Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea tells the story of Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochester’s mad Creole wife from Jane Eyre. Bertha is a dehumanized character in Jane Eyre who Bronte describes only through the character of Rochester. Both Jane and the reader must rely on his explanations of his wife. However, in Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys recreates the character of Bertha, so that she may have a story of her own to tell. Even though Jane Eyre clearly influences her work, Rhys is critiquing the narration in Charlotte Bronte’s novel and she does so by integrating three different narrators into her own novel to tell the same story, but from different perspectives.
While Jane Eyre is told exclusively from Jane’s point of view, Wide Sargasso Sea is told from three different vantage points. The novel begins from Antoinette’s point of view and through her narrative, we as readers can appreciate her character and share her feelings and travel with her from Jamaica to Rochester’s manor. In the first part of the novel, Rhys handles the narration so as to show Antoinette growing up, remembering her childhood and youth up to the point when her marriage to Rochester is arranged. As a child, Rhys has Antoinette recalls rumors pertaining to her family. Rhys is conveying to the readers that Antoinette is still speaking, but is, at the same time, is portraying how the while populace views her family in the Caribbean. As readers, we are able to see how Antoinette and her family are different from the people in this community.
Plenty white people in Jamaica. Real white people, they got gold money. They didn’t look at us, nobody see them come near us. Old time white people nothing but white nigger now, and black nigger better than white nigger.
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...y, Rhys deprives Rochester of his power over Antoinette.
Unlike Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Rhys chooses to portray the character of Bertha as Antoinette Cosway, a living, thinking human being. And then, she chooses to write a back story for Mr. Rochester to show what his inner self looks like and how it affects Antoinette and finally, she ends with Grace Poole’s account and a final word from Antoinette herself. In having three different narrators, Rhys has created a setting where everything and everyone is carefully scrutinized. Every action is carefully accounted for in Rhys’ novel, unlike its nineteenth century predecessor, where the story is told from only one perspective. Through the three characters who narrate Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys criticizes Bronte’s choice of narration in Jane Eyre and therefore, humanizes Bertha into more than a beast-like thing.
Jane Eyre’s inner struggle over leaving an already married Rochester is the epitome of the new "lovemad" woman in nineteenth-century literature. Jane Eyre is the story of a lovemad woman who has two parts to her personality (herself and Bertha Mason) to accommodate this madness. Charlotte Bronte takes the already used character of the lovemad woman and uses her to be an outlet for the confinement that comes from being in a male-dominated society. Jane has to control this madness, whereas the other part of her personality, her counterpart, Bertha Mason, is able to express her rage at being caged up. As what it means to be insane was changing during Bronte’s time, Bronte changed insanity in literature so that it is made not to be a weakness but rather a form of rebellion. Jane ultimately is able to overcome her lovemadness through sheer force of her will.
Jane Eyre is born into a world where she is left bereft of the love of parents, family, or friends, but instead surrounded by hateful relatives. She resolves to attend school to begin her quest for independence. This theme is seen through Jane’s behavior when she renounces her relation to her aunt Mrs. Reed, ignoring the nurse’s orders and leaving her room to see Helen again, and when she acquires the courage to speak her opinion to Mr. Rochester.
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.
Antoinette’s initial exposure to exile with her mother and brother forces her to grow up assuming all men are dishonest. Throughout Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette clearly has some trust issues. While she initially feels Rochester drawing her in like a moth to the flame, she has second thoughts about marrying him and almost cancels their wedding. Without giving much of a reason, she simply says, “I’m afraid of what may happen” if she were to marry him (Rhys 46). Readers, not left with much context, can easily infer that she is untrusting by Rochester’s next line.
Rhys, Jean, and Judith L. Raiskin. "Wide Sargasso Sea." Wide Saragossa Sea: Backgrounds, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998. 3-112. Print.
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.
The Novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte took a surprising twist when Bertha "Mason" Rochester was introduced. Bertha leaves a traumatizing impression on Jane’s conscious. However, this particular misfortunate event was insidiously accumulating prior to Jane’s arrival at Thornfield. Through Bertha, the potential alternative dark turn of events of Jane’s past are realized, thus bringing Jane closer to finding herself.
Jean Rhys obviously had Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre in mind while writing Wide Sargasso Sea. Each novel contains events that echo other events or themes in the other. The destruction of Coulibri at the beginning of Wide Sargasso Sea reminds the reader of the fire at Thornfield towards the end of Jane Eyre. While each scene refers to events in its own book and clarifies events in its companion, one cannot conclude that Rhys simply reconstructed Thornfield's fall in Coulibri's. Though they exhibit some similarities, to directly compare these two scenes without considering their impact on the novels as whole works would be ridiculous. Each scene's main importance, and contribution to the overall intertextual meaning, lies elsewhere in the two works, not simply within the confines of the scenes themselves.
Jane Eyre has been acclaimed as one of the best gothic novels in the Victorian Era. With Bronte’s ability to make the pages come alive with mystery, tension, excitement, and a variety of other emotions. Readers are left with rich insight into the life of a strong female lead, Jane, who is obedient, impatient, and passionate as a child, but because of the emotional and physical abuse she endures, becomes brave, patient, and forgiving as an adult. She is a complex character overall but it is only because of the emotional and physical abuse she went through as a child that allowed her to become a dynamic character.
A Mother’s love cannot be defined by a dictionary. Their love stems from actions, struggles, experiences and risks they encounter throughout their life which; helps formulate the mother they will put into existence .these life changing ordeals not only affect the mother but the child as well. With this in mind, let’s narrow into the child being a daughter. The relationship of a mother and daughter will not only be affected by her mother’s past but ultimately be with the daughter until herself because a woman and mother. Is it a mother’s generational curse or a gift of genes?
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.
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.
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,
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is a novel about a woman, Jane, moving from place to place on a path to find her own feeling of independence. Throughout her journey, Jane encounters many obstacles to her intelligence. Male dominance proves to be the biggest obstruction at each stop of Jane's journey. As Jane progressed through the novel her emotional growth was primarily supported by the people and the places she was around. This examination will look for textual support from different sections of Jane Eyre to review how Jane had grown emotionally and intellectually as she moved from location to location, as well as looking at critical analysis from Bronte critics as to how each location plays a role in Jane’s progression.
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...