Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea regarding Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre
Introduction
The assignment of analyzing Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea regarding Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre seemed at first sight a lessonlike task, but prove to be a challenging reading experience. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is usually thought of as a postmodern and postcolonial response to Jane Eyre, as I mentioned, at first sight, but as we forstep in the plot it challenges us into a fascinating discovery of an exotic land, an exotic culture, sexuality, passion, the most controversial feelings of the human existence: love and hatred.
My analysis tries to find the links between the two novels, connecting the Mr. Rochester described in Wide Sargasso Sea and the one found in Jane Eyre, the picture of the passionate woman in Jamaica and the mad one in England, and ultimately the intention of the writer, which is merely given by herself: "The mad wife in Jane Eyre always interested me," Rhys said later in an interview. "I was convinced that Charlotte Brontë must have had something against the West Indies, and I was angry about it."
The writer
Jean Rhys was born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, in Roseau, to a Creole mother and a Welsh-born doctor. As a white girl in a predominantly black community, Rhys felt socially and intellectually isolated; in 1907 she left the island and went to school to England, returning only once, in 1936. After her father's death she had to pass on school, she got married, divorced, drifting between jobs. It is often said that her female protagonists are self-portraits, they present the same woman with different names and minor details at different stages of life, all drifting, unhappy, unstable, but with clear self-knowledge and understanding of others. In fact, Rhys had a great deal in common with the character of Antoinette Cosway, and her personal experiences likely shaped the events depicted in her fiction. In any case, her origins and the 16 years spent in Dominica shaped her personality and not only because of her Creole heritage.
"Do you consider yourself a West Indian?"
She shrugged.
"It was such a long time ago when I left."
"So you don't think of yourself as a West Indian writer?"
Again she shrugged, but said nothing.
"What about English? Do you consider yourself an English writer?"
"No! I'm not, I'm not! I'm not even English."
"You have no desire to go back to Dominica?"
"Sometimes," she said.
"I don't belong anywhere but I get very worked up about the West Indies. I still care. . . ."
The Title
The choice of the title foreshadows the special character of this novel. The Sargasso Sea is a unique geographical phenomenon, since it doesn't have any coastline, beaches, shores and it doesn't come into contact with any land whatsoever. It is located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, bounded on the west by the Gulf Stream, on the north, by the North Atlantic Current, on the east, by the Canary Current; and on the south, by the North Atlantic Equatorial Current.
Furthermore, Sargasso Sea is in the neighbourhood of the Bermuda triangle, and it had been considered dangerous because of the sea-wed that was believed to entangle the ships. In spite of these suppositions, the real danger consists in the calmness of the sea, as its waters are so still, that ships before modern motorized ones might have stayed there a great deal of time.
It is out of question that the title and the exotic, magic land of the West Indies and most of all the intertextual reference to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre foreshadow an exceptional reading experience.
The Novel
The novel is situated in time shortly after the 1833 emancipation of the slaves in British-owned Jamaica. Antoinette relates the story of her life from childhood to her arranged marriage to an unnamed Englishman. At the end, this Englishman renames Antoinette Bertha after her mentally instable mother, confines her to a locked room until she descends into madness.
The novel is split into three parts. The narrator of the first part is Antoinette, she describes her childhood, her mother's second marriage, her illness, her brother's tragic death, her gardedame, Christophine, her friendship to Tia, the family mansion in Coulibri, Jamaica, the Englishman's proposal and so forth.
The second part is told form the alternating point of view of the newly-weds during their 'honeymoon' excursion to Granbois, Dominica. This part offers a rich emotional background, it first spoils the reader with the blossoming of love between the spouses, strong sexual scenes are hidden in delicate words, dialogues, apparently innocent conversations. Afterwards it thrills the reader with the machinations of Daniel, who claims himself to be Antoinette's illegitimate brother. He destroys Antoinette's reputation by offering her husband information about her mother's mental illness, which Antoinette has probably inherited and he demands hush money.
The importance of this part and the further development of the novel relies in the trust between the newly-weds, which is broken by Antoinette who doesn't tell the truth about her family history to her husband and on the other hand by Rochester who cheats on his wife right near her room, making almost mandatory for her to hear the sounds of love between her husband and the servant Amelie. After these events Antoinette's mind is blurred, and since her husband "owns" her, she remains at his disposal.
The apperception of the husband's absolute power over her appears on the level of the conscience of both spouses: Rochester writes to his father: "Dear Father. The thirty thousand pounds have been paid to me without question or condition. No provisions made for her." On the other hand, Antoinette asks her husband to "say die and I will die…. Try, say die and watch me die". And he does say so, by renaming her after her mad mother, by taking her out of her natural habitat and moving her to England, more, by confining her and leaving her alone. As we can see in Part Three, Antoinette has enough intellectual presence to escape from her factual prison by tricking Grace Poole, but she doesn't have the strength to escape her emotional one: her husband's betrayal, the way he treated her after he made her love him, her deception is too powerful and she sinks into it. However, she had one chance to escape, back home in the West Indies, if she had left Rochester she could have run away with Sandi Cosway. Sandi appears in the posture of a saviour, saves Antoinette from some harassing children, he also teaches her to throw a rock, he is coloured, kind of accepted by society…and obviously he is the love of her life.
The shortest part of the novel, Part Three presents the events again from the perspective of Antoinette, now known as Bertha. She is confined in 'the attic' of Thornfield Hall, the Rochester mansion she calls the "Great House". The focus is on her relationship with Grace, the servant who is tasked with guarding her and on the one with the Englishman who hides her from the world, who apparently promises to visit her more. She only wants love and freedom and ultimately, voicing her thoughts in stream of consciousness, Antoinette/Bertha finds her destiny and decides to take her own life.
Themes
The basic line of the novel is impregnated by the element of alterity, everything is seen in the light of otherness. Antoinette's mother is Creole, other than the rest of the members of white society, Christophine is other than the rest of the coloured servants' group because of her real or imagined powers, the Englishman also is an alien to this land, to this culture, Amelie, Baptiste, almost everyone represents alterity in a special way. Further more, there is the magic, the woodoo strongly related to the uncivilised land and people in contrast with the nons in the convent, who represent civilised religion.
'It was a song about a white cockroach. That's me. That's what they call all of us who were here before their own people in Africa sold them to the slave traders. And I've heard English women call us white niggers. So between you and I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.'"
Antoinette oscillates between the two worlds, which is why I think the other main theme-line of the novel is the search of identity, manifested in an undubitable connection to otherness and on the level of a number of characters. Alterity is usually understood as the entity in contrast to which an identity is constructed, and it implies the ability to distinguish between self and not-self, and consequently to assume the existence of an alternative viewpoint". Antionette, being Creole, doesn't really decide if she is black or white, Antoinette or Bertha, in love or nourishing hatred. Bertha Mason, Antoinette's mother defines herself by visitors and wealth and Rochester shows a double-sided character too: man of values and man marrying for money.
Racism appears as a strong element from both sides: Tia, an aboriginal of the island steals little Antoinette's clothes, she hits Antoinette on her head with a rock, for apparently no reason. On the other hand, although Antoinette doesn't explain why she never married Sandi, the novel suggests that the fact that he was colored was a barrier for her family and perhaps for herself in the way of a truly happy marriage. The complex racial and social tensions in the Caribbean are illustrated in Christophine's exclusion by the Black Jamaican population.
An other line of themes is male supremacy, the patriarchal structure of society, as Bertha Mason sees her only chance for survival on the side of a wealthy man, once married, Antionette does not have the right of disposal of her money, of her will to not leave the island. She even puts her life in her husband's hands.
Magic appears in various chapters in various forms, the strongest representative is being without question Cristophine, an Obeah witch", who actually is more of a mother to Antoinette than her own. "Her songs were not like Jamaican songs, and she was not like the other women. She was much blacker – blue-black with a thin face and straight features. She wore a black dress…and yellow handkerchief…No other negro woman wore black, or tied her handkerchief Martinique fashion."
Contrasting themes and characters
While Antoinette obeys her husband, or better-said she obeys love, the other heroine, Jane Eyre embodies the strength of character and will, the supremacy of one's principles, the ability to succeed on her own. Charlotte Brontë builds a character that gives hope, sets standards and contrary to usual female behaviour, has the power to say no, to turn down love if it wasn't born or if it doesn't evolve within the correct circumstances.
Jane is the embodied chastity, a book of rules and laws, through which even love could not get. Antoinette with her personality, her land and the strength of her emotions is luscious, uncontrollable, wild.
Jane is a grown-up even as a child, she takes responsibility for her actions, but Antoinette acts like a child throughout the entire novel: she asks thousands of questions, doesn't seem to understand anything and asks Christophine for a love potion to seduce her husband into loving her again.
Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre is a loving, caring, mild, wonderful man who has a dark secret, related to another stage of existence of his. The Englishman is Wide Sargasso Sea shows no pity or empathy, feels no content for the exquisite view he is offered by exotic nature and most importantly, doesn't feel any remorse for driving his wife mad, keeping her waiting for his love, hurting her so deeply by making love to Amelie.
The hypertext and the hypotext
It is very interesting, that the timeline of the hypertext is located before the hypotext, not after it, like it would appear in the case of classic transtextuality. One of the most quoted examples of hypertextuality in English literature is Homer's Odyssey and Joyce's Ulysses. However, the most frecvent hypotext is the Bible, it appears in Milton's Paradise Lost, but also in the postmodern: Borges' The Gospel According to Mark.
In our case the hypotext is Jane Eyre, which was written by Charlotte Brontë in 1847, and it describes the life and hardships of Jane Eyre, who finally discovers love with a strange gentleman, who owns not only a nobile mansion, but a secret past and a mad wife too, locked up in the attic. Jean Rhys, on the other hand, published her Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966, more than 100 years later, a novel which deals with the marriage of Mr. Rochester and Antoinette/Bertha Mason and tries to give reason to the unreasonable, tries to find logic in the instinctual, wild and mad.
Intertextuality is given by the author here, since nowhere in the novel appears the name of Rochester, we know him as a second-born son of a rich Englishman, who loses his rights to heritage in favour of his brother, the firstborn son therefore he needs to assure his future by marriage. His friend Richard arranges the marriage with Antoinette, his half-sister, and the same Richard is the one who visits Rochester in Jane Eyre. This scene begins to raise Jane's curiosity in Richard Mason's person, curiosity which is nourished further by the attack upon Mr. Mason by some lady, who in Jane's mind is Grace Poole.
The name of Grace Poole in another strong link between the two novels. Grace Poole is a middle-aged, red-haired servant at Thornfield Hall, who in secret is the nurse, maid and prison guard of Bertha Mason. Her role in the novel of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is misleading: Jane thinks Grace responsible for the strange sounds, the eerie laugh on the third floor and for the attempt of burning Mr. Rochester alive.
In Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, we are given a capture from the inside of the room and we see a drunk, avid woman. Grace, however offers the solution for Mr. Rochester's fortune, she says he has inherited everything after his father's and brother's death. She finds out that something happened in Jamaica, because her master came home with grey in his hair and misery in his eyes.
Another link between the two novelts, that makes the reader sure of the connection and of the identity of the male protagonist is Thornfield Hall, called by Antoinette the "Great House", which ultimately will be Antoinette's prison and grave.
Conclusion
Wide Sargasso Sea is a complex and challenging literary experience. It is so rich in exotic culture and in feelings and yet it is so poor in possibilities at the disposal of the characters. Everything in the novel is connected: the title of the novel suggests a special situation, Antoinette's dark future is foreshadowed by the fatal resemblance of mother and daughter, Rochester's psichologycal portrait is drawn in such a careful way to not destroy the mystery that surrounds Jane's future husband.
The principle of literary theory, according to which the reader has to identify him- or herself with one of the characters gains a great importance here: although we know for sure that the woman confined in the attic of Thornfield Hall is mad and will die in the end, the innocence of Antoinette, her hopeless situation raises some kind of expectation if not of a happy ending, at least of a happy period in the life of the heroine. Unfortunately, Antoinette affective falls victim to a series of circumstances that determine her faith and sinks her into misery, madness and death.
Postmodern literature has this strange effect on readers: first of all, reading the novel makes the reader meet a great amount of uncanny feelings, it ballances them out of the safety of the armchair. After reading the literary work, in which the author obviuosly doesn't spoonfeed the reader with every little detail, countless questions appear, even days and weeks after the act of reading: it almost feels like the effect of base notes of an exquisite perfume, which discover themselves only after being in touch with the skin for a while.
Bibliography, weborgaphy
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Charlotte Brontë. 2008. Jane Eyre. Radford: Wilder Publications LLC.
C.C. Thornley and Gwyneth. 1968. An Outline of English Literature. Essex: Pearson Education Limited;
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Cseke Boróka Emese
Romanian – English Language and Literature
Second year of studies
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The name of the sea originates from the 15th century thanks to Portuguese sailors who were amazed by the massive collection of seaweed (of the Sargassum variety) that they found floating in it. The seaweed is pushed into the sea by the strong ocean currents that surround the area.
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