Writing is the medium through which the suppressed voice of the female finds release. This article is an attempt at studying the intertextual relationship between Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea. An introductory analysis of the term `Intertextuality' has been given in the article. According to the theory of intertextuality, each text is the outcome of a previous utterance and a previous text already written. The much neglected Bertha in Jane Eyre has been given a new identity, new shape and a new context in Wide Sargasso Sea. Rhys has recreated, represented and retold the story of Bertha in her novel, which looks into the inner consciousness of the female psyche and explores the position of a female in the power structure created by the male world. The novel looks at the patriarchal structure in which a female is oppressed and treated as a commodity, which leads her towards madness.

In recent critical vocabulary, `Intertextuality' is a word frequently used and misused. Many literary theorists have defined the word variedly. According to the theory of intertextuality, originality is no longer possible. Whether it is a play or any artistic creation, the work is closely related to already existent work. Any text, literary or non-literary, lacks independent meaning of its own.

The act of reading, theorists claim, plunges us into a network of textual relations. To interpret a text, to discover its meaning, or meaning is to trace those relationships. Reading thus becomes the process of moving texts. Meaning becomes something which exists between a text and all the other texts to which it refers and relates, moving out from the interdependent text into a network of textual relations. The text becomes intertext (Allen, 2000, p. 1).

'Intertextuality' is a literary term with new paradigmatic, post-structuralistic and semiotic features. It is an artistic, linguistic and literary phenomenon. The fundamental concept of intertextuality is that no text is unique in itself and is not original. It is made of inevitable quotations and citations altogether from other already existent texts. While discussing the term, intertextuality, one can recall a well-known essay by T S Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent". Here, Eliot says: No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artist. You cannot value him alone (Eliot, 1962, p. 294).

Bertha, Traditional Mad Woman, Attic versus Bertha, Intertextual Reading, Wide Sargasso Sea, Female psyche, Critical vocabulary, Network of textual relations, Paradigmatic features, Post-structuralistic features, Intertextuality, Innumerable cultures, Intertextual anamnesis.