Feminist criticism is a topical contemporary literature theory. However, it is also just one way to look at literature. As readers, we should learn to use a range of literature theory to look more deeply into literature works and learn to read critically.