Reading Journal: Wide Sargasso Sea

Title: Wide Sargasso Sea
Author: Jean Rhys
Publication Date: October 1966
Genre: Postmodern Literature
N.B: Some ideas taken from the Penguin Modern Classics introduction by Angela Smith

Context

Jean Rhys

Wide Sargasso Sea is primarily known as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, giving a voice and background to the nameless character of Bertha Mason, Mr Rochester's 'mad' bride. Rhys was haunted by Brontë's portrayal of this character, drawing on her own past to sympathise with her plight. As a child Rhys lived in the West Indies during the final years of England's colonial height in the 1890s. She experienced first hand the tensions between a bid for pluralism and the exoticizing of Caribbean culture and she struggled with a sense of identity throughout her live, just as we see Antoinette (or Bertha) do in this novel. This struggle is depicted in the title of Wide Sargasso Sea as it refers to a body of water that lies between the West Indies and England, showing how both Rhys and Antoinette felt lost somewhere in the middle. Moreover, the sea was notoriously rough and difficult to navigate which can be seen as mimetic of the human situations in the novel and in Rhys' own life. Through her writing Rhys was attempting to humanise the character so suppressed and vilified in Jane Eyre, criticising the attitudes and situations that led to this portrayal. As a result not only is it easy to apply a biographical reading to the text but also many more critical readings. Wide Sargasso Sea explores the empire from a post colonialist perspective, challenging the white canon; it explores society from a feminist perspective, challenging the patriarchy and suppression of women; and it even examines events from a psychoanalytical perspective, exploring how an individuals psychology can be warped by their environment. What is key to the text throughout is that the reader is aware of how it ends and this sense of dèjà vu gives it a Gothic quality. Antoinette appears almost like a ghost in her own lifetime, revealing through a dream-like lens, tainted by Rhys' own experiences, the past that led to her demise.

Plot Overview

Part One

Narrated by Antoinette, the novel begins with her childhood in early 19th century Jamaica. The white daughter of ex-slave owners she lives with her mother and brother on the ruined Coulibri estate, the family's finances in ruins after the 1833 emancipation act. She is isolated even from her mother and her only friend, a black girl named Tia, unexpectedly turns against her. One day, however, the family receive visitors and among them is an Englishman- Mr Mason- who proceeds to marry Antoinette's mother. He restores Coulibri yet one night the black population rise up in protest and burn the estate, leaving Antoinette's brother dead, her mother's madness exposed and Antoinette herself badly injured. She recovers in the care of her Aunt Cora before being sent to live in a Convent where she remains until, at 17, Mr Mason returns to introduce her back into society as a 'civilised woman fit for marriage'.

Part Two

Antoinette marries an Englishman who remains nameless yet from Jane Eyre we know is Mr Rochester and it his voice that narrates this part of the novel. The couple honeymoon at an estate that belonged to Antoinette's mother and from the start the man begins to doubt his marriage, realising he knows nothing about Antoinette. Tensions arise between him and the servants, in particular Christophine, Antoinette's surrogate mother who has great power in the house. He then receives a letter from a Daniel Cosway, warning him that Antoinette's family has a history of insanity. From then on he begins to detect signs of this in Antoinette and distances himself from her.

Sensing that her husband is beginning to hate her, Antoinette asks Christophine for a love potion which the man drinks unknowingly and believes he has been poisoned. As a kind of revenge he sleeps with the servant girl Amelie in the room next to Antoinette so that she can hear. The next morning she leaves, only returning late at night seemingly completely mad. They have a heated argument where she pleads with him to stop calling her Bertha, something he seemed to adopt purely to assert power over her identity. The man resolves to leave Jamaica with Antoinette.

Part Three

The final part is narrated by Antoinette who is now locked away in the attic of her husband's house in England, under the watch of servant Grace Poole. She is violent and changeable with little sense of reality, haunted by the recurring dream that she takes the keys and sets the house on fire. The novel ends with the notion that she must act on this dream and, taking a candle, she begins to walk downstairs.

Narrative

The novel is narrated through a mismatch of various first person narratives, predominately Antoinette and her husband but also Grace Poole and Amelie. The same events are often told from differing perspectives at different points in the text and as a result there is a very precarious sense of reality. These narrative insecurities and inconsistencies reflect the turmoil of the character's mindsets as they struggle with their own identities, how they are viewed by others and how they should act. As a result there is the sense throughout the novel that the entire construction of reality is warped and the reader, just like the characters, can feel in places lost and unsure.

Characters

Antoinette

As a character Antoinette is difficult to read, appearing at different points in the novel as different things. There is a notion that she never really understands her own identity and so as a reader it is difficult to know who she 'truly' is. What we do see, however, is that her seeming insanity at the end of the novel is something that has gradually been forced upon her by the way she has been treated. In the final scene she sees herself in a mirror yet does not recognise the mad woman she sees, illustrating that the 'true' Antoinette is certainly not the figure who has been warped by years of isolation, ridicule and abuse. 

Rochester

Unnamed in Wide Sargasso Sea, Rochester's character is also very conflicted. Examined based on his actions alone he is an intensely bad character yet having seen events from his perspective in part two it is easier to understand the complexities of his nature. The Caribbean setting is alien and wild to him and instead of trying to embrace this he becomes increasingly 'English', placing a barrier between himself and the world his wife inhabits. This does not detract from the way he manipulates and abuses Antoinette, yet it is not simply an inherent evil in his nature that makes him behave this way, more the fact that he distances himself from the vulnerability of everything he doesn't understand and in the process becomes increasingly cold and condescending.

Others

• Annette Mason- her story mirrors her daughter's as she marries an Englishman (Mr Mason) yet is driven mad by his assumptions and demands.
• Christophine- on the surface a powerful force for good who tries to protect Antoinette, yet always an underlying notion of secrecy and fear categorised by her dealings in Obeah (spirit theft or voodoo).
• Pierre Cosway- Antoinette's brother.
• Godfrey and Myra- Servants at Coulibri.
• Tia- Antoinette's black friend who unexpectedly turns against her, a symbol of complete identity.
• Aunt Cora- seems to have Antoinette's best interests at heart but as a woman her influence is limited.
• Richard Mason- Antoinette's stepbrother who helps arrange her marriage and then refuses to help her at the end, another exploitative male figure.
• Sandi Cosway- Suggested he and Antoinette were in love yet his race was a barrier to their marriage.
• Amelie- Servant who insults Antoinette and sleeps with Rochester.
• Hilda and Baptiste- Servants at Granbois.
• Daniel Cosway- Sends the letter warning Rochester that Antoinette's family are mad.
• Grace Poole- Responsible for Antoinette at Thornfield, helps to make link to Jane Eyre explicit.

Themes/Motifs

Entrapment

• Contextual slavery overhangs the novel, as well as the racial tensions that lead on from this and a kind of willing amnesia as to what happened.
• Annette felt trapped in Coulibri after the death of her husband.
• Antoinette's parrot symbolic of entrapment- in a cage and when escapes cannot fly away, death by fire mirrors Antoinette's own death.
• Antoinette is mentally, and by the end physically, trapped in her marriage. Her literal entrapment at Thornfield is symbolic of the position of women in society- completely reliant on a father or husband.

Race

• The complexities of race relations in Jamaica in the 19th century are explored.
• Rhys examines the intricacies of race and hierarchy and how not just skin colour but also place of birth has an impact e.g. whites born in England (Rochester, Mason) are distinguished from white creoles born in the West Indies (Antoinette).
• Notion that the power balance is unstable e.g. Christophine's control in the house.

Femininity and Insanity

• Womanhood is intertwined with the notion of madness.
• Antoinette is encouraged to be chaste and pure and so her fiery and passionate nature is part of what categorises her as insane in the eyes of other characters.
• Women with strength viewed as dangerous (e.g. Christophine). Links to notion that women are almost a liability as with the story of Adam and Eve, the garden of Eden being mirrored in Coulibri- too beautiful, inhabitants driven out.

Obeah

• Literally "spirit theft", a kind of voodoo magic.
• Part of Christophine's mystery and power- a female strength that makes her both feared and ridiculed.
• Rochester fears it yet he practises a kind of colonial Obeah himself, forcing his control on Antoinette and manipulating her by calling her Bertha, describing her as a doll etc.

Opinions and Connections

Having read and enjoyed Jane Eyre I was a bit worried about reading this at the start and it did highlight some complications with Brontë's novel that I had never acknowledged. Nevertheless I found that it made me think a lot more about Bertha in Jane Eyre and how mad women are never really explained in literature, they are just assumed to be like this. As a result I found Wide Sargasso Sea a really interesting read and the setting of the West Indies was so amazingly described that Rhys really showed how it isn't just people, but also place, that influence a person.

In terms of connections, other than Jane Eyre of course, I found that I drew parallels between the way Antoinette's mentality deteriorated and the way Esther in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar develops. Both characters seem very fragile and the influence their surroundings and the people they interact with have on them is made clear by both authors. I felt like they also both dealt with the perception of society surrounding mental health and 'madness' which is really interesting as despite dealing with different time periods (Wide Sargasso Sea being set in the early to mid 1800s and Plath's novel in the 1950s) they both show how people with such issues are often not tried to be understood, instead viewed with a kind of detached fear.