Tropicophobia and the ambivalence of imperial masculinity in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea
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Abstract
This article reconsiders Edward Rochester in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea by examining his tropicophobia, a historically and psychologically conditioned fear of and aversion toward the Caribbean tropics, as a symptom of imperial masculinity. While existing scholarship has recognized Edward’s psychological complexity, it has not yet identified the specific affective and cognitive structure through which this instability manifests. By combining close reading with Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection, this article argues that Edward is not only repelled by, but also unconsciously drawn toward, the Caribbean world he attempts to cast out. This ambivalent structure—simultaneously repulsive and attractive—reveals that imperial masculinity fails to secure the coherent masculine self it demands. In doing so, the article offers a new account of Edward as both an agent of empire and a subject psychologically colonized by it, repositioning him within the novel’s postcolonial and feminist field and exposing the constitutive instability of the colonial-patriarchal order from within.
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