Thinking activity: Wide Sargasso Sea

 Thinking activity: Wide Sargasso sea 

Hello readers , 

Here I'm going to write a blog on the comparison between the wide Sargasso sea and Jane Eyre and the character of Jane with Antoinette by applying Feminism and postcolonialism. So, let's begin…

Wide Sargasso sea:

 

Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 novel by Dominican-British author Jean Rhys. The novel serves as a postcolonial and feminist prequel to Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre, describing the background to Mr. Rochester's marriage from the point-of-view of his wife Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress.

Jane Eyre:

Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë, published under the pen name "Currer Bell", on 16 October 1847, by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York.

Feminism in the novels:

In the novel Jane Eyre, Brontë reveals a firm stance on feminism by critiquing the assumptions about social class and gender. She also places the context within the postcolonialism era during the Victorian society age. Throughout the novel, Jane is subjected to some kind of oppression, where she has no financial or social freedom. The challenges she faces existed during the Victorian era, whereby women were considered powerless and as objects to serve their families and society. Jane fights gender hierarchies and class to ensure a status .

Jane is the epitome of femininity, the first instance where Jane starts to reveal feminism is when she fights with her cousin, blamed even if she was not the one at fault, and locked up for a night. She says to Mrs. Reed, “I’m not deceitful. If I were, I should say I loved you, but I declare, I don’t love you (Brontë, 2016).” Jane’s words seem mean; nonetheless, they are true. It is only fair to precisely tell others what one feels, instead of pretending as Mrs. Reed did even though she did not like Jane. The words are also ironic. In some way, Jane is trying to tell Mrs. Reed that she is deceitful as she had always acted as if she loved Jane and therefore being unfair.

Postcolonialism in the novels:

in the postcolonialism era, men considered women to be their appendages  Men would work, own business, and remain in public. However, only family life and marriage belonged to women. They had to depend on men spiritually, financially, and physically. For example, Adele and her mother demonstrate this idea, whereby they depend on Mr. Rochester for everything. Their dependence is further despised by the British people like Jane and Mr. Rochester consider them sensual and materialistic, characteristics associated with foreign women at the time.

Brontë’s work also demonstrates postcolonialism whereby Western culture is considered Eurocentric. This means that European values are universal and natural compared to Eastern ideas that are inferior . For instance, Bertha, a foreign woman, reflects the Eurocentric and dominant ideologies of England in the 19th century concerning race. Bertha is the racial other and colonized madwoman who threatens British men and women as embodied in Mr. Rochester and Jane. Jane presents Bertha Mason as Vampiric, who sucks away from Mr. Rochester’s innocence. According to Mr. Rochester, he was innocent until the savage woman took his goodness. Also, Jane, a British, cannot get married because Bertha has occupied the wife’s position, denying Jane’s identity. The situation shows how British people characterized and feared women and foreigners during postcolonialism. The fear was not because they thought the subjects were powerful, but because they considered them inferior and evil. The “blood-red” moon reflected in Bertha’s eyes represents her sexual potency, whereby Bertha refuses to be controlled. Her stature is almost equal to her husband’s. According to postcolonialism, Bertha’s death is meant as a sacrifice to restore British people’s superiority, whereby Mr. Rochester acquires freedom to marry Jane while Jane achieves her self-identity.

The Wide Sargasso Sea novel also portrays irony as the author tries to describe the idea of postcolonialism. Rhys wants readers to realize that being a casted woman is demanding. Therefore, with Antoinette’s Creole character, individuals have to understand that they cannot change their inevitable, and thus they should accept events as they turn out.

aspects of feminism and postcolonialism contributed a lot to the works of the 19th century. Rhys and Brontë reveal this as they reveal the representation of women in the Victorian era. The authors also utilize irony to develop feminism further and postcolonialism ideas. 

Comparison of the characters of Antoinette and Jane:

In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys focuses on developing a narrative history for Brontë’s character Bertha, one of few characters who are not given the opportunity to speak for themselves in Jane Eyre. Rhys’s text appears to function as a companion to Jane Eyre, rather than a rewriting of it, preserving key plot points, lines of text, and descriptions from Brontë’s text as she maps the skeletal fragments of Bertha’s recorded history onto the fleshed-out examination provided in Wide Sargasso Sea. Although Jane and Bertha have admittedly disparate lives and upbringings Rhys rather surprisingly seems to pull threads of Jane’s personal narrative into Bertha’s early life. 

Much as Jane ultimately finds a semblance of personal peace once she fully immerses herself in the routines of Lowood, so too does Bertha find comfort while shilded within the walls of the convent. How can this imposition of childhood similarity between Jean and Bertha be read when one considers the stark distinctions in most other aspects of their lives? That is to say, although the trajectories of Jean and Bertha seem to momentarily meet in this shared junction, they quickly resume their polarization. Does Rhys mean for us to read Bertha’s eventual slip into psychosis as a result of or as an occurrence in spite of the specificity of her geographic location, familial history. 

Similarly of interest regarding identity in Wide Sargasso Sea is the renaming of Bertha in the text. Although she begins the text as Antoinetta, a decision on Rhys’s behalf that seems to delay the synching of the texts, as insanity sets in, so too does the overwhelming use of the name Bertha as a means of referring to the character. Although both Bertha and Antoinetta are “given names”, they seem to represent two entirely distinct people. How does this process of renaming work in regards to Bertha’s character? What is the relationship between this bifurcation of identity and the many other identity divisions experienced by Bertha ? 

Although Jane certainly enjoys nature, evoking it both in her artwork and during periods of change in her life, it appears to take a more limited role in the overall text of Jane Eyre than the descriptions of and immersion of characters in the tropical natural spaces of Wide Sargasso Sea. Though this is surely primarily a means of centering the text in Jamaica and Dominica, the lush landscape is considered in depth both by Antoinetta and the Mr. Rochester figure of Rhys’s text. Is Rhys utilizing nature to ends distinct from those of Brontë in Jane Eyre? 

Thank you…

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