Is «Wide Sargasso Sea» by Jean Rhys the first postcolonial feminist novel?

Abstract

The paper deals with the clarifying the ideological orientation and artistic peculiarity of the novel «Wide Sargasso Sea» (1966) by the English writer Jean Rhys. The purpose of the study is to identify signs of postcolonial discourse in the novel in connection with the feminist literary paradigm. The research methodology is based on the use of historical-genetic, structural, functional, narratological methods, genre theory and the functional principles of feminist and postcolonial criticism. The results of the studying show that the novel, through intertextual dialogue with the classical tradition (Charlotte Brontë's novel «Jane Eyre»), deconstructs the ideas of «cultural and gender colonialism», rethinks the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, and attempts to rehabilitate and return the «voice of the silenced woman», which correlates with the main postulates of the second wave of feminist criticism. The scientific novelty of the study lies in identifying the signs of polynarrative genre synthesis in the novel. The material and conclusions of the article can be used by scholars to further investigate the evolution and correlation between postcolonial and feminist literary discourses, as well as in the studying modern foreign literature in higher education institutions.