Rhys Ashworth

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

1. Highlight one character with whom you can identify. One character with whom I can identify in my selected work, the novel Wide Sargasso Sea, would be Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress who is once captivated by the lush Jamaican landscape only to be repelled by it. Antoinette is a very sympathetic character. She grew up without the love of a mother and is constantly gossiped about due to the stigma of madness that surrounds her family. We see that she is hesitant in marrying Rochester at first

Jane Eyre -Spark notes Chapter I Jane is an orphan. She was adopted by Mr. John Reed, yet he died when she was a year old. One of his last wishes was for his wife, Mrs. Reed, to look after Jane. This she does out of duty, but she treats Jane as less than a servant. She despises Jane for her quiet and creative character. Jane takes great pleasure from reading books, and is very smart for her age of ten; Mrs. Reed secretly feels intimidated by her. A child of a “more sociable and child-like disposition

Sargasso Sea      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)

) though he does portray the `stiff upper lip attitude of British males peers. 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. 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

Antoinette’s and Rochester’s struggles pushes these characters to a new extreme in which it pushes Rochester to lock his wife in the attic and Antoinette to “write [her] name in fire red” (53) by the end of the novel. Throughout Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys magnifies the themes of madness and power by analyzing Rochester’s and Antoinette’s interactions with one another to ultimately teach a lesson that can be interpreted in many different ways. Their downfalls are created by the catastrophic conflicts

Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea are the novel in different centuries and came from different ideology background. However, there are many elements in the use of literature can be compared such as the writing style, characters (Jane, Antoinette;Berta, and Rochester), and the symbolic. Wide Sargasso Sea by Rhyn is the prequal from Jane Eyre, a 19th Century novel. Jane Eyre by Bronte sister is the first feminist english literature because in the story Jane Eyre considers herself equal to men which

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

relationship with their mothers. However, the mothers are not able to reconcile due to their own reasons. Mrs. Reed cannot forgive Jane because Jane was an unwanted burden and Annette loved her son Pierre more than Antoinette. In their stories, Brontë and Rhys indicate that sometimes despite multiple attempts by daughters the mother-daughter relationship cannot be formed due to the mothers’

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