Sargasso Sea Antoinette

Throughout Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre, the character Mr. [Edward} Rochester changes from a cold-hearted man,  used to getting whatever he desires and values material things, to a blind, humble man that couldn't care less about material things. When Jane Eyre, the main character, first meets Mr. Rochester, his horse has slipped on the ice, and he has sprained his ankle; she stops to help, and upon arriving to Thornfield (the place where she lives and works as a governess), she discovers that he is the master and her employer. He is a cold-hearted man. He constantly refers to Adele (a girl he took in) as a brat, and when talking to the housekeeper about Jane, he says, “I have her [Jane] to thank for this sprain,” (Brontë 122) (despite Jane not

In this passage from Jean Rhys' novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette and her newlywed, Rochester, travel to their honeymoon estate, Granbois. The two are relatively unfamiliar with each other, so the excerpt features Rochester's initial perceptions of Antoinette, the woman with whom he would spend the rest of his life. In surveying the land around him, Rhys connects the wilderness of the Caribbean island to the girl riding alongside the Englishman; in Rochester's mind, Antoinette becomes part of the nature surrounding him. Rhys suggests through the connection of nature imagery to Antoinette that the disparity between the two characters of opposite backgrounds will eventually result in a breakdown of their relationship.

She judges, criticizes, and is of a higher class because of the exploitation of rich men. She falls in love with Mr. Rochester, not because he is attractive, but because he is her key to success, a shortcut to the top of the ladder. In the book, she says, "Whenever I marry," she continued, after a pause, which none interrupted, "I am resolved my husband shall not be a rival, but a foil to me. I will suffer no competitor near the throne; I shall exact an undivided homage; his devotions shall not be shared between me and the shape he sees in his mirror. Mr. Rochester, now sing, and I will play for you" (Bronte 185). She is purely using

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

Race was paramount to how the characters of Wide Sargasso Sea viewed themselves in terms of their identity. The main character, Antoinette Cosway, struggles with her identity in how her whiteness is made evident to others around her, as well as to how she learns to views herself. Whiteness is examined more closely than blackness is within the novel because the central character happens to be white, however she does not live up to the standards of whiteness presented by those who consider themselves to be the pinnacle of whiteness. Yet, that is not to say that blackness is not discussed within the novel, because through the discussion of what is considered white, what is not considered white is also explicitly stated. Within the novel, race

A very prominent theory and ideology that has always been popular throughout the ages has been the complex subject of the battle of the sexes. In extreme cases there is often a battle of power and will within a relationship. More modernly this can be seen as the “who wears the pants” ideology, in which a partner tries to see who holds the most power in a relationship. In this post-colonial novel by Jean Rhys, this theme is taken to a whole new level. The two major characters in this work are Antoinette and Mr. Rochester, a couple in a very complicated relationship surrounded by dark pasts and differences in the socio economical level as well as in cultural

Rochester calls Antoinette by a different name that is not hers and that is Bertha. This action of calling by the name of someone that she is not, is very dehumanizing because it takes away one of the only things she has left, which is her beautiful french origin name which translates to, “Beyond Praise”, and by calling her Bertha which seems to be a very unpleasant German origin name, actually has a hidden meaning which many readers look past, which is the meaning of that German name. The direct German meaning of the name Bertha is, “Bright One”, so what can be implied, is that Jean Rhys and Charlotte Bronte did not chose this odd name on accident, they meticulously picked this name to show that even though it may seem like what Mr. Rochester is just doing is dehumanizing his own wife, but in a closer analysis, it is clear to see that in a sense he is giving her the persona and allowing her to truly be the “mad woman” she appears to be. One more very interesting aspect of this name choice is that the name can be viewed in the context of what happened to Bertha, or Antoinette nearing the end of Jane Eyre. She sets Thornfield hall aflame, and then jumps to her death while on fire from the top of the roof. So the name Bertha or “bright one” foreshadows Antoinette's dark demise. Antoinette or Bertha, “the bright one” in the relationship uses the abuse from Mr. Rochester and counters what he is attempting to do, and backfires it on him. By in the end having

Throughout the marriage, Mr. Rochester shows signs of his control of Antoinette. The first signs begin as sexual control, as Antoinette has no other real connection with Mr. Rochester, she settles with sexually pleasing him. However, when Mr. Rochester learns of her past, via Daniel Cosway, he begins to via her as the Creole woman she really is. This level of control is furthered when she seeks Christophine's help in making Mr. Rochester fall in love with her.

Once Rochester is on the island he instantly hates his surroundings. He is used to Great Britain and everything on the island is an assault on his senses. "Everything is too much, I felt as I rode wearily after her. Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountain too high, the hills too near. And the woman is a stranger." He sees Antoinette as a wild Creole girl who is not like English girls. She is wild just like the place

Throughout the first section of Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette finds nature to be a second home, somewhere she can escape from her feelings of being an outsider and be at peace. After her friend Tia steals her clothing at the beach, Antoinette begins her walk home. On her journey home, she remarks that “if the razor grass cut [her] legs and arms [she] would think ‘It’s better than people,’” (16). Antoinette has lived the entirety of her life without feeling loved by another person, and after being betrayed by someone she considered to be a friend, Antoinette loses even more faith in other people. Antoinette feels that, even if nature might physically injure her, it will not hurt her emotionally like people will. She feels more loved and accepted

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.

In Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice, the character Lady Catherine De Bourgh is portrayed to be supercilious and domineering through her actions, dialogue, and appearance. Lady Catherine’s appearance of being supercilious and uncongenial is represented by her “authoritative tone” and unfriendly appearance. People in positions of authority often view themselves as superior to others. Lady Catherine is unfriendly because she believes herself to be above everyone and does not want to associate with people below her in rank. Lady Catherine’s pride is also revealed when she states “Our instrument is a capital one, probably superior to — You shall try it someday.” Her words are representative of a woman who believes she and her belongings are

Wide Sargasso Sea was Jean Rhys’s effort to retell and complicate the unresolved character of Bertha Mason, the “lunatic creole” presented to us in Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel, Jane Eyre. Bronte’s Jane Eyre was one of the first feminist critiques of the Victorian era. It scandalised and shocked society by presenting the reader with an independent woman who defied societal ideals of self-control. Through her depiction of Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea Rhys responds to Bronte’s feminist stance through a post-colonial lens 119 years later. Both novels are feminist works, however each author approaches feminist concerns in a manner

In Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys, culture causes belonging as well as insecurity. In this novel, characters from the Caribbean and England are put side by side to highlight how strong cultures affect those without one. Christophine and R hold strong ties to their identities through their ethnic background, while Antionette is left wondering, “‘who I am and where is my country and where do I belong’” (61). Rhys uses the binary opposition of these two contrasting characters to convey that people rely on their cultures for their identity and because of this, those who do not fit into a certain group have trouble defining themselves.