Essay about Wide Sargasso Sea and Antoinette

   Jane Eyre, from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and Antoinette Mason, from Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, both depict very different creeds. While Bronte created Jane with a Christian background, Rhys has birthed Antoinette into a more primitive, confused faith. Analyzing each writer's description of the red room will reveal the religious nature of their characters.

Jane Eyre is a powerful novel with many secrets in the storyline between the characters. One of the most shocking secrets was finding out that Rochester has a wife. Since his older brother would inherit his father's fortune, Rochester needed to secure his own future with a marriage for the sake of money, not love. So, he married Bertha, who was both wealthy and beautiful.

In Jean Rhys' novel Wide Sargasso Sea, whether Antoinette Cosway really goes mad in the end is debatable. Nevertheless, it is clear that her life is tragic. The tragedy comes from her numerous pursuits for love and a sense of belonging, and her failure at each and every one of these attempts.

In the novel Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, Antoinette Mason’s identity is frequently discussed. Antoinette, the daughter of ex-slave owners and a woman whose life is dictated by mental illness, grows up in the Caribbean as a Creole during the nineteenth century. As a young adult, she is forced into a marriage with a white man from England, an event that ultimately leads Antoinette to her downfall. At the start of the novel, Antoinette and the characters around her are optimistic about their identity and future. As the plot progresses, Antoinette increasingly struggles to understand who she is and what her future entails. Ultimately, Antoinette loses her identity and her purpose. Throughout the text there are many reoccurring motifs. A motif

Throughout volume one of Jane Eyre, Jane finds an outlet to a difficult childhood in Gateshead, Lowood, and her recent move to Thornfield through reading and painting. The books she reads represents her desires, and emotions that would otherwise be difficult to express. She also finds sanctity from her difficult life though painting landscapes with watercolors. Charlotte Bronte uses art and literature to show the readers Jane’s subconscious desires that on occasion even she might not understand.

These two novels are both feminist works, although each book leads to feminist problems somewhat differently. Jane has a strong foundation in what woman deserve, as well as achieve specific goals for how she portrays her spot in society being a woman; Antoinette has no knowledge where to start to change herself. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys poses the likelihood that maybe; the gap between women and men can’t be penetrated. Possibly, the unbalance is so great that Antoinette cannot have a feeling of cheerfulness and pleasure that Jane discovers near the end of the novel. Wide Sargasso Sea portrays the fluctuating position of woman in the twentieth century. Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre can single handedly be looked at as signs of feminist texts, however, Wide Sargasso Sea presents itself with more description on post-modern shape of feminism.

The theme of isolation is explored in Bronte’s novel; Jane Eyre. This theme is also developed in The Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys. Both pieces present different types of isolation, such as isolation due to location and the isolation of a character due to their social status, such as Jane’s status as a governess. The various ways in which isolation is present in each of the texts show how inescapable and unavoidable isolation is for the characters in both Jane Eyre and The Wide Sargasso, with it being present in such a large way in their lives.

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it,” stated Herman Melville. As implied, without theme, no novel can be considered “mighty” or have any depth. Theme is essential in any work of art. Jane Eyre is a novel by Charlotte Brontë that takes the reader through the experiences of Jane Eyre, from childhood to adulthood. This includes her love for Mr. Rochester, who is the master of Thornfield Hall, the school in which Jane works at as an adult. Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel by Jean Rhys, includes

Despite all his faults in Jane Eyre, the one virtue he maintains in that story is sorely lacking in the Wide Sargasso Sea, his personal integrity. “Nor was I anxious to know what was happening behind the thin partition which divided us from my wife’s bedroom” (Rhys 140). “You bring that worthless girl to play with next door and you talk and laugh and love so that she hear everything. You meant her to hear.’ ‘Yes that didn’t just happen. I meant it’” (Rhys 154). A man who is capable of treating Antoinette in such a way, of purposefully “breaking her up” as Christophine would say, makes one wonder if he is even capable of redemption in Jane Eyre. His little encounter with Amélie could be ascribed to his intoxication on the voodoo love potion, though by the time he sleeps with Amélie many hours have passed including a trip to the ruined house and a nap in its eerie surroundings. Furthermore, Rochester’s actions are inherently selfish. Motivated solely by greed, he seems to be unwilling to let Antoinette have even a small portion of happiness. He had the option to leave with at least half the dowry and let her move on with her life, but chooses instead to keep both her money and mind locked away in the attic of a cold, colorless castle. Regardless of whether this depiction of our Mr. Rochester is canon or not, Jean Rhys effectively makes us despise the new Rochester all by solely changing the

   Jean Rhys' complex text, Wide Sargasso Sea, came about as an attempt to re-invent an identity for Rochester's mad wife, Bertha Mason, in Jane Eyre, as Rhys felt that Bronte had totally misrepresented Creole women and the West Indies: 'why should she think Creole women are lunatics and all that? What a shame to make Rochester's wife, Bertha, the awful madwoman, and I immediately thought I'd write a story as it might really have been.' (Jean Rhys: the West Indian Novels, p144).  It is clear that Rhys wanted to reclaim a voice and a subjectivity for Bertha, the silenced Creole, and to subvert the assumptions made by the Victorian text.  She does so with startling results.

Frequently not saying what he really thinks ("Wide Sargasso Sea," pp56-7), Rochester wages his personal war, not against a man, but against his wife, Antoinette.

Also, even though Rochester and Jane were of different classes, Charlotte Bronte presents him as an intelligent person. Both Edward and Jane enjoy conversations with each other. However, Jane does not express her feelings as clearly as Rochester does. So he dresses up as a gypsy and tries to find out what she thinks of the marriage, which everyone assumes that he will with Blanche. Although, both Jane Eyre and Rochester have are fond of each other, Edward was deceitful to Jane. For example, when Jane found out about Mr Rochester’s first wife, he first says that they can run away as ‘brother and sister’. However Jane refuses. Rochester tries another tactic and asks her to be his mistress. But Jane was too virtuous to accept the offer and had no other alternative but to leave Thornfield.

this is a dangerous place for them to be in, and that, like Eden, the

Rhys integrates the two characters and their racism so her readers will feel more connected with both. In the paper “Race, Creole, and National Identities in Rhys’ Wide Sargasso

Both, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea illustrate a similar parallel where two differing perceptions of the ‘other’ are present and the concept of an ‘us’ and ‘them’ is established. The Merchant of Venice depicts Shylock, a Jewish foreigner and heretic in the eyes of the predominantly Christian ensemble of characters that feature in the play - and also constitute the contemporary audience - who undertakes the role of an archetypal ‘villain’ from an Elizabethan perception. Likewise, Shylock views his Christian abusers as the ‘other’, as he suffers Antonio’s antisemitism and derogatory terms such as ‘damned inexecrable dog’ and the ‘villain with a smiling cheek’; a juxtaposing term that creates irony and questions is Shylock the villain; is there only one villain in this play; are there any ‘villains’ as such? Antonio has his own vices, but this would be widely ignored by an Elizabethan audience celebrating the success of his and Bassanio’s plot to avoid suffering the harsh consequences of Bassanio’s shortcomings set by a displaced, alienated and abused Shylock. Shylock is depicted as a justifiably irritated character as he is detested by the Venetians, shunned for his religion and occupation, betrayed by his only daughter and then even betrayed by the State – as far as he is aware. You could argue that Shylock's hatred and desire for vengeance is a natural result of his circumstances