Haunting Legacies: Time, Space, and Voice in the Postcolonial Gothic of Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

Abstract

Unresolved histories of slavery and empire do not simply fade away but linger as suffocating atmospheres that actively shape the present in Beloved and Wide Sargasso Sea. By transforming the Gothic ghost into a social fact, these narratives reveal how trauma permeates domestic spaces like 124 Bluestone Road and Coulibri to turn them into containers of grief rather than sanctuaries. Time itself fractures under this pressure and traps characters in non-linear loops where the past constantly intrudes upon the now through rememory and repetition. This structural violence extends to language because the power to name determines who is granted agency and who is erased. Ultimately, the divergence in outcomes for Sethe and Antoinette demonstrates that isolation cements the destructive cycle of acting out while communal witnessing offers a fragile possibility for working through the weight of history.