Revision of Master Narratives within Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea

To be able to discuss adequately how the master narratives of Bronte and Rhys’ time are revised, one must first understand what those master narratives were and what the social mood of the time was. From there one will be able to discuss how they were revised, and if in fact they were revised at all.

Bronte is known as one of the first revolutionary and challenging authoress’ with her text Jane Eyre. The society of her time was male dominated, women were marginally cast aside and treated as trophies for their male counterparts. Their main role in life was to be a mother and a wife, “ Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life……the more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure she will have for it.” A quote from a letter Robert Southey wrote to Bronte. A clear sign of the mentality and opposition Bronte was up against. A woman’s “proper duties” of course being to tend and wait on her “master’s” every whim and need. Women during Bronte’s time had no clear voice, none that was of any merit, they were a silent category of society, silenced by their male oppressors. Bronte’s book was in fact written before the first women’s rights movement had happened, yet it puts forward an image of an independent strong character, of a passionate and almost rebellious nature. A character “refusing subservience, disagreeing with her superiors, standing up for her right’s, and venturing creative thoughts.” I put forward that Bronte throughout her text not only revises the themes of male power and oppression, but reconstructs them also. The text is a female bildungsroman of it’s time, sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly tackling the patriarchal view of women.

Immediately from the start Bronte’s character Jane is different. She is an orphan, mis-treated and despised by her family. She has no clear social position, is described as “less than a servant” and treated like one. A protagonist who one would assume had no characteristics worth aspiring too. Jane is displayed perfectly in her hiding behind the curtain. She is placed by a window, which beyond is icy and cold, contrasting immensely from the inside of the fire and warmth. A clear statement of the icy coldness of the family she has been put to live with, and her fiery and passionate nature which we discover th...

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...ing novels of their time. They both revise aspects of their era, that would rarely, if ever, have been touched on. Wide Sargasso Sea having the double revision of challenging Jane Eyre, as well as social beliefs. “The devices that connect the two texts also rupture the boundary between them. Although this rupture completes Rhys’ text, it results in a breakdown of the integrity of Bronte’s.” As much as Bronte’s text was revolutionary of her time, so too was Rhys’. Time changed and what was once revolutionary became simplified and unbelievable. The fact remains, that without Jane Eyre, there would be no Wide Sargasso Sea, the two text’s are mutually exclusive, and just as revolutionary now as when they were written.

-Gordon, Lyndall, Charlotte Bronte: A passionate life. (London: Vintage, 1995)

-Margaret McFadden – Gerber, Ed Frank N Magill, Critical Evaluation, Masterplots, Vol 6, (1996)

-Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (London:Penguin:First Published 1847)

-Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, (London:Penguin:1966)

-Ellen G Friedman, Breaking the Master Narrative: Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, in Breaking the Sequence: Women’s Experimental Fiction. Princeton University Press, 1989,