It is human nature to want to feel included and to have relationships with others. Thus, mental isolation is a force that can quickly drive a person to his or her own downfall. Jean Rhys’s, Wide Sargasso Sea, exemplifies this point through its protagonist, Antoinette. The novel demonstrates that her unhealthy marriage to a man who does not truly love her leads to her physical isolation. However, Antoinette’s mental isolation stems from her early life. Her long lasting years of mental isolation slowly push her towards insanity and eventually cause her to reach a mental state of madness. 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 …show more content…
with. Not only is her mental isolation derived from her family life, Antoinette’s community also mentally quarantines her to only her thoughts.
While walking home one day, Antoinette is followed by a little girl who is singing, “Go away white cockroach, go away, go away”(Rhys,11). Her community isolates her because of her ethnicity since her family has had a past of owning slaves. Similar to the situation in her family life, Antoinette is mentally isolated to her thoughts again. Since she is not wanted in her community, she is forced to be in places where she is alone and she has no one to speak with in her community. Ultimately, this racial isolation causes her to feel lonely and uncomfortable in her own skin, which inches her closer to
madness. In Antoinette’ s married life, the mental isolation continues and eventually results in her madness. Her journey to madness begins with Rochester’s unfaithfulness to Antoinette; he commits adultery with Amélie, the maid. This event causes Antoinette to isolate herself to her thoughts and she obsesses over the fact that Rochester no longer loves her. Antoinette approaches Christophine stating, “Christophine, he does not love me, I think he hates me. / What shall I do? He was not like that at first”(Rhys,134). This statement serves as evidence that Antoinette’s mind is solely focused on Rochester’s lack of love for her. Despite Christophine’s advice to talk to Rochester, Antoinette focuses on trying to use obeah to solve the problems in the relationship. She isolates herself by only thinking about Rochester’s absence of love for her. Thus, this final form of isolation is the determining factor that pushes her to madness since she can no longer think rationally. Mental isolation is not the only form of isolation Antoinette endures. A big part of her madness is due to Rochester’s decision to physically isolate her in the attic. This isolation is what completely dehumanizes Antoinette and causes her to fill the role of “Bertha”. Yet this form of physical isolation results from the years of mental isolation that Antoinette endures. Without years of mental isolation, Antoinette wouldn’t have had to be locked in the attic. The mental isolation that grew over the years is the reason for Antoinette’s eventual result of madness.
Isolation often creates dismay resulting in an individual facing internal conflicts with themselves. Ann experiences and endures unbearable loneliness to the point where she needs to do almost anything to
As racism continues on to thrive in the town, Esther Hirsh, becomes a young girl who also faces discrimination only because she was a Jewish. In the same school as Esther, was a young African-American girl named Leonora who faces bully about almost every day, and everywhere, just because of her race. Her family is very well in poverty, and her mother is badly sick. She died later that month. In one quote,”Why can’t white folks leave me alone?”(P7), explains how excruciating racism was.
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
We may believe were not in no form of isolation from a single thing but we are all in isolation without notice. In the book “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar wao” by Junot Diaz, he shows isolation in every character in a very distinct way but still not noticeable. Throughout the Brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao, Diaz conveys that there is isolation in every person through his characters that are all different in personalization but are still isolated from something.
Isolation can be a somber subject. Whether it be self-inflicted or from the hands of others, isolation can be the make or break for anyone. In simpler terms, isolation could range anywhere from not fitting into being a complete outcast due to personal, physical, or environmental factors. It is not only introverted personalities or depression that can bring upon isolation. Extroverts and active individuals can develop it, but they tend to hide it around crowds of other people. In “Richard Cory,” “Miniver Cheevy,” The Minister’s Black Veil,” and “Not Waving but Drowning,” E.A. Robinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Stevie Smith illustrate the diverse themes of isolation.
When Miramar went to go meet her old friends from university, she realized how much they had progressed in life since she first met them. “Tina announced that she had just gotten accepted to nursing school, and Denise said she had decided to apply for an MBA…as they flipped through the pictures commenting on how hot each other’s boyfriend were, I let my posture crumple, feeling more and more like the garden gnome again” (Leung 150). Miramar felt alienated that her friends had such a great future ahead of them with great jobs and earnings while she had no future because she had dropped out of university and left her own family, having to find a house and make money for herself. This affected her emotionally as she did not mention any details on her own future as she hid not only her emotions, but suppressed her life from everyone else. “They looked like kids playing dress-up, but still, I looked down at my jeans and t-shirt and felt left behind” (Leung 149). Miramar felt left out as she wasn’t wearing elegant and somewhat trendy clothes like her friends. Instead she was wearing a typical jeans and t-shirt. Miramar did not lash out or complain verbally for not having clothes similar to her friends, she kept her emotions to herself and lived on in her own gray world. “Mouse was my first real friend in a long time and a good distraction from the wandering thoughts that invariably landed me back in quicksand” (Leung 152). Miramar dealt with her struggles as she finally found a real friend who she could trust and create a real connection and bond with to help her cope with her problems. Mouse was the first person she could open up to again, expressing her emotions freely. Isolation builds a barrier between those who are victims to it and the outside world. Those affected by isolation lose all sense of emotion and contact with the outside world. Only with help
The poor town that Lizabeth lived in forced her to grow up early and be the tip of the spear in the fight against poverty and racism. When something is wrong in one’s life, it is very distressing to sit and wait for the problem to be fixed. Because there were many problems in Lizabeth’s life, she
Almost everybody feels a sense of alienation or isolation at some point in their life. Maybe it was when you were a young kid at a playground in school, being left out of activities. Or maybe this feeling is being experienced by an adult who is having economical or social issues. Whatever the source is for these feelings, it is not a pleasant one, and one we tend to try and avoid as much as possible in life. In the two stories I’ll be discussing, “ The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “Desiree’s Baby” by Kate Chopin, there are two characters who experience feelings of alienation, isolation and oppression quite heavily. The effects of alienation and oppression are hindering to women’s independence and well-being. This is seen in the situations of two women we are going to be focusing on for this paper. Alienation and oppression can hinder the well-being and happiness of the individual experiencing it. It can also have long lasting psychological effects and cultural effects as you’ll see in this research paper.
The first and most evident example of alienation and isolation in the novel is Len...
Often, Rochester tricks her into answering questions in a way he deems unsuitable, simply to chastise her. He does this when he questions her about her mother’s death and again when he calls her dressing habits into question (Rhys). Rochester adds to his horrible treatment of Antoinette when he has sex with Amèlie. According to Rajeev Patke, “[h]er husband’s deliberately casual adultery with a coloured servant in Antoinette’s house distastes and dispossesses her of the only place she had learned to identify herself with as her natural habitat and patrimony” (192). Serving as the ultimate betrayal and reinforcing the bitterness and trust issues that Annette drilled into her head, Antoinette becomes more unstable. Edward Said expresses that “the exile experience constitutes an “unhealable rift between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home”” (137). As the couple’s relationship becomes more and more precarious Rochester taunts Antoinette’s already fragile state. Rochester’s feelings of entrapment or rather his feelings of self-pity, pressed further by his question, “[p]ity. Is there none for me? Tied to a lunatic for life-A drunken lying lunatic-gone her mother 's way (Rhys
In both ‘Eve Green’ and ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’, the protagonists experience fear in many guises. Although traumatic events in both Eve and Antoinette’s lives do lead to moments of sudden, striking fear, fear is also presented as having the potential to be subtle and muted, and therefore, “haunting”. Fletcher and Rhys seem to suggest that this form of fear is more damaging to the psyche than fear in its more conspicuous manifestations, as it is more deeply intertwined with the characterisations of the protagonists, therefore allowing for the fear to “pervade” the novels. As a result, it could be argued that fear has an almost constant presence in each novel, particularly because fear is seemingly linked to other prominent themes in each novel.
Through her exceptional use of the previously stated elements she educated the readers on the dangerous effects of solitude, a theme that is still in play today. Isolation can be felt by anyone who feels alone or forgotten in today 's society. Just as the monster felt alone many people across the world feel as though they do not fit in, they feel like they have been left behind and abandoned. This is why isolation is an everlasting theme in the world, because it will always be apart of
Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre depicts the passionate love Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester have for each other, and as Bertha Mason stands in the way of the happiness of Brontë's heroine, the reader sees Mason as little more than a villainous demon and a raving lunatic. Jean Rhys' serves as Mason's defendant, as the author's 1966 novella Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel to Jane Eyre, seeks to explore and explain Bertha's (or Antoinette Cosway's) descent into madness. Rhys rejects the notion that Antoinette has been born into a family of lunatics and is therefore destined to become one herself. Instead, Rhys suggests that the Cosways are sane people thrown into madness as a result of oppression. Parallels are drawn between Jane and Antoinette in an attempt to win the latter the reader's sympathy and understanding. Just as they did in Jane Eyre, readers of Wide Sargasso Sea bear witness to a young woman's struggle to escape and overcome her repressive surroundings. Brontë makes heavy use of the motif of fire in her novel and Rhys does the same in Wide Sargasso Sea. In Rhys' novella, fire represents defiance in the face of oppression and the destructive nature of this resistance.
Hay, Eloise Knapp. The Political Novels of Joseph Conrad: a Critical Study. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1972. 120. Print.
The novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys were produced at different times in history. Indeed, they were created in different centuries and depicted extensively divergent political, social and cultural settings. Despite their differences, the two novels can be compared in the presentation of female otherness, childhood, and the elements that concern adulthood. Indeed, these aspects have been depicted as threatening the female other in the society. The female other has been perceived as an unfathomable force that is demonic in nature but respects these enigmatic threatening characters.