The Looking-Glass of the "Third Space"

Ambivalence, caught somewhere between the pedagogical and the performative aspects of national identity, is a concept that is transferrable to other aspects of identity not necessarily bound up within nationalism. Bhabha's discussion of metaphor and metonymy appropriately winds its way into the liminalities of language, as language and discourse being contingent on metaphor and metonymy in identity formation. The ambivalent space between the pedagogical aspects of language (perhaps direct, literal translation?) and the performative aspects of translation (perhaps what is lost or destroyed in the imperfect "breaching" of language barriers) uses similar concepts within the context of nationalism.

In this conceptual context, it becomes clear that Antionette is a victim of cultural cross-pollination that has thrust her in an ambivalent state of being. A white Creole, she has assimilated to a colonial lifestyle that mimics British conventions-- "that is almost, but not quite," British-- and is used to both a position of white privelege and also a deep affinity for a place so "wild and lonely" as "Rochester" puts it. It is no wonder that, without a looking glass in her attic asylum in what we can only assume is England, she "doesn't know what [she] is like now" (Rhys 107). The stark desolation of beautiful island life is eradicated as well as the priveleged, psuedo-plantation lifestyle, and has been displaced by a dark, dank attic in which time no longer matters. It is no accident that this dual existence, though crumbling from the beginning of Rhys' novella, was nonetheless a tangible affirmation of a dual identity. This identity eradicated, Antionette, like Christophine, doesn't believe they are in England because she cannot see it, just as Christophine never had. Neither Antionette nor Christophine had any part of their identity vested in England and pure Englishness; rather, their identities, polarized by skin color, were nonetheless closely centered by the ambivalent hybridization of culture. They closely circle a center of identity which, in the end, is wrested from Antoinette and is replaced with "the cardboard house" of England.

What I'm wondering, however, is what fate Christophine experiences. The white presence she is subserviently tied to for the majority of her life now gone, she disappears from the story as if she only exists as the Other within white subjectivity and narrative. What is her fate to be as she retires to her shanty, or hut? I still hold firm to my belief that Rhys wished to write exclusively from a white subjectivity and therefore is not ignoring/ doing a disservice to the oppressed and subjugated blacks of post-colonial times.