Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard

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Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard

In this issue, we turn our attention to a profound and Pulitzer Prize-winning collection: Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard. This guide is designed to unravel the intricate layers of Trethewey's work, providing you with a clear, detailed, and academically sound framework for understanding her exploration of history, race, and personal memory. We will delve into the critical lens of New Historicism, break down her poetic techniques, and illuminate the central themes that make this collection a cornerstone of contemporary American poetry.

About the Author: Natasha Trethewey (b. 1966)

Natasha Trethewey is a distinguished American poet and academic, whose work is deeply rooted in the complex history and personal narratives of the American South.

Key Biographical Points:

• A Complex Heritage: Born in Gulfport, Mississippi, to a Black mother and a white father, Trethewey's very existence was illegal under Mississippi's anti-miscegenation laws at the time. This personal history of being biracial in the segregated South is a foundational element that permeates all her work, forcing a constant interrogation of identity, belonging, and societal law.

• Personal Tragedy: Her mother was tragically murdered by her stepfather when Trethewey was 19. This profound loss deeply informs the themes of grief, memory, and elegy in her poetry and her later memoir, Memorial Drive.

• Poetic Accolades: Her collection Native Guard (2006) won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She served as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States from 2012 to 2014, using the position to champion the role of poetry in national discourse.

• https://giggleinsinuate.com/qmze13wz?key=8d2be7a0e3f26cd2be6a8e5469a9e563The Historian-Poet: Trethewey is often described as a poet-historian. She meticulously researches historical events, particularly those involving marginalised figures, and weaves them together with her own autobiographical material, challenging official historical records.

Critical Appreciation

Native Guard is not merely a collection of poems; it is a deliberate act of historical and personal recovery. It exemplifies a key critical approach in literary studies.

• A New Historicist Masterpiece:
  As highlighted in the research by S. Sangeetha, Native Guard is a prime text for New Historicist analysis. This theory rejects the idea that literature exists in a vacuum. Instead, it argues that we must read literary and non-literary texts (like diaries, laws, or military records) from the same period alongside each other to understand the complex power dynamics of that era. Trethewey does this masterfully by placing her mother's story and her own beside the forgotten history of the Louisiana Native Guards.

• Excavating Silenced Histories:
  The collection gives voice to the "subaltern"—a term for populations outside the structures of political power whose voices are systematically silenced. The Black soldiers of the Native Guard and Trethewey's own mother are subaltern figures whose stories traditional history has overlooked or erased. Trethewey's poetry becomes the medium through which they can finally "speak."

• The Palimpsest of the South:
  Trethewey treats the Southern landscape as a palimpsest—a surface on which original writing has been erased to make room for new text, but where traces of the old remain. Her poems reveal the hidden, often violent, histories that lie just beneath the surface of the modern American South, from the legacy of slavery to the personal trauma of racial prejudice.

Summary

Native Guard is a meticulously structured collection in three sections, creating a powerful dialogue between the personal and the political.

• Part One: The Personal Elegy
  This section is deeply autobiographical, focusing on the poet's grief following her mother's death. Poems like "Graveyard Blues" establish themes of mourning, memory, and the struggle to preserve the past against the erosion of time. It grounds the collection in a raw, emotional reality.

• Part Two: The Historical Core - The "Native Guard" Sequence
  The central sequence of the collection is a crown of sonnets titled "Native Guard." This sequence gives the book its name and its historical weight. It is written from the perspective of a fictional, yet historically-grounded, Black soldier in the Louisiana Native Guards, one of the first official Black regiments in the Union Army during the American Civil War. These poems document his duty to guard Confederate prisoners, a deeply ironic task that highlights the complex racial politics of the war.

• Part Three: The Fusion of Personal and Public History
  The final section braids the threads from the first two parts together. Trethewey reflects on her own biracial identity and her relationship with her white father alongside continued meditations on the South's racial history. The collection concludes by affirming the poet's role as a guardian of memory, much like the historical Native Guard soldiers.

Major Themes

• Memory, History, and Forgetting:
  The collection is a sustained meditation on what we choose to remember as a society and what we force ourselves to forget. Trethewey insists on remembering the uncomfortable truths—the forgotten Black soldiers, the violence against her mother, the pain of her own marginalisation.

• The Legacy of Slavery and Racism:
  Trethewey explores the enduring impact of America's original sin. This is not just historical but deeply personal, as seen in poems about her parents' illegal marriage and the everyday microaggressions she faced.

• Grief and Elegy:
  The collection is, at its heart, an elegy for Trethewey's mother. It explores the long, complex process of grieving and how memory can be both a source of pain and a tool for preservation.

• Biracial Identity and "Between-ness":
  Trethewey consistently explores her position as a person caught between two racial identities, fully accepted by neither the Black nor the white community. This state of "between-ness" mirrors the position of the Native Guard soldiers, who were fighting for a Union that still viewed them as second-class citizens.

• The Role of the Poet as Witness:
  The poet positions herself as a modern-day "native guard," a sentinel whose duty is to bear witness to the forgotten and to inscribe their stories into the historical record, ensuring they are not lost.

Character Sketch 

• The Poet's Persona:
  The voice in the autobiographical poems is one of a grieving daughter and a thoughtful observer. She is introspective, grappling with the weight of the past and her own complex identity. She is determined and resilient, using language as her tool for survival and truth-telling.

• The Native Guard Soldier:
  The fictional soldier in the central sequence is literate, observant, and deeply aware of the ironies of his position. He is a historian in his own right, keeping a diary of his experiences. He embodies dignity and duty in the face of profound injustice, representing the often-overlooked agency of Black people in American history.

• The Mother (Gwen):
  Though absent, the figure of Trethewey's mother is a powerful presence. She represents love, loss, and the specific vulnerabilities of Black womanhood. Her story is a private tragedy that echoes the public tragedies of racial violence.

• The Father (Eric Trethewey):
  The poet's white father, also a poet, represents a more complicated personal history. Their relationship explores themes of love, racial difference, and the ways in which personal connections can both bridge and highlight societal divides.

Famous Excerpt 

From the poem "Native Guard":

"I recall now the chain-link / gate, the field of horses, / their tracks like coins in the hard mud. / I know better than to believe / in memory, yet I can't help / but recall the weight of things / unknown, the history that lies / buried, even now, in the soft earth."

• Analysis: This excerpt perfectly encapsulates the collection's core themes. The "chain-link gate" suggests imprisonment and division. The "history that lies buried" is a direct reference to the South's hidden, violent past. The speaker's scepticism—"I know better than to believe in memory"—highlights the New Historicist concern with the unreliability of historical narratives. Yet, the compulsion to "recall the weight of things unknown" defines the poet's mission: to dig up and examine these buried truths, regardless of the difficulty.

Literary Techniques 

Trethewey's power as a poet lies in her masterful use of form and language.

• New Historicism

• Definition: A literary theory that argues a work of literature cannot be understood outside of the historical context in which it was created. It insists on reading literary texts alongside non-literary texts (e.g., diaries, laws, medical records) from the same period to reveal the period's competing power structures and ideologies.

• Trethewey's Use: She places her mother's story (a personal, "non-literary" history) and the diary of the Black soldier (a fictionalised historical document) alongside the official narrative of the Civil War, challenging and expanding that narrative.

• Crown of Sonnets

• Definition: A sequence of sonnets (usually seven) where the last line of each sonnet becomes the first line of the next. The final, fifteenth line is often comprised of the first lines of the preceding fourteen sonnets, creating a tightly interlocked structure.

• Trethewey's Use: The "Native Guard" sequence is a crown of sonnets. This traditional, rigid form contrasts powerfully with the revolutionary and marginalised content. It symbolises the act of preserving and structuring a history that was once chaotic and suppressed, imposing order on memory.

• Elegy

• Definition: A poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead.

• Trethewey's Use: The entire collection functions as an extended elegy, mourning not only her mother but also the forgotten soldiers and a lost, more honest version of American history.

• Persona

• Definition: A voice or character assumed by a poet or author. It is a dramatic speaker who is not the author, though they may share similarities.

• Trethewey's Use: In the "Native Guard" sequence, she adopts the persona of a Black Union soldier. This allows her to give a direct, first-person voice to a historical figure who was denied one, creating an intimate and powerful connection with the past.

• Imagery

• Definition: Visually descriptive or figurative language used to create mental pictures for the reader.

• Trethewey's Use: Her imagery is often stark and grounded in the physical world: "the field of horses," "the hard mud," "the ghost of history." She uses concrete images to make abstract concepts like memory and history tangible and visceral.

• Palimpsest

• Definition: A manuscript page that has been written on, scraped off, and used again, but where traces of the original writing remain visible. Metaphorically, it refers to a place or object where layers of history coexist.

• Trethewey's Use: The American South, particularly Mississippi, is treated as a palimpsest in her work. Her poems reveal the contemporary landscape while simultaneously showing the traces of its violent, racist past just beneath the surface.

 Important Key Points

• Native Guard is a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection that intertwines personal memoir with public history.

• It is a key text for New Historicist analysis, demonstrating how literature can challenge and expand official historical narratives.

• The collection is structured in three parts, moving from personal grief, to historical witness, and finally to a synthesis of the two.

• Central themes include memory versus forgetting, biracial identity, grief, and the legacy of racism.

• Trethewey uses traditional forms, like the crown of sonnets, to contain and give structure to marginalised and traumatic histories.

• The poet creates a powerful persona for a Black Civil War soldier, giving voice to the historically silenced.

• Understanding terms like elegy, persona, and palimpsest is crucial for analysing Trethewey's techniques.

• Ultimately, the collection positions the poet as a "native guard"—a guardian of forgotten stories and a witness against historical amnesia.

Natasha Trethewey's Native Guard is a profound and essential work for understanding the complexities of American history and identity. It proves that poetry is not an escape from the world, but a powerful tool for engaging with it more deeply and truthfully. We hope this guide serves as a valuable companion on your journey through this remarkable collection.

Natasha Trethewey, Native Guard analysis, Pulitzer Prize poetry, New Historicism, American Civil War poetry, African American literature, elegy, crown of sonnets, biracial identity, memory and history, Poet Laureate, poetry analysis, Cambridge English literature guide, literary techniques.

Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea analysis, postcolonial literature, feminist criticism, Jane Eyre prequel, Bertha Mason, symbolism in literature, patriarchy, Creole identity, displacement, the Other, madwoman in the attic, Cambridge English literature guide, character analysis, themes.

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Welcome, scholars and literature enthusiasts, to the inaugural issue of The Literary Lens. This guide is designed to provide you with a clear, detailed, and academically rigorous breakdown of Jean Rhys's seminal work, Wide Sargasso Sea. We will navigate its complex themes, characters, and literary techniques, equipping you with the knowledge to excel in your essays, seminars, and examinations. Our analysis synthesises key critical perspectives, including postcolonial theory, feminist critique, and symbolic analysis, to offer a holistic understanding of this groundbreaking novel.

About the Author: Jean Rhys (1890-1979)

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Jean Rhys was a mid-twentieth-century novelist born in Roseau, Dominica, a Caribbean island that was then a British colony. Her personal history is crucial to understanding her work.

• Key Biographical Points:

• White Creole Heritage: Rhys was born into the planter class, a community of white descendants of European colonisers. This positioned her in a complex, often ambiguous space: she was neither fully accepted by the British colonial establishment nor by the Black Caribbean community. This experience of marginalisation directly fuels the central conflict in Wide Sargasso Sea.

• Life in England: She moved to England at the age of 16 and struggled with poverty, unstable relationships, and a sense of profound displacement. This personal experience of alienation and being an "outsider" in the metropolitan centre mirrors the plight of her protagonist, Antoinette.

• A Voice for the Silenced: After early literary success in the 1920s and 30s, Rhys fell into obscurity for nearly three decades. Wide Sargasso Sea, published in 1966, was her triumphant comeback. The novel is her most famous work, celebrated for giving a voice to a character famously silenced in Western literature: Bertha Mason, the "madwoman in the attic" from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.

Critical Appreciation

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Wide Sargasso Sea is not merely a prequel to Jane Eyre; it is a powerful postcolonial and feminist rewriting of a classic text. Rhys shifts the narrative perspective from the English centre to the Caribbean periphery.

• 'Writing Back' to the Empire:
  The novel is a prime example of what postcolonial theorists Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin call "writing back." This is the process where authors from formerly colonised nations challenge and subvert the narratives imposed by the colonial power. Rhys "writes back" to Brontë by telling the story from the perspective of the Creole woman, revealing the colonial prejudices and patriarchal oppression that led to her tragic fate.

• Challenging 'Madness':
  Rhys reframes Bertha's "madness" not as an inherent genetic flaw, but as a social and psychological consequence of being dispossessed, renamed, and imprisoned—both physically in an attic and culturally in an English identity that is not her own.

• A Tragedy of Two Victims:
  While the novel powerfully centres Antoinette's suffering, a nuanced reading, as highlighted in the research by Inna Malissa Che Jamal et al., also encourages us to see Rochester as a victim of the oppressive patriarchal system. As a younger son with no inheritance, he is forced into a mercenary marriage, which fuels his own resentment and cruelty.

Plot Summary

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The novel is divided into three distinct sections, each with a different narrative voice.

• Part One: Antoinette's Childhood in Jamaica

• Narrator: Antoinette Cosway.

• Summary: This section depicts Antoinette's impoverished and isolated childhood after the Emancipation Act of 1833. Her family, former slave owners, are now ostracised by both the Black Jamaican community, who call them "white cockroaches," and the wealthy English colonisers. Key events include the burning of her family estate, Coulibri, the death of her disabled brother Pierre, and the subsequent descent into madness of her mother, Annette. This section establishes the root of Antoinette's profound sense of dislocation and identity crisis.

• Part Two: A Disastrous Marriage in Dominica

• Narrator: An unnamed English gentleman (we know him as Mr. Rochester).

• Summary: Rochester arrives in the Caribbean and, motivated by her dowry, marries Antoinette. Initially enchanted by the lush landscape and his new wife, he quickly becomes overwhelmed by the alien environment. His growing paranoia is fed by a malicious letter from Daniel Cosway, a man claiming to be Antoinette's mixed-race half-brother, who alleges madness runs in her family. Rochester withdraws, renames Antoinette "Bertha," and consummates his relationship with a servant, Amélie, to torment his wife.

• Part Three: Imprisonment in England

• Narrator: Antoinette/Bertha.

• Summary: The narrative shifts back to Antoinette, now imprisoned in the attic of Thornfield Hall in England. Disoriented, cold, and stripped of her identity, she exists in a ghost-like state. The section culminates in her famous, dream-prophesied act: taking the keys from her guard, Grace Poole, and setting fire to Thornfield, an act of defiant self-liberation, even if it means her own death.

Major Themes

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• Displacement and Alienation:
  This is the novel's central theme. As defined in the research, displacement refers to the feeling of being forced from one's home and feeling like an outsider in a new environment.

• Antoinette is displaced in her own homeland and later in England.

• Rochester feels alienated and threatened by the Caribbean landscape and culture, leading to a hostile withdrawal. He is also displaced from his family structure as a disregarded younger son.

• Racial Identity and the 'Other':

• The 'Other': A key postcolonial term for a person or group defined as foreign, strange, or outside the dominant social norm. The coloniser often constructs the native as the 'Other' to justify domination.

• The White Creole: Antoinette occupies a tragic middle ground. She is "othered" by the Black community for her white ancestry and by the English for being too closely associated with the Caribbean. She belongs nowhere.

• Patriarchal Oppression:

• Patriarchy: A social system structured around male authority and the supremacy of the father. In this system, women and younger sons often have limited legal and financial autonomy.

• Manifestations: Rochester's control over Antoinette is the clearest example. He renames her, controls her money, dismisses her voice, and ultimately imprisons her. However, as Li Luo's symbolic reading notes, Rochester is also a victim of this system, pressured by his father to secure a fortune.

• Madness and Power:
  Antoinette's "madness" is presented not as a medical condition but as the logical outcome of being systematically oppressed, silenced, and having her identity erased. It is a form of social and psychological disintegration.

• The Search for Identity:
  Antoinette's entire life is a struggle to answer the question, "Who am I?" This search is frustrated at every turn by the conflicting cultural forces and people who seek to define her.

Character Sketch

• Antoinette Cosway (Bertha Mason):

• The Tragic Heroine: A sensitive, lonely woman defined by her mixed heritage. She feels a deep connection to the Caribbean landscape, which Rochester hates. Her identity is fragile, and its systematic destruction by her husband leads to her tragic end. She evolves from a hopeful girl into a vengeful spirit, reclaiming agency through her final, fiery act.

• Rochester (The Unnamed Husband):

• The Complex Antagonist: He is not a simple villain. He is a product of English patriarchy and colonialism—entitled, suspicious, and ultimately cruel. However, he is also a young man displaced in a foreign culture, manipulated by his father, and psychologically unequipped to understand his wife or his environment. His actions are driven by fear, prejudice, and a desperate need for control.

• Christophine:

• The Voice of Resistance: An obeah woman (practitioner of Afro-Caribbean folk magic) from Martinique, given to Antoinette's mother as a wedding gift. She is one of the few characters with unwavering moral clarity and agency. She is fiercely loyal to Antoinette, criticises Rochester to his face, and represents a culture and power system that the English cannot comprehend or control. She symbolises resistance against colonial and patriarchal domination.

• Annette Cosway (Antoinette's Mother):

• A Foreshadowing of Tragedy: Beautiful and proud, Annette is broken by the death of her son and her rejection by society. Her descent into madness and abusive confinement prefigures her daughter's fate, highlighting the cyclical nature of oppression for Creole women.

Famous Excerpt 

From Part Three, Antoinette's narration in Thornfield Hall:

"There is no looking-glass here and I don't know what I am like now. I remember watching myself brush my hair and how my eyes looked back at me. The girl I saw was myself yet not quite myself. Long ago when I was a child and very lonely I tried to kiss her. But the glass was between us—hard, cold and misted over with my breath. Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?"

• Analysis: This passage is profoundly symbolic. The absence of a mirror signifies Rochester's complete erasure of Antoinette's identity. She can no longer see herself, literally or metaphorically. The memory of the "cold glass" separating her from her reflection as a child illustrates her lifelong alienation from her own self. The final questions—"What am I doing in this place and who am I?"—epitomise the complete psychological destruction wrought by her displacement and imprisonment.

Literary Techniques

Rhys's genius lies in her use of sophisticated literary techniques to convey her themes.

• Symbolism

• Definition: The use of symbols—objects, figures, colours, or places—to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

• Rhys's Use:

• The Sargasso Sea: A sea without shores, filled with tangled seaweed that can trap ships. It symbolises Antoinette's trapped, rootless existence between two cultures (Europe and the Caribbean), unable to find a safe harbour. (Li Luo)

• Fire: Represents both destructive hatred (the burning of Coulibri) and purifying rebellion (the burning of Thornfield). It is Antoinette's only means of agency and self-assertion.

• Mirrors and Reflection: Symbolise identity and self-knowledge. The broken and absent mirrors chart the fragmentation and eventual erasure of Antoinette's sense of self.

• Thornfield Hall: The ultimate symbol of English patriarchy—a cold, imprisoning structure that must be destroyed.

• Multiple Narrators

• Definition: A narrative structure that switches between different character perspectives.

• Rhys's Use: By giving us Part One from Antoinette and Part Two from Rochester, Rhys creates a complex, multi-voiced narrative. This technique forces the reader to see both sides of the colonial and gender conflict, revealing the subjectivity of truth and the impossibility of a single, authoritative story.

• Intertextuality

• Definition: The relationship between texts, especially when one text shapes the meaning of another.

• Rhys's Use: The entire novel is in dialogue with Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Rhys uses the reader's prior knowledge of Bertha's fate to create dramatic irony and to subvert the original text, challenging its colonial and patriarchal assumptions.

• Postcolonial Theory

• Definition: A critical framework that analyses the cultural, political, and psychological legacy of colonialism and imperialism.

• Key Concepts in the Novel:

• The 'Other': As discussed in the themes.

• Hybridity: The state of being of mixed origin. Antoinette's Creole identity is a hybrid one, which causes her crisis.

• Subaltern: A term, notably used by theorist Gayatri Spivak, referring to populations that are socially, politically, and geographically outside the hegemonic power structure. Antoinette is a subaltern figure whose voice is silenced in the original text; Rhys's novel is an attempt to let her "speak."

• Patriarchy

• Definition: A social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, and control of property.

• Manifestation in the Novel: The legal system that gives Rochester control of Antoinette's wealth, the social conventions that allow him to imprison her, and the familial pressure he himself is under from his father.

• Creole

• Definition: In the West Indian context, this term can be complex. It often refers to a person of mixed European and Black descent. However, it can also refer to a white person descended from European settlers born in the colony. Antoinette is a white Creole, which places her in a socially ambiguous position.

Important Key Points 

Wide Sargasso Sea is a postcolonial and feminist prequel to Jane Eyre that gives a voice to Brontë's silenced "madwoman in the attic."

• The novel explores profound themes of displacement, racial identity, patriarchal oppression, and madness as a social construct.

• Jean Rhys's own background as a white Creole from Dominica provides an authentic and powerful perspective on the central conflicts.

• Key literary techniques include rich symbolism (the Sargasso Sea, fire, mirrors), the use of multiple narrators, and sophisticated intertextuality.

• A critical understanding of terms like 'the Other,' 'hybridity,' 'patriarchy,' and 'the subaltern' is essential for a deep analysis of the text.

• Characters are complex: Antoinette is a tragic figure seeking identity; Rochester is both a victimiser and a victim; Christophine is a powerful symbol of resistance.

Wide Sargasso Sea remains a cornerstone of postcolonial and feminist literature. Its exploration of identity, power, and the destructive legacy of colonialism continues to resonate powerfully with readers today. We hope this guide provides a solid foundation for your own exploration and analysis of this magnificent and tragic novel.

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea analysis, postcolonial literature, feminist criticism, Jane Eyre prequel, Bertha Mason, symbolism in literature, patriarchy, Creole identity, displacement, the Other, madwoman in the attic, Cambridge English literature guide, character analysis, themes.