As the foremost white West Indian writer of this century and author
of the widely acclaimed novel
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
(1890-1979) has attracted much critical attention, most often from
the perspective of gender analysis. Veronica Gregg extends our
critical appreciation of Rhys by analyzing the complex relationship
between Rhys's identity and the structures of her fiction, and she
reveals the ways in which this relationship is connected to the
history of British colonization of the West Indies. Gregg focuses
on Rhys as a writer--a Creole woman analyzing the question of
identity through literary investigations of race, gender, and
colonialism. Arguing that history itself can be a site where
different narratives collide and compete, she explores Rhys's
rewriting of the historical discourses of the West Indies and of
European canonical texts, such as Rhys's treatment of
Jane
Eyre in
Wide Sargasso Sea. Gregg's analysis also reveals
the precision with which Rhys crafted her work and her
preoccupation with writing as performance.
