In Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette’s madness is a result of a couple of factors. Mr. Rochester, her husband drives her mad because of male dominance and Antoinette’s heredity shows that her parents were mad. Antoinette’s husband, Mr. Rochester drives her mad because he wants to be the dominant one and controlling of Antoinette, while Antoinette is an innocent girl who only wants to be loved. In the text, it says, “If she was a child she was not a stupid child but an obstinate one. She often questioned me about England and listened attentively to my answers, but I was certain that nothing I said made much difference. Her mind was already made up…. I could not change them [her fixed ideas] and probably nothing would. Reality …show more content…
In the text it says, “There is no looking glass here and I don't know what I am like now. I remember watching myself brush my hair and how my eyes looked back at me. The girl I saw was myself yet not quite myself. Long ago when I was a child and very lonely I tried to kiss her. But the glass was between us—hard, cold and misted over with my breath. Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I? (107)” Clearly, Antoinette is referencing herself and her mother, Annette also had the habit to talk about herself and ask about her identity and purpose to the world. Also, in the text, it says, “They drive her to it. When she lose her son she lose herself for a while and they shut her away. They tell her she is mad, they act like she is mad. Question, question. But no kind word, no friends, and her husban’ he go off, he leave her. They won’t let me see her. I try, but no. They won’t let Antoinette see her. In the end- mad I don’t know- she give up, she care for nothing. (101)” Here, her nurse, Christophine is explaining that Antoinette’s mother is sane, which is the one of the causes for Antoinette’s madness, since one of the factors that causes Antoinette’s madness is her family. Annette is very similar to
They are already in a compromising situation in celebrating her eighteenth birthday at a gas station having coffee which was already established as being not the norm earlier with Marie recounting her own large party where her “mother made a large party” (154). There reality is broken when the teenagers arrive and “One of the girls went to the juke box and put money in” and they are forced to leave because of Carol condition which causes her to have a breakdown from the noise (157). The arrival of the kids forced them to come into contact with their own reality which can never coincide with the one they have fabricated. This small reminder of what the norm is supposed to be is often brought to their attention through others such as when they “could see, in the light shaft of light, a boy, two girls and a dog” (155). In this instance, they are walking on the way to their weekly picnic, which is in itself repetitive, when they are shown the norm of other having fun “the boy splashing in the water with the dog” while they are forced to go through the motions without much emotion. This depiction of the norm unsettles their reality and, even though they don’t stop trying to alter reality to shelter Carol, shows how dysfunctional their own situation is as it can be seen as a potential version of themselves without Carol’s
He criticizes women for making men behave like monsters and for contributing to the world’s dishonesty by painting their faces to appear more beautiful than they are. This illustrates Hamlet shifting from sane to insane. During Hamlets talk between him and his mother, he hears a noise behind the bars. Hamlet storms into the room and asks his mother why she has sent him. She says that he has offended his stepfather.
Already full of self-criticism and self-loathing (Grigg 140), Antoinette begins feeling an “unconscious sense of guilt,” the result of an identification with someone to whom the person has been erotically attached; and it is “often the sole remaining trace of the abandoned love –relation” (Grigg 141). While Rochester is determined not to love her, he cannot help but feel responsible for her, after all part of the exile, and therefore her undoing is attributed to him. Unable to walk away from the marriage, he sets out to make the best of it the only way he knows how, by locking her away, exiling her
The Infant Child plays a huge role in Blanche’s early life. As a result of her mother’s death, Blanche has a fearful temperament, and
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.
Marie Laure was residing in Paris with her father Daniel when she was diganosed with cataracts and became fully blind by the age of six. Her father was her everything he believed in her even when she did not believe in herself and he taught her everything she needed to know in order to become successful. Shortly after it becomes apparent that Paris will be overun by the Nazis so Marie-Laure and Daniel flee the city. Marie-Laure eventually loses her father and after the devastation her character grows immensely. Conformity takes over Marie-Laure as she is no longer allowed a choice, she follows the French resistance and does not question it which can be seen when she says “But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don 't you do the same?” (Doerr 1142-1143) Through this quote it can be acknowledged that although many believe that Marie-Laure is brave for overcoming her obstacle of being blind, Marie-Laure sees no sympathy for herself, she does not believe she is brave because she simply knows no other way than conforming to the society around her, she does what she does to keep her life. Therefore it can be seen through the situation and time period of the written work, conformity in which is very prevalent through the character of Marie-Laure. Moreover it is evident that citizens of the Hitler led countries were attuned with his orders because there voice could not be heard. While Marie-Laure still had the ability to see a Frenchmen exclaimed “open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever” (Doerr 123). Doerr expressed this statement several times in the novel after the Frenchmen had said it to Marie-Laure because it portrays the truth behind the quote. Although this could have been said to Marie-Laure about her blindness as she grew older
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
...d longs for her elder sister and mother. Frances is a good person – at heart – and is always looking out for her younger sister. Moreover, even though she has different views that her father and will always do the opposite of what is expected of her, it is seen that this insecurity is caused by James indeed. Frances feels that in order to gain security in her life, she must perform these actions. She feels compelled to live her life the way she does. Frances’s naughty and mischievous behaviour can be viewed as a weakness she possesses, and she longs to correct these weaknesses by her actions. She is not a role model by any means, but she is by no means the Devil’s advocate. A sincere heart – compelled by circumstances – does its best to make the situation turn out for the better than the worse, and Frances, through her love for her mother, inevitably does just that.
Towards the middle of the memoir, the theme is shown through the irony of Jeannette’s mother’s situation as well as Jeannette’s feelings towards
In particular, she is distressed by her separation from Sara and “[t]o live alone, always alone” , without the knowledge of the codes of manhood that all the men around her know from lifetimes of experience. In fact, Alexina seems to be most distressed by the impossibility to fully embody this full identity, she describes herself as a “disinherited creature, a being without a name!” . Here Alexina’s description of her fate seems in direct opposition to Foucault’s argument regarding non-identity, her lack of full identity at this point, or lack of full classification into ‘normal’ roles, seems to be the cause of her distress not her happiness. In fact, in the final parts of her memoirs she expresses a hope that doctors and scientists will “analyse” her parts and “draw new information from it” . While it could be argued that Alexina’s hope here is not to be identified or classified, since she simply longs for information, the fact that she is so clearly distressed by being ‘nameless’ suggests that she finds no consolation in being ‘partly’ something. It could be argued then that the limbo state that Foucault describes is that state that Alexina embodies in her final moments, she is no longer a woman legally or medically and yet she is not fully a man either, she
The relationship shared by Pierre and Helene is best described as a lustful charade. It is no coincidence that Pierre, one of the most introspective characters in the novel, first marries a shallow, inwardly-ugly adulterer. His first recorded attitude towards Helene is one of admira...
what a weak character she is. When Hamlet harasses her and tells her to go to a nunnery
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.
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, one of the most evident and important themes is the theme of madness. The theme is apparent throughout the play, mainly through the actions and thoughts of Hamlet, Ophelia, and Laertes. Madness is defined as the quality or condition of mental illness or derangement (being insane). Madness is at the center of the conflicts and problems of the play and is conveyed through Shakespeare’s elaborate use of manipulation and parallels between Hamlet, Ophelia, and Laertes to contribute to Hamlet’s tragic character.
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.