Jean Rhys’ 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea rewrites Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre from a contemporary, postcolonial viewpoint. Wide Sargasso Sea explains to the story of Brontë’s “madwoman in the attic” from Bertha Mason’s very own point of view. In Jane Eyre, Bertha is usually “hidden apart, ” in terms of her physical place in the attic and also in terms of her own background voice. Rhys, however , builds up Bertha into a complex personality: in Extensive Sargasso Sea, Antoinette Cosway is a solid woman who have rebels against and triumphs over the colonial and patriarchal oppressions that face her as a result of her West Indian identity. Rhys’ novel depicts Antoinette’s ultimate vengeance in Rochester at the conclusion of Anne Eyre like a valid response to this oppression. By shifting points of perspective and reworking certain incidents in Brontë’s text, Rhys subverts the colonialist structure out that Jane Eyre and Brontë herself came.
In writing Jane Eyre and the persona of Bertha Mason, Charlotte Brontë seems to have relied on a number of colonialist pretenses. Ellen Friedman writes that Jean Rhys “exposes the assumptions of…nineteenth-century English imperialism, Christianity, and patriarchy that served as the circumstance for Charlotte Brontë’s text” (1175). The first of these assumptions is the fact Bertha, like a Caribbean girl, is innately different from British women just like Jane. Rochester’s initial portrayal of Bertha in his discussion with Anne characterizes her as, in the words of Edward Stated, “sensual…more or perhaps less stupid, and…willing” (145). Rochester at first meets Bertha at a party, and “she flattered [him], and lavishly shown for [his] pleasure her charms and accomplishments” (Brontë 260), the diction of “displayed” and “pleasure” especially calls into your head Bertha’s sensuality and her role while an spectacular other. Brontë also possibly alludes to syphilis when ever Rochester tells Jane, inches[Bertha’s] excesses had prematurely created the germs of insanity, ” once again indicating Bertha’s supposed sex excesses (261). Similarly according to Said’s concept that the native woman is sensual focused enough is that, in Jane Eyre, she has almost all the agency in getting Rochester to marry her: Rochester states: “Her family wished to secure me… and so did she, inches and “her relatives motivated me, opponents piqued me, she allured me” (260). In offering Bertha a lot of sexual volition in Rochester’s initial impressions of her, Brontë characterizes her as an spectacular “other” without considering other aspects of her persona.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, yet , Rhys directly contrasts Brontë’s sexually encouraged portrayal of Bertha in her characterization of Rochester’s initial communications with Antoinette. Unlike the Rochester in Jane Eyre, who blames his appreciate for Bertha on her own “allure, inch Rhys’s Rochester relates the opposite:
When at last I attained her I actually bowed, smiled, kissed her hand, danced with her. I enjoyed the part I was expected to play. She by no means had everything to do beside me at all…I must have provided a ok performance. (45)
In Rhys’s novel, it truly is Rochester, instead of Antoinette, who may have agency within their period of courting. The idea that “[Antoinette] never experienced anything to carry out with [Rochester] at all” completely subverts Brontë’s notions of the native woman as being sexually incurred and, in Said’s words and phrases, overly “willing” (145). Rhys continues to problem Brontë’s characterization of Bertha as sexually motivated and willing in that Rhys’s Antoinette initially decides that “she will not marry [Rochester]” because inches[he doesn’t] find out anything about [her]” (46). Again, Rochester ultimately has to persuade and coerce her into the marriage: “I’ll trust you if you keep in mind that. Is that a good deal? ” (47). Antoinette’s decision to not get married to Rochester because of their unfamiliarity reveals her as a persona concerned with a lot more than sexuality in her relationship with her husband, once again undermining Brontë’s initial characterizations of her.
Additionally to depending on colonialist assumptions in characterizing the early Bertha, Brontë also portrays the Bertha as an “other” after your woman goes upset and Rochester takes her to Britain. Rather than characterizing her as an unique other, however , Brontë shows her being a demonic different, who fog the line among human and animal, Brontë’s Rochester specifically refers to Bertha as “a demon” in comparing her to Anne, and to her abode, the attic of Thornfield Way, as “the mouth of hell, ” “a wild beast’s den” and “a goblin’s cell” (251, 265). In Brontë’s portrayals of her, Bertha is bestial and inhuman:
In the profound shade, with the further end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or man, one could not really, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, about all fours, this snatched, and growled just like some strange wild pet: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a hair, hid their head and face. (250)
In characterizing Bertha, Brontë strips her of her humanity: your woman refers to her merely while “a figure” and as “it, ” and compares her to “some strange wild animal” which has a “mane” (250). The notion that Brontë’s Bertha never addresses, she only “yells, inch also robs her of her mankind and paints her like a demonic additional (262).
In Jane Eyre, that take really miss Bertha to make the shift from exotic to demonic different: Rochester states, “in the earliest letter I actually wrote to apprise [his dad and brothers] in the union—having already begun to experience extreme outrage of its consequences… We added a great urgent demand to keep it secret” (263). In Wide Sargasso Sea, nevertheless , Rhys consistently describes Antoinette as gorgeous and feminine. Additionally , Rhys’s characterization of Antoinette often immediately contrasts Brontë’s point simply by point. Contrary to Brontë’s explanation of Bertha’s “dark, grizzled hair, inches Rhys describes “[Antoinette’s] hair” as “combed away from her face and [falling] effortlessly far listed below her waistline, ” so that as having “red and rare metal lights in it, inch a much more womanly description (47). Similarly, although Brontë states merely that Bertha wore nondescript “clothing, ” Rhys describes her as in a very dress “made in St . Pierre, Martinique, ” in addition to the style “� la Joséphine” (47). Since Josephine Bonaparte is associated with Europe through her role as empress of Portugal, Rhys’s reference to her focuses on Antoinette’s “whiteness” in contrast to Brontë’s “dark” and “purple” madwoman (250). Possibly after Antoinette is transported to England, Rhys continues to dissociate her from Brontë’s Bertha: though the mad Antoinette ultimately has “streaming” hair consistent with Brontë’s descriptions of her, Rhys never appreciates that it is Antoinette. The woman fitted Brontë’s information is always known as “that ghost of a girl, ” and appears only “surrounded with a gilt frame”—a mirror, the girl with only without fault linked to Antoinette (11, 112). In setting up a separate personality for her, Rhys creates a character who “is not Anne Eyre’s lunatic at all” (Rody 223).
Nevertheless in Wide Sargasso Sea Antoinette by no means fulfills the role of demonic various other, toward the end of the new she increases into the role described simply by Said since “sensual” and “willing” because of her connections with Rochester. Rhys subverts yet another of Brontë’s colonialist pretenses: when Brontë portrays Rochester as a victim of his “infernal union” with Bertha, Rhys characterizes Antoinette as the oppressed get together (259). Rhys suggests that Antoinette’s madness and development into Europe’s concept of a “native woman” provides a consequence of her marriage to Rochester. Without a doubt, Rochester alterations and creates Antoinette’s identification in a number of ways. The most obvious method is that he changes her name from Antoinette to Bertha, “a brand [he’s] especially fond of, inches despite the fact that she insists that her “name is not Bertha” (Rhys 81). This individual also prohibits Antoinette coming from speaking patois with Christophine in order to further more distance her from her Creole root base.
Rochester’s attempts to differentiate her from her mother by simply changing her name and make her more Western actually actually backfire, because Antoinette expands to fit Said’s model of a native female as a result of her estrangement by her hubby (which develops out of the reality “he under no circumstances calls [her] Antoinette now”) (68). Laura Ciolkowski remarks, “[Rochester] is decided to resolve Antoinette’s ambivalence [about her heritage] first in to the singular colors of English language womanhood, and second, once his inability to ensemble Antoinette because the terne mother of English kids is totally obvious, into the similarly singular shades of a savage otherness” (343). After their particular marriage begins to crumble, Antoinette becomes desperate for her partner to “come to [her] one evening, ” proving the fact that her intimate drive starts to govern her actions (68). Furthermore, to be able to satiate her desires, Antoinette wishes to use obeah, an institution looked at by Europe as superstition, in this way, Antoinette becomes not simply “sensual” and “willing, ” but as well “stupid” and superstitious from the European viewpoint. Likewise, after she has recently been brought to England, Antoinette declares, “Does [my crimson dress] make me seem intemperate and unchasteThat person told me therefore , ” demonstrating that Rochester constructs Antoinette being a “native woman” fitting with nineteenth-century Western european colonialist landscapes (110).
By detailing Rochester’s manipulations of Antoinette, Rhys undermines Brontë’s presumption that Bertha’s eventual vengeance on Rochester is a result of her descent by “idiots and maniacs” (Brontë 249), rather, Rhys reveals Antoinette’s last act burning down Thornfield manor being an important take action of rebellion through which Antoinette, and Rhys herself, inside the words of Aijaz Ahmad, “modified, questioned, overthrew, [and] rewrote” “Western representations” in the colonial (McLeod 48). By the end of Large Sargasso Sea, Antoinette explains her final act as “why I was helped bring here and what I have to do” (112), Antoinette’s solve and perseverance contrasts Brontë’s Bertha, in whose setting fireplace to Thornfield was only one of her many injustificable acts of “wild mischief” (364). Though Antoinette has been driven crazy by the end of Wide Sargasso Sea, she actually is still capable of exact her revenge, Rhys expresses Antoinette’s ability to consider vengeance despite her chaos through the symbol of the candlestick at the end with the novel. Though “the fire flickered and i also thought it was out, ” which in turn expresses Antoinette’s discouragement (and perhaps the reader’s disbelief in her ability to rebel against her oppression), she “shielded it with [her] side and this burned up again to light [her] along the dark passage” (112), the constant candle fire thereby signifies Antoinette’s solve and determination, and becomes her seemingly inexplicable act of arson at the end of Jane Eyre into her triumphant level of resistance against the oppression perpetrated after her by simply Rochester and Western world. The fact that candles is surely an archetypal literary symbol for hope also supports this kind of reading of the ending of Wide Sargasso Sea. Caroline Rody shows that “Antoinette/Bertha thus embodies in her defiant ending the triumphant revisionist act of Rhys the reader turned writer” (218).
In spinning Jane Eyre as Large Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys redefines Bertha Mason’s final act burning down Thornfield Manor being a rebellion against colonialist oppression rather than a unique act of violence. Rhys shows Bertha’s eventual chaos to have been a result of Rochester’s construction of her personality in accordance with nineteenth-century European notions of imp�rialiste women. Rhys challenges Brontë’s characterizations of Bertha because both a great exotic and a demonic other, laying out her being a victim of the patriarchal and colonialist world embodied in Edward Rochester. Despite her victimization, however , Antoinette rebels against Rochester, just as Rhys herself rebels against Brontë: while Antoinette destroys her literal penitentiary, Thornfield Manor, by fireplace at the end of both novels, Rhys subverts the colonialist framework that held Bertha Mason’s persona captive by providing Bertha a voice, a great identity, and a purpose.
Works Cited
Brontë, Charlotte now. Jane Eyre. Ed. Richard J. Dunn. New York: Norton, 2001.
Ciolkowski, Laura E. “Navigating the Wide Sargasso Ocean: Colonial History, English Hype, and Uk empire. ” 20th Century Books 43. a few (Autumn 1997): 339-59.
Freidman, Ellen G. and David Galef. “From Plagiarism to Appropriation. ” PMLA 108. five (Oct. 1993): 1174-5.
McLeod, John. Beginning Postcolonialism. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000.
Rhys, Jean. Extensive Sargasso Ocean. Ed. Judith L. Raiskin. New York: Norton, 1999.
Rody, Caroline. “Burning Throughout the House: The Revisionary Paradigm of Jean Rhys’s Large Sargasso Marine. ” Rhys 217-25.
Said, Edward cullen. “From Orientalism. ” Imp�rialiste Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Target audience. By Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. New York: Columbia UP, 1994, 132-49.
