For the Drifting Sargasso Finds Its Way: Loss and Reconstruction of Antoinette’s Identity in Wide Sargasso Sea

Abstract

Adopting the applied techniques and methods of comparative literature, the postcolonial, the feminist and the psychosocial theories, this paper comes in contact with two literary works through spotlighting the external forces that can be supportive and encouraging on the one hand but undermining and discouraging the two protagonists’ long and arduous search for an identity and an independent self on the other. The paper investigates the similarities and differences in these two literary works to discover how the two writers correspond to the search of identity of the two protagonists’ in the two different novels. In addition, this paper also scrutinizes the way of the struggles that these female protagonists display to achieve their respective goals. Upon penetrating into the novels, each protagonist alights on herself in a distinctive manner depending on the state of affairs and the external forces that thoroughly determines the construction or destruction of her identity in full measure. In fact, they have picked what they want. They care to have a world of their own where there shall be their own choices of life style, terms and decisions.