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Charlotte Bronte's Jane eyre and Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea
The Sargasso Sea is a relatively still sea, lying within the south-west zone of the North Atlantic Ocean, at the centre of a swirl of warm ocean currents. Metaphorically, for Jean Rhys, it represented
an area of calm, within the wide division between England and the West Indies. Within such an area, a sense of stability, permanence and identity may be attained, despite the powerful, whirling currents
which surround it. But outside of this ?sea?, one may be destabilised, drawn away by these outside forces, into the vast expanse of ?ocean? between the West Indies and Europe. Outside of these metaphorical and geographical oceanic areas, one may become the victim of these currents, subject to their vagaries and fluctuations, no longer able to personally define, with any certainty, where one is
culturally or geographically located.
For Jean Rhys, Jane Eyre depicted representations of a Creole woman and West Indian history which she knew to be inaccurate. ?Bertha Mason is mad; and she came from a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations. Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard!? She is further described as having a ?discoloured face?, ?a savage face? with ?fearful blackened
inflation? of the features, ?the lips were swelled and dark?; described as a demon, witch, vampire, beast and hyena1. But nowhere in the novel does Bronte allow ?the madwoman in the attic? to have a
voice, to explain what may have caused her madness. Rhys says: ?The mad wife in Jane Eyre always interested me. I was convinced that Charlotte Bronte must have had something against the West
Indies and I was angry about it. Otherwise, why did she take a West Indian for that horrible lunatic, for that really dreadful creature??2 So in Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys rewrites Bronte?s canonical text according to her own, personal experiences, as both a white West Indian and a woman.
But, giving Antoinette a voice, she exposes truth behind madness: The history of the land in which she lived, and the role of the woman in it, was a tale of Victorian, patriarchal values and colonial
exploitation; polarised ideology, division and confrontation in racial, cultural, sexual and historical issues. In a literary sense, Antoinette?s voice, once heard, would not only offer mitigating reasons for her madness...
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...tim of Victorian patriarchal colonialism she sought to give her a voice. In giving her a voice, she also revisits her own childhood and life experiences, giving herself the chance to be heard: To locate herself, emotionally, culturally and in literary terms, within the many binary oppositions in the book. To find a stable and secure place like the Wide Sargasso Sea.
Works Cited:
ANGIER, Carole: Jean Rhys London, Penguin, 1992.
BAER, Elizabeth. R: ?The Sisterhood of Jane Eyre and Antoinette Cosway?, in Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsch and Elizabeth Langland, eds The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development London, University Press of New England, 1983, pp.131-149.
BOUMELHA, Penny: ?Jane Eyre, Jamaica and the Gentleman?s House?, Southern Review, 21 July 1988.
BRONTE, Charlotte: Jane Eyre Middlesex, Penguin, 1994.
ERWIN, Lee: ?Like a Looking Glass?: History and Narrative in Wide Sargasso Sea in Novel, Winter 1989
HAVELY, Cicely Palser: Wide Sargasso Sea: Real and Imagined Islands BBC TV, 1998.
NEWMAN, Julie: ?I Walked With a Zombie?, in The Ballistic Bard: Postcolonial Fictions London, Arnold, 1995.
RHYS, Jean: Wide Sargasso Sea London: Penguin, 1997.
In Stephen Dunn’s 2003 poem, “Charlotte Bronte in Leeds Point”, the famous author of Jane Eyre is placed into a modern setting of New Jersey. Although Charlotte Bronte lived in the early middle 1800’s, we find her alive and well in the present day in this poem. The poem connects itself to Bronte’s most popular novel, Jane Eyre in characters analysis and setting while speaking of common themes in the novel. Dunn also uses his poem to give Bronte’s writing purpose in modern day.
knowledge" (4-5). In line 1, the speaker establishes straight off the bat that the Sargasso Sea is
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
Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Brontë, was published in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Company, in London. This year is exactly ten years into Queen Victoria’s sixty-four year reign of the British Empire. The Victorian Era was renowned for its patriarchal Society and definition by class. These two things provide vital background to the novel, as Jane suffers from both. Jane Eyre relates in some ways to Brontë’s own life, as its original title suggest, “Jane Eyre: An Autobiography”. Charlotte Brontë would have suffered from too, as a relatively poor woman. She would have been treated lowly within the community. In fact, the book itself was published under a pseudonym of Currer Bell, the initials taken from Brontë’s own name, due to the fact that a book published by a woman was seen as inferior, as they were deemed intellectually substandard to men. Emily Brontë, Charlotte’s sister, was also forced to publish her most famous novel, Wuthering Heights, under the nom de plume of Ellis Bell, again taking the initials of her name to form her own alias. The novel is a political touchstone to illustrate the period in which it was written, and also acts as a critique of the Victorian patriarchal society.
Eroticism, romance, and a steamy landscape is at the forefront in John Duigan’s movie adaptation of the Jean Rhys novel, Wide Sargasso Sea. Behind these themes exists a power struggle between two of the main characters and their dependence on one another. Antoinette Cosway and arranged English spouse, Edward Rochester, begin their marriage and lives together. In this arrangement, initial lust and interest between the two soon begins to crumble with the introduction of revealed secrets and fears. Much focus is spent on the main character Antoinette’s personal journey throughout the story, however, it is my interest to look at the character Rochester. His own struggle with identity is not only interesting, but very powerful in how as his identity and strength changes, it directly affects that of his wife, Antoinette. His character development seems rather parasitic. As he gains strength and masculinity, she becomes weak and fragile.
Moglen, Helen. "The Creation of a Feminist Myth." Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: W.W. Norton, 1987. 484-491. Print.
Jane Eyre, the female lead of Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre, in several customs exemplifies the traditional womanlike character of nineteenth century literature, but in others, she disrupts the frame abruptly and deliberately. Her physical characteristics unaccompanied challenge all undeclared rules portrayed by different authors of the time. While confined in the red room of her Aunt Reed’s mansion, Jane stares into the viewing glass and labels herself as a “strange little figure…with a white face and arms speckling the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still” (Brontë 20). In the same passage, she accounts for her features as being “half fairy, half imp” (Brontë 20). In nineteenth century fiction novels, “fairies” were
Jane Eyre was published in 1847. Originally titled Jane Eyre: an autobiography, the novel is about title character, Jane Eyre, and her journey from girlhood to wife of Rochester. The book contains many elements of the gothic, including the supernatural, the horrific, and other gothic forms and elements. The excess contained in the book includes that of sexual excess, as Jane is attracted to Rochester by sexual passion, as well as that of the romantic, there is also what Rochester considers Bertha's sexual excess. This essay will aim to discuss how these are contained by the Christian framework of the novel.
In conclusion, the novel of Wide Sargasso Sea paints a unique vision of the inherent racism within 19th century British culture. While the criticism that the portrayal character who are people of color is often one-sided and flat; they are painted through the eyes of the White and Creole characters that hold power and influence. This method of writing sets it apart vastly from that of Jane Eyre and Mansfield Park.
The aspects of Jane Eyre that would be susceptible to a post-colonial approach are its connection with the West Indies, with the island of Madeira and with India:
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.
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.
Although written during both the Victorian and Gothic time period, Jane Eyre draws upon many revolutionary influences that ultimately enabled it to become one of the most successful books of all time. Jane Eyre is merely a hybrid of a Victorian and Gothic novel, infusing a share of dark allusions with overzealous romanticism. The primitive cultures of the Victorian period reflect high ethical standards, an extreme respect for family life, and devotional qualities to God, all in which the novel portrays. Yet, to merely label Jane Eyre as a Victorian novel would be misleading. While the characteristics of a Gothic no...
First, one must beg the question, why does Rhys choose an allusion that nobody will understand? Rhys was fully aware that the title would not lend itself to easy interpretation. Why, then, did she stick with Wide Sargasso Sea instead of the more obvious ‘The First Mrs. Rochester’ or even ‘Creole’? Her seemingly unusual title choice is in actuality a carefully crafted selection that echoes her decision to write about the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre; it requires unpacking, just like Bronte’s Bertha. Like the lunatic in the attic, Rhys is asking the readers to not take her at surface value, but to question her reasons: “the reason why Mr. Rochester treats her so abominably and feels justified, the reason why he thinks she is mad and why of course s...