After the fire at Coulibri, Antoinette endures a rough time in her life, for her mother rejects her and Pierre dies. Antoinette’s mind is full of fear, sadness and instability. This trauma is clearly shown in the convent that she attends for the remainder of her adolescence. Upon entry, Antoinette takes immediate note and puts extra emphasis on describing the stones in the school. Taking note of the “cool stoneflagged room” (Rhys, 28) and providing this as the initial description suggests that she is at first uncomfortable. Having just been aggressively confronted by two residents of the island Antoinette is shaken (Rhys, 27). In order to further convey Antoinette’s distrustful mind, Rhys describes the uninviting and cold stones of the convent thus allowing the reader to more deeply …show more content…
In first arriving to the island Rochester’s description of his new bride shows the reader that he does not truly love her and in fact is afraid of her. Calling her eyes dark and alien (Rhys, 36) suggest that he dislikes her appearance. By ignoring his wife and turning his focus to Amélie, Rhys suggest that Rochester is unhappy with Antoinette as his …show more content…
In order to maintain a realistic feel as a first person narrative Jean Rhys turns to setting, both physical and temporal, to describe the way the character sees the world and from here allow emotions, psyches and moods to be drawn from this description. The imagery in each setting provides the reader with more than just a mental image. Rhys makes use of every detail to convey emotion. When reading the Wide Sargasso Sea one sees the world through the eyes of another. It is important the one pays attention to the fine details as they are describing more than just the
The last years of Marie Antoinette’s life was written as a tragedy. She was taken as a
Already full of self-criticism and self-loathing (Grigg 140), Antoinette begins feeling an “unconscious sense of guilt,” the result of an identification with someone to whom the person has been erotically attached; and it is “often the sole remaining trace of the abandoned love –relation” (Grigg 141). While Rochester is determined not to love her, he cannot help but feel responsible for her, after all part of the exile, and therefore her undoing is attributed to him. Unable to walk away from the marriage, he sets out to make the best of it the only way he knows how, by locking her away, exiling her
Rhys, Jean, and Judith L. Raiskin. "Wide Sargasso Sea." Wide Saragossa Sea: Backgrounds, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. 3-112. Print.
The sense of fear attributed to the setting in 'Wide Sargasso Sea' may have been influenced by Rhys' own experiences as a creole woman growing up in the Caribbean. Rhys' great-grandfather's house was burned down by members of the local black community in an act of revenge, as he was a slave-owner. This event is often considered to have inspired Rhys to write about the arson of Coulibri. This supports the idea that Rhys was influenced by her own feelings of fear in her own home, which indicates that fear is a vital part of the setting in the
Within Rhys’s novel, he incorporates the normality of the West Indies during the nineteenth and mid- twentieth centuries. Antoinette, the main character, who happens to be a white Creole, is mistreated and discriminated because of her identity. Throughout the text, characters are victimized by prejudices. For example, Antoinette and Annette become victims of traumatic experience as they face numerous kinds of mistreatment. Antoinette had to deal with an arranged marriage, which results her becoming distressed. Throughout this marriage, she was treated irrationally by her husband, Rochester and servants. She was unable to relate to Rochester because their upbringings were incompatible. She had to stomach the trauma of being shunned because of her appearance and identity. She was called names, mainly “white cockroach”, and was treated as an
Geoffrey Chaucer has successfully developed several themes which are seen throughout his works. Although the literary techniques that Chaucer uses are not his own, these themes which reoccur are in the one of a kind style which defines Chaucer's works.
A couple of years later Antionette is arranged to marry Rochester. They move to the Winward Islands. Rochester doesn’t remember much about the wedding. He doesn’t feel any loves towards her. He feels that his father and brother tricked him into marrying a lunatic.
Schapiro, Barbara Ann. "Boundaries and Betrayal in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea." Literature and the Relational Self. Ed. Jeffrey Berman. New York: New York University Press, 1994.
Sarvan, Charles. ¡§Flight, Entrapment, and Madness in Jean Rhys¡¦ Wide Sargasso Sea.¡¨ The International Fiction Review. Vol 26.1&2:1999:82-96.
Rochester is a mimic of the occident despite being a member of the society. He is ‘almost the same’ but patriarchal structures meant that the younger son would not gain as much as the first born, and so he is victimized by his difference, just as Antoinette is. Sylvie Maurel believes that by ‘marrying Antoinette, Rochester is by no means creating his own story. As a penniless younger son, he is pressurized by his family into an arranged marriage with a presumably wealthy creole.’ Unlike Annette’s second husband, Mr. Mason, Rochester does not travel to Jamaica in order to ‘make money [off old estates] as they all do’ (p. 13), he does so to please his father.
Racial tension is a major theme in “Wide Sargasso Sea”, with the mix of whites and blacks and white/blacks in the novel creating a cut-throat atmosphere which creates a hazardous place for Jamaica’s denizens. Many racial situations occur between whites and blacks, which Americans are use to due to the dangerous troubles between blacks and whites in the 1950s with a clear enemy: the whites. But Rhys tackles a more important point: an overall racial hostility between everybody living in Jamaica during the novels time period with no one to blame. Instead of using only racism, Rhys uses situations her readers could easily relate to such as: betrayal, adultery, and feeling of not belonging. Through her use of alternating points of views, Rhys uses racism shared by both characters and their actions/faults and thoughts to meld and to show the blame cannot be placed onto one person.
...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.
Therefore, Antoinette's fabrication of identities and Rochester's later manipulation leads Antoinette to have no identity, causing her to slip into madness. Rhys exploration of the key theme of identity through the character of Antoinette shows the reader the dangers of not being true to your own roots but having them forced upon you.
Antoinette is born into a life of isolation. In her early life, her mother mentally isolates her. Antoinette’s mother paid little to no attention to her because of Antoinette’s sickly little brother Pierre. This lack of attention leads to Antoinette’s isolation from her family. Antoinette herself states, “She wanted to sit with Pierre/ I was old enough to look after myself.”(Rhys,7). Since her mother focused solely on Pierre, Antoinette learns that she needs to be independent. She knows that her mother will not help her, which indicates that she is isolated only to her own thoughts because she did not really have anyone else to socialize
... and an indication of Antoinette's fate. The most destructive fire in Wide Sargasso Sea comes at the end of the novella, when Antoinette burns Thornfield Hall down to the ground. While this action serves as an escape and an act of defiance, it is also destructive, as Bertha takes her own life in the process of taking power from her husband: "Then I turned around and saw the sky. It was red and all my life was in it... I saw the orchids and the stephanotis and the jasmine and the tree of life in flames" (170). Antoinette's ultimate act of rebellion will, of course, lead to her ultimate destruction--- the life that she sees in the burning sky will be extinguished when she comes crashing to the ground. Rhys' use of fire in moments that show or foreshadow physical and emotional devastation reflects the role of fire as a symbol of destruction in Wide Sargasso Sea.