JSalter PhD Final Thesis Submission.pdf - University of Guelph

perspective on Bertha’s social condition and the personal limitations imposed by her
social position. In Sucking Salt: Caribbean Women Writers, Migration, and Survival,
Meredith Gadsby contends female independence “shatter[s] the master narrative of
masculinity that permeates Caribbean culture” (66), and thus Rhys’s novel challenges
previous negative perceptions of Bertha. As a postmodern novel, Wide Sargasso Sea
“inscribes and subverts the conventions and ideologies of the dominant cultural and
social forces” (Hutcheon 11). Rhys’s characterization shifts critique towards the colonial
society that governs Bertha’s existence. Gayatri Spivak argues that it is Rhys’s
articulation of the psychology behind Bertha’s actions that “keeps [Bertha’s] humanity
intact” (125).
Mootoo’s representation of the Caribbean ‘madwoman’ invites questions about
the social conditions responsible for Mala’s perceived ‘madness.’ Mootoo’s complex and
contradictory characterization of Mala, socially constructed by town gossip as a
dangerous madwoman yet revealed through Tyler’s narrative as the innocent victim of
horrific familial sexual violence, exemplifies how rumours about this old woman (as a
monster to be feared) serve to erase her personal history and abdicate the community of
their complicity and social responsibility. Vivian M. May argues that “[t]he community’s
readings of Mala entail no understanding at all: they place Mala within socially
acceptable cognitive frameworks so that the community can move on. Madness has no
meaning other than as a repository for the abject” (“Dislocation” 109). May suggests,
Mootoo’s novel “pushes us to […] recognize how passivity plays an insidious role in
domination” (“Trauma” 117). To expose the ideological operations behind these social
practices of exclusion, Mootoo’s novel challenges the blind acceptance of authoritative
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