The politics of violence : Frantz fanon and wide Sargasso sea

Abstract EN

Frantz Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth (1961), focuses on the process of decolonization and argues that violence is a means necessary to political action, and also is an organic force or energy.

In other words, Fanon clearly states that because the colonizers dominate and control the colonized in occupied territories by the use of violence, it is necessary for the colonized to use violence to reverse the power relationships and gain liberation.

The paper aims at applying this reading of violence as a positive force for change and liberation on Jean Rhys’ postcolonial novel, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966).

In writing her novel, Rhys dramatizes violence and resistance through presenting a heroine exemplifying the postcolonial social and psychological state of alienation but challenges the English patriarchal/colonial domination.

The violent action of Rhys’ heroine in the burning of Thornfield Hall at the end of the novel suggests that it is only through violence and death that Antoinette is able to release herself from the Othering of her ethnic heritage and her English husband.