Analysis Of Antoinette Cosway's Defiant Journey In Wide Sargasso Sea

Even though Mrs. Fairfax believes that Rochester will marry Blanche Ingram, Blanche is not the woman of his choice. Blanche’s family believes they are a great match, due to their equal social status. However, Rochester does not have the same plan in mind. Jane is not happy with herself, because she fell in love with a man out of her social reach, but Rochester is not concerned with social status. Both Jane and Blanche Ingram have positive and negative qualities. Rochester prefers Jane based on all of her positive

As a feminist, Jane is able to protect herself when she is in a situation where she needs to be defended. For instance, when her brutish older cousin John hurls a hardcover book at her head, she pounces back by attacking him in defense. She also faces no difficulty in successfully defeating her cold-hearted aunt in a verbal fight, just at the tender age of ten. Jane is surely unafraid of the consequences that she has to face on actions that she believes as rightfully done. This amazing trait remains even as she proceeds into adulthood and meets the love of her life. She is able to deal with, and even stand up to Mr. Rochester’s unreasonable verbal attacks directed at her. She clearly shows her dauntless side of her personality, by speaking her own mind when Mr. Rochester demands for the money that he had given her. Jane refuses clear cut, and Mr. Rochester asks to then at least let him see the cash. Jane refuses again by retorting that he is “not to be trusted.” Jane has an honest and truthful soul who knows how to speak for herself, unlike many women during this period of time. Jane is never concerned about what other people would think of her if she tells them the exact truth about everything. She is able to inform her departure by cancelling off the wedding between herself and Mr. Rochester after what she had witnessed and experienced. Jane cries out “you are a married man-or as good as a married man, and wed to one inferior to you- to one with whom you have no sympathy- whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union: therefore I am better than you- let me go!” Jane is able to truthfully utter her thoughts, her true opinion without being afraid; even if it was to someone she dearly loved. When Mr. Rochester angrily cries out, “Jane, be still; don’t struggle so, like a wild frantic bird that is rending its own plumage in its

Although she seemed to be the ideal bride, Rochester did not know about the insanity that ran in her family’s blood. But, he soon learned about it as he watched his wife become mad. Desperate, Rochester paid for a caretaker to tend to her in a hidden room in Thornfield Hall.

Through a close reading of the selected passage of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, a reader can see that Jane attempts to separate herself from her decisions by personifying her emotions and giving them a specific voice, which strongly reflects the societal views of the time. At this point in the story, Jane has discovered, on her wedding day, that Mr. Rochester is still married to a woman named Bertha, and that woman still lives in his house. Distraught, Jane locks herself in her room and tries to decide what she should do. When she wakes up the next day, she is again confronted with what she needs to do in the wake of her discovery.

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 marriage of Mr. Rochester and Antoinette, Mr. Rochester is as an oppressive force, a husband who wants to dominate his wife. We see Mr.Rochester’s dominance in how he treats his wife as an object and ultimately muddles her identity. His initial dominance is economic; upon their marriage, he owns all of her wealth and we see the consequence of this dynamic when Antoinette asks Christophine for help in improving her marriage. Christophine advises her to just "pack up and go" to which Antoinette tells her that Rochester "will not come after [her]" because she has "no money of [her] own..everything [she] had belongs to him" under English law (69). Clearly economically powerless, Antoinette is dependant on her husband and unable to escape a loveless marriage and start over. Mr. Rochester 's economic stability grants him power, leaving Antionette as the woman in the marriage, oppressed because

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

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.

Furthermore, Jane says “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself” (Chapter 27, Bronte.) This statement greatly represents the growth that Jane has undergone. She no longer dreads the solitude that once haunted her because she respects herself enough to realize that she did not deserve to experience such great dismay. Through independence and self-recognition, Jane has discovered the importance of loving oneself. Without the reliance on the thoughts of others, the once extremely troubled girl found bliss through a lack of outside control. In regards to her relationship with Mr. Rochester, Jane understands that she must leave him behind to maintain her own well-being. She does not allow the wealth or proclaimed love from Rochester to skew her decisions and she does not linger to dominate the life of her lover. Instead, she moves forward to continue her endless pursuit of happiness and independence.

Even in her state of anger she cannot help but once again be the restrained and subdued one in their relationship. Despite all of the happiness she has found with Rochester she still cannot bring herself to stay in a relationship in which she sacrifices part of herself, because she doesn’t know how to reconcile her need feel like she belongs and is taken care of while at the same time remaining uncorrupted.

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

The second part of the novel marks the beginning of the marriage between Antoinette and the English gentleman (normally identified as Rochester from Jane Eyre; he will be referred to as such for the remainder of the essay).   The Marriage contract itself, interestingly, is negotiated and put into action by a series of men: Rochester's father and brother, Antoinette's stepfather and, subsequently, her step-brother, Richard Mason. When Antoinette herself puts up a half-hearted resistance to the marriage, both Rochester and Richard Mason step in to push the contract along.  Already, Rhys, within the marriage, establishes action as a male characteristic and inertia as female.

Rhys weaves the themes of women's sexuality, madness and slavery throughout her story of Wide Sargasso Sea. Antoinette yields to insanity apparently inflicted by Rochester's controlling ways as he sets out to deconstruct her personality. Her madness is a symbolic death, an escape from her situation of female dependence and male dominance. Rochester changes Antoinette's name to Bertha, ("Wide Sargasso Sea," Part 2 p 87) stripping her of her identity. He later fragments this even further for her taunting her; "Marionette, Antoinette, Marionetta, Antoinetta." ("Wide Sargasso Sea," part 2, p99) inferring she is a malleable puppet, and he is the puppet master, the controller.

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

Jane’s foster family, the Reeds, restrict her rights, refusing to treat her as an equal to the other members of the family. Jane, at a mere eight years old, is chastised by Mrs. Abbott, the nanny, who asserts, “you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep” (Bronte 11). When Rochester imprisons Antoinette in England, he deprives her of any sense of humanity. The people in their lives who yielded power over them unjustly repressed both women.