Other Ways of Looking: The Female Gaze in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea.

The concept of the gaze has been a central focus of film theory since Laura Mulvey's seminal essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", published in 1975. Although the term "gaze" also exists in postcolonial theory, there is a wealth of information on the male gaze in cinema, in comparison with very little having been written on the subject in terms of literary texts. The phenomenon of gazing in literature strikes relevant parallels with gazing in film theory, as well as with postcolonial theory. This paper will therefore examine the gaze as an objectifying force in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), by drawing upon feminist film theory as it has developed since "Visual Pleasure". Homi Bhabha's theory of the displaced colonial "I" or "eye" will also be utilised, as well as bell hooks' theory of the "oppositional gaze" in Black Looks.