Sargasso Sea Antoinette

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

Jane and Antoinette are about ten when introduced in the novel. Their fathers have died when they’re young, leaving both girls unwanted by the women rearing them. Antoinette's leave with her mother, after her father dies of drunkenness. Jane’s mother died when Jane was young, so she lives with the Reed’s family at Gateshead Hall, Mrs. Reed had raised her, but she treats Jane like a stranger and cold-hearted way. However, in Wide Sargasso Sea, Annette is Antoinette’s mother, but she treats her as an outsider. Young Antoinette’s like

Her creole relation and her relations with the black make her a very diverse person. Rochester on the other hand is seen as the typical white man, seeking power. There is some aristocrat and gentlemanly like nature with Rochester but it’s all a ploy in his journey to success. Antoinette possesses Afro-Caribbean culture without a doubt instilled in her by all of the maids she’s been around all her life, more specifically Christophine the woman who practically raised her and taught her moral values and built character. Antoinette then has a cultural clash between English and Caribbean values. In an attempt to heal the marriage, Antoinette asks Christophine for advice regarding her failing marriage Christophine advices her to leave him, she says, “a man don’t treat you good, pick up your skirt and walk out. Do it and he come after you.” This is different than what Antoinette thinks. She wants to stay next to her husband giving herself false hope that everything will work itself out. She has an idolized and unrealistic view of England, she thinks of it has something extraordinary and luxurious, way different from her life in Jamaica. Antoinette being raised in a different approaches then most and has had a lot of different views making her a very diverse person. She is culturally better in the sense that her upbringing has made her a much more passion filled and interesting woman.

Otherness is a state of isolating an individual because of the subversiveness they are considered to have within the society. The female and child otherness is a prominent issue in the novels, Jane Eyre (1847), and Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), though the stories were fashioned in different periods. There is a depiction of extensively different social, political and societal sceneries. Conversely, regardless of their variances, expositions of youthful, female otherness and aspects as regards selfhood could be associated to the writers’ predictions of the dangerous female other. According to numerous critics, Jane Eyre’s novel offers Jane as a social stranger. This marginalization leads to the otherness of Jane because she subverts conventional,

From the story of her life we get a better understanding of her role as a character in Jane Eyre and perhaps most of the mystery we have is cleared up. Wide Sargasso Sea is a very creative literary piece that provides depth to a character whose story would have gone untold.

In Jean Rhys’s novel Wide Sargasso Sea, Edward Rochester can be considered as an embodiment of patriarchal and colonial oppression. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, patriarchal means, “relating to, characteristic of, or designating a society or culture in which men tend to be in positions of authority and cultural values and norms are seen as favouring men…” (“Patriarchal”) moreover colonial means “of, belonging to, or relating to a colony…” (“Colonial”). In addition, oppression means “prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or exercise of authority, control, or power; tyranny; exploitation” (“Oppression”). In order to discuss Edward’s role in patriarchal and colonial forms of oppression, his marriage, and emotional connection to Antoinette, symbolic representation, and cultural differences will be analysed and discussed, focusing on any evidence of both forms of oppression.

In her article, "Woman as Storyteller in Wide Sargasso Sea" Valerie Roper asserts that Antoinette is much more than just a narrator. Antoinette tells the story of her life but also illuminates the plight and circumstances of women as increasing self awareness dawns. The duality of Antoinette's identity represents the war within women as they struggle to assimilate their own desires, beliefs, and values with those of the paternalistic society in which they live.

He suffers a certain paranoia around Antoinette and her 'family', and this paranoia can only be truly revealed using his thoughts. Rochester, as a white male, does not connect with his surroundings, he sees it as alien, and to overcome this infamiliarity, he asserts his power and regains control over his wife. For Antoinette, her first person narrative account of her story is a key way of the reader being able to understand her pains as a lonely Creole woman. Both Wide Sargasso Sea and The FBW’s poems give a strong voice to otherwise marginalized women and transforms them both from original tragic demise into a kind of triumphant heroism.

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.

Rochester is a man who has expectations for everything. When his search for love is not met, he may have to turn to short, meaningless relationships, involving mistresses. In Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester admits to having relationships with women from different regions of the world. On page 313, Rochester states: “I sought my ideal of a woman amongst English ladies, French countesses, Italian signoras, and German grafinnen. I could not find her… Yet I could not live alone; so I tried the companionship of mistresses.” {Committing adultery and ultimately attempting bigamy goes against not only moral standards, but legals ones as well. Usually, the byronic hero has sexual dominance and may find themselves going against laws. This trait is imperative because it makes it easier to identify the character closely related to that of a byronic hero.} Though, having a mistress can be simple work, keeping it a secret comes with the need of knowledge and

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

In Wide Sargasso Sea, the main character is Antoinette Cosway. She is a young Creole woman who comes from a dysfunctional family. Her father, Alexander Cosway, dies before his character could be introduced. He was a former slave owner who had a plantation, Coulibri Estate, and was very wealthy. His name was tainted because his fondness of alcohol and he recklessly spent his money. People visited her father, Alexander Cosway, when he was alive, but not her or her mother, Annette. Antoinette asked her mother “why so few people came to see [them,] she told [Antoinette] that the road from Spanish Town to Coulibri Estate where [they] lived was very bad and that road repairing was now a thing of the past” (Rhys 15). In that quote,

Wide Sargasso Sea is divided into three parts. Throughout the whole novel, gender discrimination is the most severe problem in Antoinette’s life and it mainly reflects the communication between Antoinette and Rochester. Rochester uses absolute European standard to measure all things he see in Jamaica. He thinks Antoinette’s appearance is attractive but it is strange to his England or European standard of beauty. It looks like Rochester regards Antoinette as a commodity instead of a woman. He makes comments on Antoinette’s appearance, which is very rude. Antoinette is like a toy for Rochester. She has to follow the orders of his husband. Rochester gets marriage with Antoinette, but he doesn’t love her at all. Just like he said, “The woman I am going to marry is meaningless to me. She has no relationship with

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is a classic Victorian novel that shows the “epic love story” between the heroine Jane and Mr Rochester. However, if a reader was to delve deeper and look between the lines, they would realise that Bronte’s novel in fact covers a wide range of societal issues circulating in 1840’s England. I am going to be exploring the connotations of colonialism, the blame of the mentally ill, and the submissiveness of females that are described in chapter 27, when Mr Rochester explains to Jane who his wife is and her backstory.