A Fragmented Self: Psychological Dissociation and Trauma in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea through Pierre Janet’s Dissociation Theory
Abstract
This study examines the psychological disintegration of Antoinette Cosway in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), with the specific objective of identifying the interior psychological mechanism by which colonial dispossession, patriarchal violence, and unresolved childhood trauma converge to produce identity fragmentation, a dimension left comparatively unexplored by existing postcolonial and feminist scholarship. Data were collected exclusively from the primary literary text, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (André Deutsch, 1966 first edition). For close readings, four passages of the novel were chosen that reveal the process of dissociative rupture through the language and narrative structure of the text: Antoinette's description of her love for her mother, Annette; her reaction to the burning of the Coulibri Estate; her addressing Rochester with questions concerning her own self; and her repeated fire dream ending with Thornfield. The choice of the passages was guided by the formal markers of dissociative process in the text, such as Antoinette's fragmented perception, thoughts and memories, her confusion between different aspects of life, etc. The theoretical background is provided by Pierre Janet's Dissociation Theory that is represented by L'Automatisme Psychologique (1889) and developed by modern trauma theorists such as van der Kolk (2014), Brewin (2019), Spiegel et al. (2013), Lyssenko et al. (2018). The analysis demonstrates that the dissociation in Antoinette involves four steps in which the trauma becomes progressively worse: childhood traumas in terms of relationships and environment create the idées fixes; the liminal position in terms of culture of being a Creole woman means that the external confirmation of the identity does not take place; the naming by Rochester "Bertha" marks the end of dissociation between the past self and the new self; finally, the collapse at Thornfield marks the complete inability to synthesize and integrate the self, achieved through shifting to the third person by Rhys. In this regard, this study brings to the literature on Wide Sargasso Sea a psychologically sound framework of analysis. The use of the Janetian approach is not meant to replace postcolonial and feminist theories of criticism of the book; rather, the idea here is that colonial and patriarchal oppression become the exact triggers of the dissociative process.
Keywords: Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, Pierre Janet, dissociation, trauma, fragmented identity, postcolonial literature.
