An Analysis Of Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea

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Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea tells the story of Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochester’s mad Creole wife from Jane Eyre. Bertha is a dehumanized character in Jane Eyre who Bronte describes only through the character of Rochester. Both Jane and the reader must rely on his explanations of his wife. However, in Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys recreates the character of Bertha, so that she may have a story of her own to tell. Even though Jane Eyre clearly influences her work, Rhys is critiquing the narration in Charlotte Bronte’s novel and she does so by integrating three different narrators into her own novel to tell the same story, but from different perspectives.
While Jane Eyre is told exclusively from Jane’s point of view, Wide Sargasso Sea is told from three different vantage points. The novel begins from Antoinette’s point of view and through her narrative, we as readers can appreciate her character and share her feelings and travel with her from Jamaica to Rochester’s manor. In the first part of the novel, Rhys handles the narration so as to show Antoinette growing up, remembering her childhood and youth up to the point when her marriage to Rochester is arranged. As a child, Rhys has Antoinette recalls rumors pertaining to her family. Rhys is conveying to the readers that Antoinette is still speaking, but is, at the same time, is portraying how the while populace views her family in the Caribbean. As readers, we are able to see how Antoinette and her family are different from the people in this community.
Plenty white people in Jamaica. Real white people, they got gold money. They didn’t look at us, nobody see them come near us. Old time white people nothing but white nigger now, and black nigger better than white nigger.
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...y, Rhys deprives Rochester of his power over Antoinette.
Unlike Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Rhys chooses to portray the character of Bertha as Antoinette Cosway, a living, thinking human being. And then, she chooses to write a back story for Mr. Rochester to show what his inner self looks like and how it affects Antoinette and finally, she ends with Grace Poole’s account and a final word from Antoinette herself. In having three different narrators, Rhys has created a setting where everything and everyone is carefully scrutinized. Every action is carefully accounted for in Rhys’ novel, unlike its nineteenth century predecessor, where the story is told from only one perspective. Through the three characters who narrate Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys criticizes Bronte’s choice of narration in Jane Eyre and therefore, humanizes Bertha into more than a beast-like thing.

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