“Mimic woman” or “Abject Subject”? Crisscrossing Glances of Postcolonial and Psychoanalytic Theories in Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

Abstract

This study intends to examine the intersections of Postcolonilism and Psychoanalysis in Rhys's literary oeuvre, Wide Sargasso Sea. In the light of Kristeva's Abjection theory, the paper challenges Bhabha's notions of hybridity, mimicry and ambivalence as he accentuates them as a form of resistance against White hegemony. Notwithstanding Bhabha's arguments, the novel also indicates that the hybrid woman's mimicry of whiteness subjects her to an ambivalent space, which not only make her incapable of distorting the master's hegemony, it dooms her to get lost in a constant psychotic delirium and abjection.