THE GENEALOGY OF THE MONSTER : From Bertha Mason to the Chudail Patriarchal Monstrosity-Making, Feminist Rage, and the Politics of Gendered Violence in Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and Bulbbul (2020)

THE GENEALOGY OF THE MONSTER

From Bertha Mason to the Chudail

Patriarchal Monstrosity-Making, Feminist Rage, and the Politics of Gendered Violence in Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and Bulbbul (2020)

Academic Details

Detail	Information
Presented by	Nidhi R. Pandya
Roll No. / Sem / Batch	19 / Semester 3 / 2025-27
Paper	Paper 203: The Postcolonial Studies (Paper Code 22408)
Unit	Unit 3: Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea
Submitted to	Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Date	October 14th, 2026 (Presentation Season 3, Afternoon Session)

Who decides who is a monster? In Jane Eyre (1847), a woman is locked in an attic and called mad. In Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), she gets a name, a voice and a story. In Bulbbul (2020), a woman in colonial Bengal is called a chudail (witch) and decides to answer back. Three texts, two centuries, two continents, one pattern. This blog follows that pattern step by step, in simple points that are easy to remember.

Quick Snapshot

Core idea: The female monster is never natural. She is made by patriarchy and empire to silence, confine or destroy women who refuse to obey.

Texts: Jane Eyre (Brontë, 1847), Wide Sargasso Sea (Rhys, 1966), Bulbbul (Anvitaa Dutt, Netflix, 2020).

Big reversal: Rhys and Dutt take the monster label and turn it into voice, rage and justice.

1. Research Question and Hypothesis

Research Question

“How do Wide Sargasso Sea and Bulbbul expose and reverse the patriarchal technology of monstrosity-making that begins with Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre, and what political work does the reclaimed female monster perform across colonial and postcolonial contexts?”

Hypothesis

The three texts show how nonconforming women are turned into monsters so that their agency, sexuality and voice can be controlled. Rhys and Dutt reverse this process. They reclaim monstrosity as a site of feminist resistance, spatial rebellion and retaliatory justice. This also shows that gendered and colonial oppression have a long, continuous history.

2. Introduction and Historical-Critical Context

Spivak argues that nineteenth-century British literature cannot be read without remembering imperialism, which shaped how England imagined itself. Jane Eyre is a key example. Behind the story of an independent English heroine stands Bertha Mason, a Creole woman from the Caribbean who is locked away and described as animal-like and mad.

Jean Rhys writes back. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Bertha begins as Antoinette Cosway, a young Creole woman. Her husband, Rochester, renames her “Bertha”, which is the first act of erasing her. Rhys also links Antoinette’s fire at Thornfield with the fire that the ex-slaves set at her family’s estate, so colonial and patriarchal oppression meet in one image (Erwin 143).

Bulbbul carries the same logic to nineteenth-century Bengal. Directed by Anvitaa Dutt and produced by Anushka Sharma, it shows a child bride who is punished, then feared as a chudail. In the film, rebellious women are labelled witches and removed through what scholars call motivated witch-hunting.

In one line: Bertha, Antoinette and Bulbbul are not three separate women. They are three stages of one story.

3. Reading the Monster: The Theory Toolkit

Four thinkers give us the tools to read the monster. Learn this table, because it is the base of the whole argument.

Thinker	Key Text	Core Idea	How We Use It
Barbara Creed	The Monstrous-Feminine (1993)	Horror shows the female body as abject and a threat to the patriarchal order. The witch is a key example.	Explains why the chudail is feared.
Gilbert and Gubar	The Madwoman in the Attic (1979)	The madwoman is the woman writer’s double, carrying her anxiety and rage.	Bertha is the prototype that Rhys and Dutt inherit and change.
Judith Butler	Gender Trouble (1990)	Gender norms are performed, not natural. Women who refuse the script expose this and are punished.	Explains why women who refuse the obedient wife or mother role are made monstrous.
Claire Johnston	“The Subject of Feminist Film Theory/Practice”	Feminist film must look at the social audience and treat recognition and identification as political strategies.	Shows that films like Bulbbul act on real gender relations.

“the author’s double, an image of her own anxiety and rage” (Gilbert and Gubar, on the madwoman)

In one line: Creed explains the fear, Gilbert and Gubar the prototype, Butler the punishment, Johnston the audience.

4. Bertha Mason and the Imperial Production of Monstrosity

• Space first: Spivak notes that even Jane’s retreat to the window-seat in the opening chapter shows how domestic space is written and controlled. The same logic later imprisons Bertha (Spivak 246).
• Thornfield as archive: Hope reads Thornfield Hall as an “imperial archive” where buildings and texts shape each other (Hope 52).
• Gothic needs a monster: Khair says the Gothic needs a secret or transgression to break into a normal world (Khair 119). Bertha is that eruption.
• Her rage becomes monstrosity: In the Gilbert and Gubar model, the confined woman’s anger is projected as madness so that the “sane” heroine can emerge.
• The native female is excluded: Spivak shows that the English heroine is built through “childbearing and soul making”, while the colonial woman is pushed outside (Spivak 244).
• Result: Bertha’s body carries both patriarchal and imperial anxiety.

In one line: Bertha is locked up so that Jane can be free, and that freedom is built on someone else’s silence.

5. Spivak, Worlding, and the Exclusion of the Native Female

Spivak warns that feminist criticism can repeat the habits of imperialism when it only admires women writers of Europe and Anglo-America (Spivak 243). In other words, a feminism that forgets empire becomes part of empire.

• Feminist individualism needs a particular kind of subject, one who is shaped not only as an individual but as an individualist. The native female has no share in this norm (Spivak 245).
• Khair adds that colonial accounts reduced the non-European other to a negative image of the European self, or a childlike version of it (Khair 120).
• Worlding: Jane Eyre quietly “worlds” the Third World, meaning it draws it as a space that exists only to serve the European story. Rhys forces the reader to see this.

“childbearing and soul making” (Spivak 244)

In one line: The genealogy of the monster is also a genealogy of feminist complicity that later texts must undo.

6. Antoinette’s Voice and the Politics of Narrative Reclamation

• Writing from the edge: Poursanati and Pooyandeh say Rhys wrote from her own liminal position in the colonial order. They call the novel a Subaltern Gothic that dismantles the colonial narrative through space and voice.
• The risky choice: Erwin argues that Rhys takes the risk of writing from “the wrong side”. She even links Antoinette’s burning of Thornfield with the ex-slaves who burned her family’s estate (Erwin 143).
• Christophine and obeah: Christophine’s obeah is suggested as a force that guides the final outcome. Her words to Antoinette are: “You choose what you give, eh? Then you choose.”
• First-person power: By giving Antoinette the narration, Rhys turns the silenced monster of Jane Eyre into a speaking subject of feminist and postcolonial rage.

In one line: Reclaiming voice is the first major reversal in the genealogy of the monster.

7. Looking-Glass Identity and Racial-Class Displacement

Antoinette belongs fully to neither the white nor the black world. Erwin notes that her language keeps suggesting an “interchangeability of racial positions”, seen in phrases like “white n*****” and “black Englishman” (Erwin 144).

• Tia’s reply: Tia says that old-time white people are now no better than “white n*****”, and that a black person is better than that. This exposes how racial hierarchy depends on class and money.
• The burning house: Antoinette runs to Tia hoping to live with her and be like her, but Tia throws a jagged stone at her.
• Both doors close: The violence shuts off both the white and the black positions and leaves Antoinette in a liminal non-place.
• Hope’s reading: Such moments are part of the “decomposition” of the imperial archive that Wide Sargasso Sea carries out on Jane Eyre (Hope 52).

“It was as if I saw myself. Like in a looking-glass.” (Antoinette, Wide Sargasso Sea)

In one line: The looking-glass is the symbol of a self that colonial race and class violence both creates and destroys.

8. Haunted Landscapes, Confined Bodies, and the Politics of Space

• Poursanati and Pooyandeh argue that Rhys turns both the beautiful but frightening Caribbean landscape and the oppressive English manor into charged sites where the silenced female voice finally erupts.
• Confinement in Thornfield is re-read as a form of spatial rebellion against confinement itself.
• The burning of the manor is read as a “subaltern speech act”, a way of speaking when no one will listen.
• Because buildings and texts “frame and inhabit each other” (Hope 52), burning Thornfield also breaks down the imperial textual archive.
• Bridge to Bulbbul: This spatial politics returns in the village, haveli and forest of the film.

In one line: Space is not just a setting. It is a weapon of control and a tool of resistance.

9. Postcolonial Gothic and the Reversal of the Scream

Khair defines the postcolonial moment as a new critical awareness in which speech must take colonial discourse into account, and not simply copy or oppose it (Khair 118).

• Imperial Gothic used colonial fears mostly to contain them. Postcolonial Gothic has no wish to calm the fears of European or Eurocentric readers.
• The classic Gothic moment is the self screaming at the sight of the other. The postcolonial moment begins when the non-European other confronts the European self (Khair 119).
• Wide Sargasso Sea makes the formerly monstrous other the source of narrative and moral authority.
• Bulbbul continues the same reversal inside an Indian patriarchal and colonial setting.

“when the self screams at the sight of the other” (Khair 119)

In one line: The genealogy of the monster is also the story of the redirected Gothic scream.

10. From Attic to Village: The Persistent Logic of Monstrosity-Making

The same logic that calls Bertha “mad” calls Bulbbul chudail. In both cases a woman who does not fit the rules is turned into a supernatural or pathological threat.

Mechanism	Bertha / Antoinette	Bulbbul	How the Text Reverses It
Confinement	Locked in the attic at Thornfield	Confined in the haveli, then in the forest as spectre	Space becomes a site of rebellion and haunting
Labelling	Called mad, animal-like, “Bertha”	Called chudail / witch	Label is reclaimed as power
Racial / Colonial coding	Creole otherness used to justify exclusion	Colonial modernity + indigenous patriarchy	Double violence is exposed
Voice	Silenced; spoken about by others	Story told through her actions and the village	Monster becomes speaking / acting subject
Final act	Fire at Thornfield read as madness	Retaliatory justice	Violence turned into political speech

11–14. Key Continuations: Witch-Hunting, Feminist Horror & Posthuman Becoming

Sharma and Tripathi show that colonial “civilizing” missions and indigenous patriarchy worked together to police women’s bodies and sexuality. The film stages this as double violence.

Karmakar and Pal place Bulbbul in the tradition of feminist horror that turns repression into revenge and retaliation. Old horror punished the woman; feminist horror lets her strike back.

Khobra and Gaur read the film through Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman feminism as a form of “wanting out” — the desire to escape patriarchal exclusion by becoming-witch. The witch moves from object of horror to subject of feminist world-building.

In one line: Old horror punished the woman. Feminist horror lets her strike back. The posthuman turn is the most radical modern extension of the genealogy that began with Bertha Mason.

15. The Three Women Side by Side

Feature	Bertha (Jane Eyre, 1847)	Antoinette (Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966)	Bulbbul (Bulbbul, 2020)
Label	Mad, animal-like	Renamed “Bertha”, called mad	Chudail, witch
Setting	English manor, Thornfield Hall	Jamaica and then Thornfield	Nineteenth-century Bengal
Voice	Silenced, seen from outside	First-person narrator	Acts and haunts; the village tells her story
Space	Attic	Caribbean landscape and attic, both charged	Haveli, village and forest
Response to violence	Fire set at the end, read by others as madness	Fire as a “subaltern speech act”	Retaliatory justice
Political work	Shows the excluded colonial woman	Reclaims voice and exposes empire	Reclaims the witch label and exposes double violence

16. Hypothesis Justification

The evidence supports the hypothesis. Spivak, Khair, Erwin, Hope, Poursanati and Pooyandeh, Sharma and Tripathi, Karmakar and Pal, and Khobra and Gaur show the political meaning of the female monster. Creed, Gilbert and Gubar, Butler and Johnston explain its inner mechanisms and social effects. Rhys and Dutt both turn monstrosity into feminist rage, spatial rebellion and retaliatory justice. So the genealogy of the female monster is both a literary history and a political diagnosis.

17. Lessons for Today

• Modern witch-hunting, online harassment and labelling women as “difficult” follow the same logic that made Bertha and the chudail.
• Feminist media and speculative genres help reclaim the monster instead of running from her.
• Literal and metaphorical confinement of women is still a live political issue.
• Following Johnston, texts and films act on real gender relations, not only on literary history.
• Posthuman and speculative feminist imaginations give us ways of “wanting out” of oppressive norms.

In one line: The genealogy ends not in the past but in the urgent present.

18. Conclusion

The genealogy of the monster, from Bertha Mason to the chudail, shows how patriarchy controls female agency. Wide Sargasso Sea and Bulbbul reclaim monstrosity as resistance and retaliation. Through postcolonial Gothic and feminist film theory, the monster changes from a silenced victim into a symbol of political agency. The journey moves from imperial oppression to feminist becoming.

Final Thought

The monster is not born, but made, by empire, by patriarchy, and by the fear of women who refuse to be silent.

19. Learning Outcomes

• I understand how patriarchal systems in colonial and postcolonial contexts manufacture the female monster.
• I can trace the line from Bertha Mason to Antoinette Cosway to the chudail in Bulbbul.
• I can apply Creed’s monstrous-feminine, Gilbert and Gubar’s madwoman, and Butler’s gender performativity to literary and film texts.
• I can name the mechanisms of monstrosity-making: confinement, racialisation, labelling as mad or witch, and spatial control.
• I can show how Rhys and Dutt reverse these mechanisms into feminist rage and resistance.
• I can join close reading with postcolonial, feminist and film-theory scholarship.
• I can explain why this genealogy still matters today.

20. Limitations and Further Scope for Research

Limitations

• The study focuses on only three texts: Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea and Bulbbul.
• It relies mainly on selected scholarly articles and does not cover the wider archive of colonial Gothic, postcolonial rewriting or Indian feminist horror.
• The analysis is mostly textual and discursive.
• It has no audience-reception data, production histories or regional case studies of witch-hunting beyond what Sharma and Tripathi cover.

Further Scope

• Place Bulbbul beside Stree, Pari and Chhorii to map a wider body of Indian feminist horror.
• Study more colonial and Indigenous archives on witch-hunting in Bengal and nearby regions.
• Build a deeper dialogue between posthuman feminism and Subaltern Studies.
• Explore the chudail as a form of subaltern speech that goes beyond both colonial and patriarchal frames.
• Use reception studies and ethnography to see how Indian audiences read the reclaimed witch.

Presentation Video

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Keywords to Remember

Keyword	One-Line Meaning
Monstrosity-making	The patriarchal process of labelling nonconforming women as monsters to control them
Monstrous-feminine (Creed)	The female body shown as abject and threatening in horror
Madwoman (Gilbert and Gubar)	The confined woman who carries the author’s anxiety and rage
Gender performativity (Butler)	Gender is repeated action, so breaking the script invites punishment
Worlding (Spivak)	Imperial texts draw the colonial world as a backdrop for European stories
Subaltern Gothic	A Gothic that uses space and voice to dismantle the colonial narrative
Imperial archive (Hope)	Buildings and texts that store and shape imperial ideas
Redirected scream (Khair)	The other no longer screams in fear; she confronts the self
Double violence	Colonial modernity and Indigenous patriarchy both policing women
Wanting out (Braidotti)	The desire to escape patriarchal exclusion

Possible Exam Questions

• Explain how Wide Sargasso Sea reverses the monster figure of Jane Eyre.
• How does Spivak’s idea of worlding help us read Bertha Mason?
• Discuss the chudail in Bulbbul as the inheritor of Bertha’s position.
• What is meant by double violence in the context of colonial India and witch-hunting?
• Show how space becomes a tool of resistance in Wide Sargasso Sea and Bulbbul.
• Write a note on postcolonial Gothic and the reversal of the scream.

Works Cited

• Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Smith, Elder and Co., 1847.
• Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990.
• Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. Routledge, 1993.
• Dutt, Anvitaa, director. Bulbbul. Netflix, 24 June 2020, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12393526/.
• Erwin, Lee. “‘Like in a Looking-Glass’: History and Narrative in Wide Sargasso Sea.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 22, no. 2, 1989, pp. 143–58. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1345800.
• Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. Yale UP, 1979.
• Hope, Trevor. “Revisiting the Imperial Archive: Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, and the Decomposition of Englishness.” College Literature, vol. 39, no. 1, 2012, pp. 51–73. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/462449.
• Johnston, Claire. “The Subject of Feminist Film Theory/Practice.” https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/21.2.27.
• Karmakar, Goutam, and Payel Pal. “Framing the Feminist Horror: Repression, Revenge, and Retaliation in Stree (2018) and Bulbbul (2020).” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 41, no. 2, 2024, pp. 196–224, https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2022.2105623.
• Khair, Tabish. “Gothic and the Postcolonial Moment.” https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108624268.007.
• Khobra, Ujjwal, and Rashmi Gaur. “It’s Witchy to Want Out! Posthuman Feminist Becoming and Speculative Liminality in Anvitaa Dutt’s Bulbbul.” Feminist Media Studies, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2026.2633541.
• Poursanati, Susan, and Parisa Pooyandeh. “Subaltern Gothic: ‘Space’, ‘Place’, and Female Voice in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.” Cogent Arts & Humanities, vol. 13, no. 1, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2026.2620833.
• Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. 1966.
• Sharma, Navin, and Priyanka Tripathi. “Colonial Civilizing Mission, Indigenous Resistance, and Witch-Hunting in Anvita Dutt’s Bulbbul (2020).” AlterNative, vol. 19, no. 2, 2023, pp. 398–406, https://doi.org/10.1177/11771801231170270.
• Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 1, 1985, pp. 243–61. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1343469.