Authors, Jean Rhys and Charlotte Bronte constructed their novels in completely different time periods and came from different influences in writing. Jean Rhys’s fiction book, Wide Sargasso Sea is an interesting relation to Jane Eyre. The female character of Jane Eyre forms into a furiously, passionate, independent young woman. The female character of Jean Rhys’s illustration is a character that Jane will know further on as Rochester’s crazy wife who is bolted in an attic. Jean Rhys further studies this character, where as Charlotte Bronte approved that it was left explained (Thorpe 175). Antoinette, considerably like Jane, evolves in a world with minimal amount of love to offer. Both these women are taken cared of as children by relatives, both had a lonely childhood, and both had lost their first friend. However, Jane is capable in defining herself by refusing the trademarks others place on her and shape her identity, while Antoinette is puzzled by having a body, spirit and life. She is mostly ignored by almost all except for Josephine and has very small communication with others, which puts a lock on her feeling of identity. Schapiro writes Wide Sargasso Sea “explores psychological conditions of profound isolation, self-division . . . the condition is bound up with another of the novels characteristically modernist themes: the conviction that betrayal is built into the fabric of life" (84).
Wide Sargasso Sea persistently proposes problems of its concepts of gender. Female characters in Rhys's novels are cruelly exposed to the gendered anf financial constraints of an imperial world" (Humm 187). This idea of an imperial world is constructed and controlled by the “white men.” While Jane is rejected, the outcome for Antoinet...
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... Maggie. "Third World Feminisms: Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea." Practicing Feminist Criticism: an introduction. Great Britain: Prentice Hall, 1995.
Madden, Diana. "Wild Child, Tropical Flower, Mad Wife: Female Identity in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea." International Women's Writing: New Landscapes of Identity. Ed. Anne E. Brown and Marjanne E. Gooze. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995.
Rhys, Jean. A Norton Critical Edition: Wide Sargasso Sea. Ed. Judith L. Raiskin. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999.
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.
Thorpe, Michael. "'The Other Side': Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre." A Norton Critical Edition: Wide Sargasso Sea. Ed. Judith L. Raiskin. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999.
Gray, Jennifer B. "The Escape Of The "Sea": Ideology And "The Awakening.." Southern Literary Journal 37.1 (2004): 53-73. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
By Rochester calling Antoinette Bertha he has effectively created a new person, one he wants to control and rule. Jean Rhys asserts the theme of control through the structure in Wide Sargasso Sea which is very unconventional due to its three part structure. This structure could represent the unconventional ideas that are presented in the novel, women were seen as weak and men often dominated so the era the novel was written the question of where control lies between the two characters would have ultimately been seen as eccentric by many. Rhys also uses a chronological structure to shows the differing points of power in each of the characters’ lives. It could be argued that surroundings could be considered a character as it has so much influence over Antoinette’s life. The one place that Antoinette feels comfort is her home, this was shown in the start of the novel when she shows affection for where she lives but she soon hates the place which she once loved “But I loved this place and you have made it into a place I hate” Rochester has so much control he can change love into hate, he has destroyed her
-Ellen G Friedman, Breaking the Master Narrative: Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, in Breaking the Sequence: Women’s Experimental Fiction. Princeton University Press, 1989,
In A Place Where the Sea Remembers, is filled with guilt and regret, the main factors in the characters lives, and forgiving one other is hard to come by. Some of the characters experience the pain of trying to live wi...
M.L Stedman’s novel The Light Between Oceans challenges readers to recognise ideas about how the environment shapes and readjusts the identity of the main protagonist, Tom. It follows the tragic story of lighthouse keeper Tom Sherbourne and his wife Isabel who, after discovering a baby in a shipwrecked boat, must face the terrible consequences of their decision to raise the child as their own. Stedman traces the journey of his characters through the microcosmic setting of life on Janus Rock as well as the macrocosmic setting of Australia in the wake of World War One. The incandescence of Janus Light, the oil lamps, electric lamps, the candles and the darkness they stave off, all serve to illuminate the characters and their changing era. Through use of characterisation, figurative language such as metaphors, and setting, the author is able to structure the book as resting on a series of triangles, with different characters becoming the fulcrum at different times. This unity of environment intertwined with characters lives offers representations of shifting attitudes and values of the main protagonist before the resolution of the novel.
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
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.
loss of his slaves. Annette is left with no one of her colour or class
The novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë is an early 19th-century English literature; a literary work that is evocative and riveting. It depicts acts of betrayal between family members, loved ones and self-inflicted betrayal. The acts of betrayals are done by Mrs. Reed, Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre herself.
Woolf, Virginia. "The Continuing Appeal of Jane Eyre." Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: W.W. Norton, 1987. 455--457. Print.
Wide Sargasso Sea is unique from Jane Eyre and Mansfield Park in that the issue of race plays a huge part in how the characters themselves relate to themselves and their place within their society. Its unique nature comes from the way the story is written from the point of view of the characters themselves rather than the author. The writing style within the novel shows how racial stereotypes and prejudices influenced portraying people of color within 19th century writings and attitudes.
Brennan, Zoe. "Reader's Guide: Bronte's Jane Eyre." Ebrary. Continuum International Publishing 2 2010. Print. April 28, 2014
Rhys, Jean, and Judith L. Raiskin. "Wide Sargasso Sea." Wide Saragossa Sea: Backgrounds, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. 3-112. Print.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys confronts the possibility of another side to Jane Eyre. The story of Bertha, the first Mrs Rochester, Wide Sargasso Sea is not only a brilliant deconstruction of Brontë's legacy, but is also a damning history of colonialism in the Caribbean.
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 setting. 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. The female other has been portrayed as intensely alienated while grows knowing that their actions are subject to ridicule, rumor,