The Presentation of Isolation in Jane Eyre and the Wide Sargasso Sea

In the novel, ‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Bronte, setting is used throughout the novel to illustrate the development in the character. The novel is revolved around five separate locations, ; the Reed family's home at Gateshead, the wretched Lowood School, Rochester's manor, Thornfield, the Rivers family's home at Moor House, and Rochester's rural retreat at Ferndean, these settings all play a very important part in Jane’s life as they all represent the development of Jane’s character and the different period’s of her eventful life.

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,

   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.

One of the most startling scenes in Jane Eyre is when finally it is revealed that Mr. Rochester has been keeping his wife in his attic, in an attempt to keep her away from the eyes of society, and of course, his and Jane's. Rochester tries to tell Jane that the reasoning behind the cruel act is that his wife is mad, is unstable and cannot be around others. The saddest part is that Bertha never asked for any of this to be brought upon her. Bertha Mason’s early life, actions and mystery illness pushed onto the path of loneliness and misery.

During Jane Eyre’s first encounter with the red room she feels extreme isolation. This feeling of isolation keeps reappearing throughout the novel when she is alone. It is especially emphasized at Lowood when she drops her slate, resulting in Mr. Brocklehurst targeting her as an outcast. Isolation is also emphasized during the night she leaves Thornfield, after Rochester tries to convince her to become an undignified mistress. In analyzing Eyre’s first encounter with the red-room, it is important to emphasize that she feels isolated and this feeling of isolation keeps reappearing in two key future events in the novel.

With part one and three told from Bertha’s perspective, the novel presents a more sympathetic and human image of Bertha, who was, according to the novel, born Antoinette Cosway in Jamaica. Bronte’s novel and Rhys’s prequel depict two different images of Bertha: one of spite, the other of fragile humanity, with Rhys’ novel rejecting the marginal status Jane Eyre portrays. Wide Sargasso Sea asks who is Bertha? Is she evil and insane? Or the victim of an oppressive society?

An example of the effects of Jane being contained within social boundaries is shown on page 86 of Jane Eyre, when Jane cries “Then, grant me at least a new servitude!”. She is longing for freedom, yet yearns for “servitude”. This situation shows how Jane feels contained by her way of life, but is set in her ways, because the way she has been treated her entire life is the way she knows how to live, even if she wishes freedom from it. Shortly after, on page 93, Jane is shown to be, though poor, a member of the gentry, when Bessie regales her of a time shortly after she went off to Lowood that a Mr. Reed showed up to Gateshead wishing to see Jane. Bessie describes him as looking quite like a gentleman, and states “I believe he was your father’s brother”. She goes on to mention where he went, presenting evidence that he was likely a wine merchant. This solidifies Jane in her path.

While scholarship on Jane Eyre tends to systematically associate fire with love and passion, the previous reading of Wide Sargasso Sea allows for a different interpretation of this motif within the novel. Interestingly, one of the first examples of this theme is the character of Helen Burns. Her name itself is connected to fire, and could be a way to foreshadow the end of the novel. More than foreshadowing, however, Helen is to Jane a foil of what Tia is to Antoinette. Jane too admires her friend’s freedom, but Helen’s freedom is spiritual when Tia’s is physical.

Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea follows the story of Antoinette Mason, who is widely known to mirror the character of Jane Eyre. In this novel, Antoinette, a white women with European descent born in West Indies during the post-emancipation era, struggles to fit into her surrounding and discover a sense of self. While most literary critics view Antoinette’s story as an example of someone who breaks free from society’s shackles that bind her and restrict her freedom, I believe this is a story of woman’s fall into the realms of insanity due to male superiority. Although this novel is successful in providing a backstory and painting a picture of an otherwise minor character in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, the protagonist herself may have failed

Jane narrates throughout Jane Eyre. Antoinette shares narration with her husband, the implied Mr Rochester and Grace Poole. Jane’s mastery of her narrative when considered in tandem with the partial control afforded to Antoinette exemplifies the amount of voice afforded each of them within the hegemonic colonial discourse. As a white, English female Jane is able to speak back against the empire as she is only one tier below the ideal—white, male, heterosexual—and as a native and child of Mother England, is allowed to be the captain of her own narrative. Antoinette is a creole and native of one an English colony, the West Indies is allowed only partial command as she is also only partially white, and therefore her narrative is to be read against or verified by those who form part of the empire: Grace Poole and the implied Mr Rochester. Discrepancies between autonomy provided to both Jane and Antoinette in terms of narration coincides with the power each is afforded within the colonially constructed culture they both

In the novels Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre, by Jean Rhys and Charlotte Bronte, the theme of isolation is used to contrast both Antoinette and Jane. In both novels, Jane and Antoinette all have to experience isolation which helps them by the end of the novels. In this essay, I will compare and contrast how Charlotte Bronte and Jean Rhys explain the theme of isolation through the lives of both Jane and Antoinette. The novels, Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea, portray Jane and Antoinette as being two isolated personalities who, despite their different lives both endure isolation.

One may come too close to the fire and let her demons consume her, leaving all but the ashes and dust. Others can overcome these obstacles and can wash away the burning flames of sadness. Antoinette is unable to control this fire, while Jane is able to wash away these restraints. According to Spivak, the concepts of “Self and Other” refers to how people are defined by who they are in relation to others; the “other” allows the Self to exist as empowered (Spivak cited in Rodenburg). In this essay, I will discuss how Antoinette, from Wide Sargasso Sea, and Jane, from Jane Eyre, both face similar challenges throughout their lives, but deal with their pains in different manners. I will argue that both Jane and Antoinette experience social

Isolation today is significantly different to the isolation that occurred in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea. Before, isolation was truthfully isolation, known as “social withdrawal”. Social isolates did not have freedom of any kind (there was no justice); as a result they acquired depression, learning disabilities, attention deficit, difficulty in making decisions, personality disorders and often even caused their death. Today instead, we have an isolation that is not 100% pure and brutal as the one in that period. With the passage of time, we became aware in some parts of the world that what happened before was socially harmful. It was thanks to the courageous models like Jane and Antoinette that we developed and improved primitive erroneous morals. There are many people today finding their voice and self-identity in society, they have the opportunity to do this because the world is slowly and progressively accepting more liberty of freedom and becoming more open-minded. In text citations that refer to their conception of justice and standing up to justice and isolation, are the

In the novels Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, the theme of loss can be viewed as an umbrella that encompasses the absence of independence, society or community, love, and order in the lives of the two protagonists. They deal with their hardships in diverse ways. However, they both find ways to triumph over their losses and regain their independence.

The discussion about intertextuality shows that both these two novels contain feminism thoughts, just as Wang Tao’s study has supported that Wide Sargasso Sea is the transcendence of Jane Eyre at the reflection of feminism thoughts. If further explore, we can see that enough researches have been done to dig out the hidden ideas in the two novels. Liu Liang has “made a comparison of womanhood in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea by probing into their different attitudes towards patriarchy and sex to find the difference between modern feminism and older feminism”(129). The different experiences of the two heroines indicates that Jane Eyre contains the traditional feminism that women should pursuit equality at work opportunity, while Wide Sargasso Sea