Jean Rhys writes Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre (1847) in order to give life to Bertha Mason, a Jamaican creole who is locked in the attic as a madwoman by her English husband, Rochester. Rhys thinks that Bertha is completely undermined and negated in Bronte’s novel. Bronte’s silences over Bertha’s identity and history enforce Rhys to break the unspoken and deliberately neglected white creole’s identity; and give her a voice that humanizes this supposedly inferior creole, and validates her quest for identity and belonging while also challenging Western hegemonic expectations and conditions. Rhys, in an interview with Hannah Carter, reveals:
The mad wife in Jane Eyre has always interested me. I was convinced that Charlotte Bronte must have had something against the West Indies and I was angry about it. Otherwise, why did she take a West Indian for that horrible lunatic, for that really dreadful creature? I hadn’t really formulated the idea of vindicating the madwoman in the novel, but when I was rediscovered I was encouraged to do so. (qtd. in Nunez 287)
Wide Sargasso Sea depicts Antoinette Cosway, a white creole woman and descendent of the European colonizers, torn between her white creole identity and her affiliation with and attachment to the colonized, black people of postcolonial Jamaica. Black people negate Antoinette because her father was a slave-owner and the English people condemn her because she comes from the West Indies. Antoinette is neither fully accepted by the colonized black people nor by the white European colonizers. She continuously struggles to negotiate between completely opposing expectations and spaces of black Jamaican and white European cultures. Consequently...
... middle of paper ...
...mporary Trends. Ed. David H. Richter. 3rd. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. 1643-1655.
Huddart, David. Homi K. Bhabha. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Nunez-Harrell, Elizabeth. "The Paradoxes of Belonging: The White West Indian Woman in Fiction." MFS Modern Fiction Studies 31.2 (1985): 281-293.
Mezei, Kathy. "'And it Kept its Secret': Narration, Memory, and Madness in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea." Critique 28.4 (1987): 195-209.
Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
Rutherford, Jonathan. "Third Space: Interview with Homi K. Bhabha." Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. Ed. Jonathan Rutherford. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990. 207-221.
Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: Penguin, 1968.
Thieme, John. "Pre-Text and Con-Text Rewriting the Carribean." (Un)writing Empire. Ed. Theo D' Haen. Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998. 81-98.
Jane Eyre, written in 1847 by Charlotte Bronte, relates a tale of tragedy, mystery, and gothic romance. Covering the multiple issues of England in that time, Bronte writes of orphan treatment, social class, and Britain’s controversial law of prohibiting divorce in all circumstances. Orphaned at a young age and unwanted by her guardian Mrs. Reed, Jane searches for higher prospects in education at Lowood, eventually earning a position as a governess at Thornfield. Complications disrupt her life, when she becomes engaged to her employer, Mr. Rochester, and soon after discovers that he is already married to a lunatic. Leaving Thornfield, Jane finds a home with St. John and his two sisters. Eventually, she returns to her former employer, discovering Thornfield in ashes, Mrs. Rochester dead, and Mr. Rochester blind and free from wedlock. Flooded with motifs, Jane’s continual struggles between her passions and responsibility prevail as the main theme of Bronte’s entrancing narrative.
Alexie, Sherman. The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. Groningen [etc.: Noordhoff, 2011. Print.
By Rochester calling Antoinette Bertha he has effectively created a new person, one he wants to control and rule. Jean Rhys asserts the theme of control through the structure in Wide Sargasso Sea which is very unconventional due to its three part structure. This structure could represent the unconventional ideas that are presented in the novel, women were seen as weak and men often dominated so the era the novel was written the question of where control lies between the two characters would have ultimately been seen as eccentric by many. Rhys also uses a chronological structure to shows the differing points of power in each of the characters’ lives. It could be argued that surroundings could be considered a character as it has so much influence over Antoinette’s life. The one place that Antoinette feels comfort is her home, this was shown in the start of the novel when she shows affection for where she lives but she soon hates the place which she once loved “But I loved this place and you have made it into a place I hate” Rochester has so much control he can change love into hate, he has destroyed her
Jane Eyre’s inner struggle over leaving an already married Rochester is the epitome of the new "lovemad" woman in nineteenth-century literature. Jane Eyre is the story of a lovemad woman who has two parts to her personality (herself and Bertha Mason) to accommodate this madness. Charlotte Bronte takes the already used character of the lovemad woman and uses her to be an outlet for the confinement that comes from being in a male-dominated society. Jane has to control this madness, whereas the other part of her personality, her counterpart, Bertha Mason, is able to express her rage at being caged up. As what it means to be insane was changing during Bronte’s time, Bronte changed insanity in literature so that it is made not to be a weakness but rather a form of rebellion. Jane ultimately is able to overcome her lovemadness through sheer force of her will.
Alexie, Sherman. The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2007. Print.
-Ellen G Friedman, Breaking the Master Narrative: Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, in Breaking the Sequence: Women’s Experimental Fiction. Princeton University Press, 1989,
Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea has developed a character for the depth of time. Antoinette's childhood story of outmost unhappiness, contrasted with her attempt at love, and finally the arrival to her concluded state depicts the single condemnation of her soul. Misguided and unloved, Antoinette is forced to raise herself in a world of fear and hatred. As a young woman, her only happiness is found with nature, her place of peace in the world. Yet when her chance at love arises, Antoinette challenges the very destination of her life and hopes to undo her already doomed demise. However, despite all these downfalls, Antoinette is simplistically understood through her voice of narration; possibly due to her complex view of the world, and her knowingly plausible condition, it forces herself to derive her life into a fragile and untrustworthy state.
For the rioters, Coco the parrot, and Antoinette, fire offers an instrument of escape from and rebellion against the oppressive actions of their respective captors. Wide Sargasso Sea takes place shortly after the emancipation of Jamaican slaves. Annette's husbands, first Alexander Cosway and then Mr. Mason, have both profited immorally off of the exploitation of black Jamaicans. Unsurprisingly, the former slaves feel great hatred towards the Cosways--- hatred that boils over when the ex-slaves set fire to Annette's house (35). The significance of th...
The novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is an early 19th-century English literature; a literary work that is evocative and riveting. It depicts acts of betrayal between family members, loved ones and self-inflicted betrayal. The acts of betrayals are done by Mrs. Reed, Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre herself.
Rhys, Jean, and Judith L. Raiskin. "Wide Sargasso Sea." Wide Saragossa Sea: Backgrounds, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. 3-112. Print.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys confronts the possibility of another side to Jane Eyre. The story of Bertha, the first Mrs Rochester, Wide Sargasso Sea is not only a brilliant deconstruction of Brontë's legacy, but is also a damning history of colonialism in the Caribbean.
Nanda, Serena. Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub., 1990. Print.
In the novel “Wide Sargasso Sea” by Jean Rhys, the character Antoinette is left mainly to her own free will as a child with no friends and relied on herself to find out that there is a world that can be both peaceful and horrifying. In the first part of the novel, we witness Antoinette’s childhood memories. She remembers the racial tensions and disapproval of white Jamaican women because they were not like “real white people”, wearing French Caribbean fashions. The white people also feared revenge of the ex- black slaves who follow Antoinette and called her “white cockroach”. Accepted by neither white nor black society, Antoinette feels great shame and left out. Having witnessed her home burnt down by the ex-slaves, the death of her brother Pierre, and her mother falling ill and mad, Antoinette had to go through it alone and begins to talk to herself for comfort. Being rejected by her mother and every...
“Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.” Literature and Its Times. 2. Joyce Moss and George Wilson, eds. Detroit, MI: Gale Publishing Group, 1997. Print.
Rochester is sent to the West Indies as a young man and is tricked into marrying Bertha Mason. There is a sense that her madness i...