Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

 

                                       Wide Sargasso Sea 

                                                              - Jean Rhys

Introduction :-

Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 novel by Dominican-British author Jean Rhys. Jean Rhys (originally Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams) was a Caribbean novelist who wrote in the mid 20th century. Her first four novels were published during the 1920s and 1930s, but it was not until the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966 that she emerged as a significant literary figure. A "prequel" to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea won a prestigious WH Smith Literary Award in 1967.

Wide Sargasso Sea consists of two parts. It is a visceral response to Charlotte Bronte's treatment of Mr. Rochester's 'mad' first wife, Bertha, in her classic Victorian novel Jane Eyre. Jean Rhys revels the horrifying reality that might lie behind a man's claim that a woman is mad, and humanises Bronte's grotesque invention, the now-archetypal and heavily symbolic 'madwoman in the attic'.

Questions and Answers :- 

1】 Write a brief note on Caribbean cultural representation in " Wide Sargasso Sea.

Ans. :- 

In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys deals with identity through two major characters: Antoinette and her husband, Rochester. The novel compares English and Caribbean identities and explores the effect of conflicting identities within these various characters. Through this exploration, Rhys explores the idea that identity is both something that is inherited and acquired.

It is important to note the meaning of the title of the novel. The Sargasso Sea embodies the conflict Antoinette feels about her opposing Caribbean and English identities. The Sargasso Sea is a calm stretch of sea that is surrounded by some of the strongest and deadliest currents in the world. The Sargasso Sea is so calm and its surrounding currents so strong that any seaweed or debris deposited into the Sargasso Sea is very unlikely to escape. This embodies the experience of Antoinette, she is caught between two cultures and becomes the depository of differing cultural characteristics, such as when Rochester starts molding her into his concept of an English woman, and when Antoinette appropriates characteristics of the black Caribbean culture into her own identity.

Antoinette is a part of the European white culture. She's inherited from her family and the Caribbean culture she was born into. Antoinette both fears and admires the Caribbean culture and the sense of identity that their black servants have. Antoinette appropriates a Caribbean identity into her own identity, but the black servants and other Caribbeans she encounters do not accept her, rather they see her as a threat. Antoinette describes to Rochester how a girl would sing “a song about a white cockroach. That’s me. That’s what they call all of us who were here before their own people in Africa sold them to slave traders. Antoinette is rejected by other white Europeans because of her family’s financial status and the fact that they are Creole.

Antoinette further explores her Caribbean identity through her friendship with Tia. Antoinette claims she wants to be like Tia and sees a kind of strength and confidence in Tia that Antoinette lacks. When Tia steals Antoinette’s money and pretty dress, Antoinette is forced to wear Tia’s dirty, old dress. Antoinette and Tia’s roles reverse; this symbolizes the ability to acquire identities, in this case Antoinette attempting to take on a Caribbean identity and reject her English identity. When Tia throws a rock at Antoinette, it represents the Caribbeans rejecting Antoinette from Caribbean culture and Antoinette losing the Caribbean identity she grew up with. Rhys described how tightly bound Tia was with Antoinette’s identity, Antoinette claiming “we had eaten the same food, slept side by side, bathed in the same river. As I ran I thought, I will live with Tia and I will be like her,”  and Antoinette was looking at Tia as through a “looking glass,”  implying that Tia represented the Caribbean half of Antoinette’s identity. This event signifies Antoinette’s attempt to abandon a black/Caribbean identity and attempt to create a more white/Creole identity as she moves to Spanish Town.

Even though Rochester despises the Caribbean and its culture, he unknowingly becomes a part of and practices obeah. When Antoinette begs Christophine to make a love potion for Rochester, Rochester discovers this and effectively turns the obeah spell against Antoinette. This suggests that even though Rochester works so hard to separate himself from the Caribbean, his involvement with obeah inevitably leaves a mark of Caribbean identity on him. This also supports the idea that identity is something that can be acquired, even unknowingly. However, Christophine warns that if white people were to use obeah it would not work the same way as if a black Caribbean has used obeah. So even though Rochester has acquired some kind of Caribbean identity, it is only a perversion of a true Caribbean identity.

Antoinette adopts a Caribbean identity and feels ostracized by her English peers and sense of English identity. Rochester has a strong sense of English identity and attempts to erase all traces of Caribbean identity in Antoinette, and in the process even partakes in Caribbean culture himself. Antoinette’s fabrication of identities and Rochester’s later manipulation leads Antoinette to have no identity and she eventually slips into madness.

2】 Write a note on Rascism in "Wide Sargasso Sea".

Ans. :-                                       

Jean Rhys was given a copy of Jane Eyre by her husband, Leslie Smith. She was affected by the story of Bertha Antoinetta Mason Rochester and she wanted to give her a life beyond what was expressed in Jane Eyre("Jean Rhys.") Since she was born and raised in the West Indies, she was familiar with the rascial discrimination that was ramptan among islanders.

 

The time of the Emancipation was a shock to the system for white English families which living in Jamaica. Suddenly they were without laborers, without money and most importantly without the status that was associated with being a slave owner. Being a slave owner had guaranteed them at least the forced respect of their slaves, now they were denounced and humiliated at every turn. The lines were clearly drawn between whites and blacks after emancipation, they were totally against of each other. Creole whites and English whites were against each other and Jamaican Creole whites were against any Creole whites who were not from Jamaica-such as Antoinette and her mother who were of Martinique heritage (savory 136).

The separation of whites is illustrated in the first lines of the novel, when Antoinette tells us "They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks. The Jamaican ladies had never approved of my mother..... She was my father's second wife, far too young for him they thought, and worse still, a Maritinique girl"(Rhys15). Antoinette further explains the discrimination she experienced at the hands of black children, " I never looked at any strange negro. They hated us. They called us white Cockroaches. Let sleeping dogs lie. One day a little girl followed me singing, ' Go away white cockroach, go away, go away(Rhys 20).

Antoinette had become habituated to spend her time alone, but their servant Christophine introduced her to the daughter of her friend, Tia, to be a playmate. They both spend their time together, swimming in the mornings and relaxing in the afternoons, and it seemed broken by their friendship. The argument originates when Tia takes three pennies form Antoinette, because of a bet the two couldn't sattle. Antoinette calls to Tia, " Keep them then, you cheating nigger.... I can get more if I want to"(Rhys 22). At this point Tia begins to belittle Antoinette and her mother calling her a "poor like beggar" and telling her there are "plenty of white people in Jamaica. Real white people, they got gold money. They don't look at[you], nobody see them come near [you]. Old time white people nothing but white niggers now, and black nigger better than white nigger"(Rhy 22). This example shows exactly how deep the discrimination ran within the families of Jamaica, these were not adults expressing hatred; these were children speaking callously to one another. Children who should be able to play without judging and determining the value of a person by their fortune or skin color or heritage,have learned these ideas and the words to express hatred at a young age.

The ultimate expression of this deep-seated hatred comes when a group of black men and women descend on Coulibri Estate. They begin by shouting insults at the family and ultimately set the house on fire (Rhys 35). Fire destroys their home and all that they have been in the past. While escaping the grounds, Antoinette sees Tia in the crowd she decides that she will run to her. She thinks she can stay with Tia and in that way will not have to face the many changes coming to her life. But as she approaches, Tia throws a stone, which strikes her in the head (Rhys 41). This is the end of her time at Coulibri, her life will be forever changed from this moment on. Her brother, Pierre, ultimately succumbs to injury from the fire and her mother retreats from her and begins her descent into madness.

3】Write a note on character of Christophine.

Ans. :-

Chrisrophine is the one of the important character of the novel. As a surrogate mother, Christophine introduces Antoinette to the black culture of the Caribbean and instills in her a sensitivity to nature and belief in the practices of obeah. It is Christophine's voice that opens the novel, as she explains Annette's exclusion from Spanish Town society; Christophine is the voice of authority. She explains the world to Antoinette and explains Antoinette to the readers. With her words gliding from a French patois to a Jamaican dialect and back into English, her command of language corresponds with the power of her words and her ability to invoke magic. She seems Omniscient, intimately linked with the natural and tropical world and attuned to animal and human behavior. 

    

Christophine, much like Antoinette and her mother, is an outsider. Coming from Martinique, she dresses and speaks differently from the Jamaican blacks. She is a servant, but, unlike the other black servants who live at Coulibri, she remains loyal to the Cosway women when the family's fortunes dwindle—an alliance at which the other servants sneer.Like Antoinette and her mother, Christophine becomes the subject of cruel household gossip, although she still commands some household respect because of her knowledge of magic.

A wedding present from the old Mr. Cosway to Annette, Christophine is a commodified woman, but is still fiercely self-willed. She provides a contrast to Annette in that she exercises complete independence from men and implicitly distrusts their motives. When Mr.Rochester arrives at Granbois, he immediately senses Christophine's disdain and he associates her with all that is perverse and foreign about his new Caribbean home and his indecipherable  wife.

A threat to Rochester's English privilege and male authority, Christophine calmly monitors his attempts to assert dominance. She instructs Antoinette that "woman must have spunks to live in this wicked world." Christophine adopts an increasingly assertive role in protecting Antoinette when Rochester begins to challenge his wife's sanity. Ultimately, Christophine advises Antoinette to leave her increasingly cruel husband, citing her own independence as an example to emulate. Having had three children by three different fathers, Christophine remains unmarried, saying "I thank my God. I keep my money. I don't give it to no worthless man." Christophine's final confrontation with Rochester establishes her as Antoinette's more lucid spokeswoman.

4】 Write a note on narrative technique of Wide Sargasso Sea.

Ans. :- 

In Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys neglects the linear autobiographical narrative, as in Jane Eyre, preferring the trisect form where parts one and three are in Antoinette's own voice with a gap of Rochester's narration between them. This allows Rhys to open out the narrow view of events we have in Brontë's novel and gives the reader an awareness of cultural differences, motivation and psychology of both the characters and sympathy for both. By giving both narratives Rhys is allowed an innovative base to explore each character's mentality and the relationship becomes the mainspring of the novel as they become caught in a tangle of resentment, rumour, history and betrayal.

Through the two points of view she creates a world of oppositions, contrasts and parallels; the patois and simple childlike tone of Antoinette compared to the deliberate, educated and imperial tone of Rochester. Culture is set against culture; "She called the ajoupa, I the summer house". There are different levels of awareness as Rochester desperately tries to find the secret of the place and Antoinette hides her past. By interrupting Antoinette's narrative with Rochester's the full effect of their relationship is starkly portrayed. The contrast of the adolescent "I will write my name in fire red" and the shadowy insubstantial "ghost" in Thornfield intensifies the sense of loss and destruction the relationship causes and heightens the tragedy of the novel and Antoinette's demise.

As the split narrative shows up their divisions in the same way it also shows up the similarities of their positions. They are both vulnerable outsiders. Antoinette is forced to go to England by a dominating force, and this same force has also been compelled to go to Jamaica. Where Antoinette is rejected by her lunatic mother, so Rochester is rejected by his father: both are rejected in favour of a brother. From the two points of view the reader may learn how these rejections have had similar effects - they are hurt, vulnerable and fear their passions and are hesitative to trust others, practising "caution ... silence and coldness". Rochester is later shocked by the force of his desire for Antoinette and his passion takes a dangerous and threatening turn "Desire, Hatred, Life and Death come very close in the darkness ... " (p.79)

Revelations of the past haunt them as Daniel's letter arrives, it cuts through Rochester's narrative and causes him to assume a distance and they become estranged "This brought me to my senses". He empties himself of "mad conflicting emotions" and masters the situation. Rhys therefore manages to show Rochester as implicated in the same mad passion and violence that he attributes to 'Bertha'. The reader sees the effect of this coldness as Antoinette's narrative is inserted. She is desperate for his love, he is the substitute for her life and prepared to go to any lengths to recapture him "there must be something else I can do". Whilst we feel sympathy for Antoinette there is also a certain amount allowed for Rochester "She had left me thirsty ... longing for what I had lost before I found it".

The structure of the narrative allows Jean Rhys to explore the nature of madness and perception. She charts the seeds of instability in childhood, the effect of Rochester and the workings of the mind and its externalised form of madness. From Rochester we only receive a disturbed and distorted image of Antoinette. The novel is a patchwork of various first-person narratives, told directly to the reader (Antoinette, Rochester) or told to another character (Grace Poole). Moreover, the narratives often relate the same events from different perspectives. 

5】Evaluate the Wide Sargasso Sea with the perspective of post-colonialism.

Ans. :- 

Postcolonialism is a twentieth century-cultural, intellectual, political and literary movement, post-colonialism focuses on the direct effects of colonization on both the colonized and the colonizer. It relates to some issues as orientalism, Otherism, national identity, the subaltern, and hybridity. Post colonial criticism consists of reading colonial texts either written in or after colonization. It offers re-reading to texts that carry racist or colonial undertones such as Heart of Darkness, Jane Eyre and A Passage to India, post-colonial criticism is also concerned with the question of the identity. The previously colonized people try to form a new national identity for themselves, other than the image given to them by the colonizer. 

Rhys' work offers a retelling of part of Bronte's novel with specific attention paid to the largely negative effects of European colonization on the culture of the Caribbean. Post colonial writing attempts to revise or correct often-accepted European made historical details by providing accounts from the perspective of the colonized peoples - generally repressed minority groups. In this case, Rhys gives voice to the Bronte's Creole madwoman, who was presented as demonic and bestiarchy by Bronte, a character she sympathetically reconfigures as Antoinette. 

The vision of Bertha/Antoinette as an insane offspring from a family plagued by madness is no longer rational to the  reader. By imagining Antoinette's history before being locked in the attic, Rhys calls into question the racial characterization of her literary predecessor. In this vein, Antoinette's namless English husband (Bronte's Rochester) represents the powerful colonizer, whose imperialist and patriarchal oppression causes Antoinette's madness. The destruction of Thornfield Hall occures in both novels; however, Rhys epitomizes the fire as a liberating experience for Antoinette, as Thornfield Hall represents domestic ideas of Britishness.

                      

With the impact of second wave postcolonialism, the postcolonial writer started to write for a specific purpose in literature. They used the language of mainstream power and aiming at same target. Wide Sargasso Sea is such an attempt to exert a previously silenced voice using the mainstream methods and language with the basic purpose of constituting a cultural self for the formarly suppressed voice of the Creole peoples. Jean  Rhy applies the customs, ways and tradition of the center, that is Charlotte Brontte's Jane Eyre, to tell the story of the other, the periphery. 

The point of view that was misjudged, disregarded and silenced in Jane Eyre now turns out to be the basic key perception in Wide Sargasso Sea, in which the story of other is chiefly displayed. In her postcolonial reply, Rhys rejects the imposing impirialist ways and methods of fiction writing to identify the repressed ones, because postcolonialism " wants to disrupt, disassemble or deconstruct the kind of logic, ideologies of the West."

The Wide Sargasso Sea is an inevitable postmodern and post colonial novel. It is perfectly written as a reply to Charlotte Brontte's Jean Eyre. By her deconstructionist method , Rhys skillfully present the theme, characters and general plotline of Jane Eyre, she utilized all the blessings of parody and pastiche method of a postmodern novel, which marks Wide Sargasso Sea as a flawless postcolonial parody of Charlotte Brontte's Jean Eyre. Rhys gives voice to the intentionally silenced Jane Eyre characters with a post colonial attempt to unearth the other side of the related character and the story. The mad woman, Bertha Mason the first wife of Edward Rochester who was a silenced character of Bronte. Who is coming from a Creole origin and displayed to the readers as a woman with a dark and horrific image through the writer's intention of othering, becomes Antoinette Cosway, a key figure of Wide Sargasso Sea, in which the othered, repressed and silenced " mad woman's" story is retold to unearth the orientalist attitude of Brontte's story towards the West Indies and the Creole culture.

The story retold in Wide Sargasso Sea seems to be a pathetic love in her marriage to an Englishman, through a close post colonial reading of the novel several crucial cultural and political orientalist attitudes towards creole people, Europe's alternative and potential "Other", are depicted. Rhys creates Antoinette Cosway, a parallel character to Brontte's character Bertha Mason with the intention of creating a naive character from the horrific mad woman in the attic. 

In Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys confronts the possibility of another side to Jane Eyre. The character of the mad Creole is given voice, dignity, identity and right to tell the reader "her side of the story". The protagonist knows that the fate of her mother and the tragic history of her all family can be misjudged and misunderstood by others. That is why the heroine assures her husband " There is always the other side, Always."

Accordingly, to be able to focus on the view points of the silenced other, in Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys replies to Bronte's impirialist way of fiction narration from a one fixated White English point of view, through several points of view and narration. In Wide Sargasso Sea, as opposed to the first person narration of Jane Eyre, Antoinette, Mr. Rochester, Grace Poole all serves as narrators throughout the story, which gives the readers an opportunity to grasp the questionable "reality" via three different points of view.

Antoinette revolts against all those subjugating factors of her life in her recurring dreams in which she sets fire to the whole attractive British prison house. The subaltern, like Antoinette, has the dream and desire of protesting against all the power structures that captivates, devalues and decreases their own identity. May be one day they wake up from their solicitous dreams and feel like acting out their desires of freedom and a self-identity, just as Antoinette at the end of Wide Sargasso Sea.

6】How nature is playing an important part in "Wide Sargasso Sea", illustrate your argument with a description of islands.

Ans. :-

The environmental crisis has attracted the attentions of many scientists, politicians, and writers in the 20th century as nature has her own special ways of showing her objection in natural disasters like earthquakes, draughts, and global warming. Nowadays, human beings arrive at this conclusion that they face serious environmental crisis. Infact, they are paying back what they had done to the environment earlier. Man had treated nature violently and thoughtlessly, now he has to bear the sad and ominous repercussions of his cruelty and indifference. 

As an environmentally-oriented work, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) has met all the criteria that are proposed by Lawrence Buell in his book The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture (1995).Rhys incorporates elements of nature in the novel but in Wide Sargasso Sea nature and natural imageries are no longer there to heighten literary effect of the work rather they are things in themselves. Bertha is connected with nature. So, nature is not represented as only a setting in the novel rather it serves as a metaphoric place in its own and she can identify herself with nature.

The novel shows the symbiotic nature of the relationship between human and nonhuman in Caribbean land. The novel suggests that Caribbeans are more nature-conscious and animal-conscious as opposed to the English man that comes from an industrial country. These people hold nature and natural elements dear and near to themselves. Nature shapes their life and nurtures them and as grateful human being they grab each opportunity to mention it. They also use nature and animals to enrich their language and expressions: 

I thought that when I saw him and spoke to him I would be wise as

serpents, harmless as doves.(Wide Sargasso Sea,P.161) He had the eyes of a dead fish.(Wide Sargasso Sea, P.44) He wouldn't go. He would probably try to force us out. I've learned to let sleeping curs lie, she said. 

       

    

The title of Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)is so telling that this piece of literature is very much concerned with the nature and natural elements and also with the inside nature of human beings. The harmony between nature and human world can be one of its special aims.Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) is totally conscious of the fact that human beings are destroying nature by their aspirations and activities, so nature is glorified and cherished here. Nature is presented as an active participant in the novel. Those who respect nature and preserve it in the novel are of superior moral and ethical value but those who are against it are depicted as evil characters.

The place is another important element in the novel and this act of changing place and moving from one house to another affected Bertha as she considers herself belonging to Coulibri. She feels herself totally at home in Coulibri when she says that:

I am safe. There is the corner of the bedroom door and the friendly furniture. There is the tree of life in the garden and the wall green with moss. The barrier of the cliffs and the high mountains.And thebarrier of the sea. I am safe. I am safe from strangers. (Wide Sargasso Sea, p. 24)

She seeks her solace in nature. She is grown up in nature and it is her sanctuary. She is in such a perfect harmony that in a scene she firmly believes that any further movement would interfere with this harmonious relationship:

       

When I was safely home I sat close to the old wall at the end of the  garden. It was covered with green moss soft as velvet and I never wanted to move again. Everything would be worse if I moved.(Wide Sargasso Sea, pp. 20-21)

Nature is not only her mother and her sole protector but also all of her elements like fire, wind and animals are sources of comfort to her. This point is evident when she says “I wished I had a big Cuban dog to lie by my bed and protect me "(Wide Sargasso Sea, p. 34). At the end of novel, she knows for sure that once again nature and her elements come to rescue her as she says "there was a wall of fire protecting me" (Wide Sargasso Sea, p. 170) or when she thinks that wind can help her to fly "the wind caught my hair and it streamed out like wings. It might bear me up, I thought, if I jumped to those hard stones" (Wide Sargasso Sea, p.170).The metaphor of light and darkness in the novel was used to show lack of knowledge and the search for it and Bertha finally manages to steal the fire. Fire is shown as a disaster to the patriarch and colonial agent and a hero as it sets Bertha free from pain and sufferings.

The black people have their special curse for white Creole and again an animal is bring to the fore as Antoinette says " They called us white cockroaches." (Wide Sargasso Sea, p. 20) When Antoinette's half-brother wants to show that his father was such an arrogant man he says "he walks like he own the earth."(Wide Sargasso Sea, p. 111) as earth is the most precious things in the world and owning it is makes anybody proud. Even Mr. Mason believes that they pay too much tribute and respect to nature" I leaned on the railing and saw hundreds of fireflies – ‘Ah yes, fireflies in Jamaica, here they call a firefly La belle."(Wide Sargasso Sea, p. 73)

Rhys shows that how the ownership of land is actually a by-product of dominating a woman. She creates a harmony between woman and nature. As a result of this harmony, Antoinette can be dubbed as representative of nature. As a man and a person from an industrial country, Mr. Rochester is so disconnected with nature that he sees only woman and nature as commodities. However, Bertha represents both nature and woman that is exploited and dominated by a man and Mr. Rochester embodies the western man that exploited nature and woman by virtue of the supposed superiority of his race and gender. 

Rhys embodies nature in her works through various characters. She draws on an analogy between mother earth and woman to show how characters treated them. Mother earth is a female character that is exploited by masculinity and patriarchy and both take the plights of women, nature and black for granted.Men fail to develop a thing in their bosoms unlike Mother Earth and women. It seems as if they hold some kind of grudges against women and nature and patriarchy is an option to fulfill this inability. Antoinette as the representative of nature gives Mr. Rochester the ability to become rich, to appear as a gentleman in the eye of Jane Eyre. She is just like the mother earth that exploiters suck her essence to maintain the superiority of their races.

He separates her from nature as she is a part of it and transferring her to the city. She is now absent from the society through patriarch who renames her first as Bertha and then as mad woman in the attic. In the same way that rain and flood are used to fill dams, here a white male channels a Creole's girl ability to bring heirs for him and then imprisons her as a caged animal but the mad woman in the attic rejects his attempt to civilize her.

Bertha's imprisonment and her rebellious act of setting house on fire can be read in different lights. In Foucauldian term, her madness is in fact a label to term her as abnormal. This provides the oppressor with a legitimization to keep her under control. The prison serves to show the power of patriarchy over a woman and how patriarchy drives her to go mad. However, as power does not belong to a single person and tends to circulates, It can a come from different directions and find its way from above and below of this net of power. So, when she set house on fire, she proves her true essence that presents her as a powerful figure that can exert her power. As the agent of nature, a natural element like fire comes to rescue her. From Said's view, here patriarchy looks down on her as inferior creature. However, Rhys empowers her by giving voice to this silent figure.The ending shows the preservation and survival of nature is achieved through the omission of patriarchy.

7】 Critically evaluate Wide Sargasso Sea with feminist approach.

Ans.:-

In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys illuminates the story unheard voice of the classic novel Jane Eyre: Bertha Rochester, Mr. Rochester's insane wife. Instead of showing her as a monster in the attic, Rhys changes Bertha's name to Antoinette and gives her a new identity and story. Jean Rhys writes her novel in the "female" phase according to Showalter's theory. It is in this period that woman writers feel free to reflects themselves in their writings as examplified by Wide Sargasso Sea challenging the long set world of the canonical Jane Eyre. Rhys' adventure as a woman writer stems from her interest in reading the classical books.

Hence, she reads Bronte's Jane Eyre as a reader and accordingly, decides to write a history to Edward Rochester's mad wife Bertha Antoinette Mason and gives her a voice to express herself. As part of the female literary tradition, Rhys looks for a model to base her writing upon and she has Charlotte Bronze's classical novel. She might have needed the female support and solidarity from previous writer during the process  of creation and felt the "anxiety of authorship", in Gilbert and Gubar's words (2010). She makes an extraordinary interpretation of Jane Eyre and creates a post colonial prequel to the canonical work, which once again conforms the intertextual nature of two different cultures and periods.  

Despite Rhys Creole background and Bronze's English origin, they narrate the suffering of women in distinct contexts because they are both women writing about the universal female problems. Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea can be regarded as a deconstruction of the original text in that it represents Edward as a colonial and misogynist personality in contarst with Bronze's depiction of the Romantic and victimised character, Rochester talking about his wife Bertha as an obstacle to his happiness. Further, as a hybrid between Jamaica and England, Antoinette is accpepted by neither side, which explains her lonliness and sensitivity. In her childhood, she has a Martinique friend Tia, with whom she eventually parts ways as  she discriminates Antoinette for her race and humiliates her. 

Antoinette suffers for being an outcast in her society and observing the suffering of her friend Tia, she feels like seeing herself"in a looking glass."(41). After her troubled childhood in the nunnery, she marries to Edward Rochester. Who was an English gentleman seeking ways of earning money. Antoinette thinks that she will finally find true happiness. In the end she is disillusioned and miserable because of her discriminating husband and is locked away in an attic at Thornfield, England, being forced for an isolated life. Therefore, Jean Rhys pens the sad story of Antoinette Mason as she is also a Creole woman and she might have desired to express the problems of women in post colonial Jamaica. As a woman, she feels the need to write about women and display her thoughts about English patriarchy in a most sentimental way and without the fear of patriarchal oppression.

Wide Sargasso Sea introduces many female personalities innovating to the feminist analysis of the text. Mainly, the protagonist of the novel, Anoinett Cosway is a great example for the lively woman seeking for a companion, but turn into a monster by the male oriented society. After the "Emancipation in Jamaica", former slaves turn bitter against slave traders, One of whom is Antoinette's father whose burden is left with Antoinette and her Martinique mother , Bertha. Both as a girl and a hybrid between two races, she suffers and get excluded from other children's playgrounds and finally, she is sent away after her mother loses her mind. Mr. Mason provides her with a dowary of thirty thousand pounds.

Even though she is a beautiful woman full of life, Edward does not appreciate her because she is a Creole woman living in the heart of nature in her house Coulibri, on an island. She is true lover of nature and thinks it is "better than people." Antoinette is driven into madness by Rochester's ignorance and insistance about calling her as Bertha , instead of Antoinette. She becomes Antoinette Bertha Cosway Mason Rochester, expressly manifesting the gradual fragmentation in her identity. She eventually becomes the embodiment of the women suffering in postcolonial countries.

Jean Rhys writes about the problems of women in her own period of time. Antoinette Rochester perishes in the hands of the patriarchal society as a woman and a Jamaican. 

8】Describe the madness of Antoinette and Annette, give a comparative analysis of  implied insanity in both characters.

Ans. :-

                       

                " This is my place and this is where I belong."

  

                                " I tell you a hard thing, pack up and go."

                                         "Go, go where?"

Madness can not be define easily as it has different connotations and interpretations. It can be taken as a mental illness and a consequence of social and cultural pressures. According to David Cooper, " one does not go mad but is driven mad by others and Antoinette suffers from the same.

 

                 

Madness in Wide Sargasso Sea intricately linked with images of heat, fire and female sexuality .Wide Sargasso Sea provides unique insight into the gradual  worsening of the human mind and spirit. On examining Antoinette and her mother Annette, the reader gains a new perspective of insanity. One realizes that these two women are mentally disturbed as a result of numerous external factors that are beyond their control. The cruelty of life and people drive Annette and her daughter to madness. Neither mother nor daughter have a genetic predisposition to madness, and their downfall is an inevitable result of the actions of those around them and the unbearable nature of their living situation.

Causes of Annette's madness :- 

Annette is a widow at the start of the novel, sunk into debt after the death of her husband. Her relationship with Antoinette is distant, owing partially to her preoccupation with her sick, mentally handicaped son, Pierre. She marries a rich man, Mr. Mason, in order to save her family from destitution in the wake of Emancipation and goes mad with grief as a result of the destruction brought about partially by his failure to listen to her warnings about the anger of the black residents at his shows of wealth.

A disembodied presence throughout the book, Annette shows signs of madness and melancholy in her daughter's earliest recollections. Often the subject of gossip, she feels abandoned, scared and persecuted. After the fire, Mr. Mason leaves Annette in the care of a black couple who reportedly humiliate her and mock her condition. So, loneliness, financial decline is also responsible for her madness.

Causes of Antoinette's madness :- 

Antoinette suffers from identity crisis and this ultimately leads her to paranoia and then madness. Antoinette is a Creole women and lives in coulibary Estate in Jamaica, an English colony. She considers herself black but she is not embraced by native people because of her connection with white slave owner. She does not get appreciation and acceptance from people living, as Rhys mentions Antoinette's emotions on one occasion in these words,

"They hated us. They called us white cockroaches. Let sleeping dog lie. One  day a little girl followed me singing, Go away white cockroach, go away, go away. I walked fast but she walked faster. White cockroach, go away, go away. Nobody wants you. Go away."

After the rejection, she even tries to make herself at home with blacks by having a black friend Tia. But even this does not work. The rejection make her conscious about her own origin and throughout the novel she suffers from the binnaries of Jamaican/English, black/white and is unable to get rid of this problem. She is looking to find her origin and her uncertain behavior can be seen through her conversation with Christophine, "So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all."

Madness is Antoinette inheritance: her father was mad according to his bastard son Daniel, as was her mother, Annette. Antoinette upbringing and aggravat her inherited condition, as she feels rejected and displaced, with no one to  love her. She becomes paranoid and solitary,  vulnerable to vivid  dreams and violent outbursts. 

Antoinette's madness is a result of a couple of factors. Her husband, Mr. Rochester drives her mad because of male dominance and Antoinette's heredity shows that her parents were mad. Antoinette's husband drives her mad because he wants to be the dominant one and controlling of Antoinette, while Antoinette is an innocent girl who only wants to be loved.

"Madness" of Antoinette can be also interpreted as a social incident. She is driven"mad" by her patriarchal husband. Her "madness" is a consequence of Mr. Rochester's oppression in a diseased patriarchal society, a society that allows and accepts cruelties towards women. 

It is significant that women like Antoinette and her mother are most susceptible to madness, pushed as they are into childlike servitude and faminine docility. Their madness consigns them to live invisible, shameful lives. The predominance of insanity in the novel forces us to question whose recollections are trustworthy. 

Hence it must be said that the cruelty of Antoinette and Annette's living situation, and not a genetic trait is responsible for their dementia. Antoinette suffers another form of solitude because she grows up as an orphan. Her father died when she was very young and her mother neglects her  preferring instead to only show concern for Antoinette's young brother, Pierre.

9】 What is the role of male characters in Wide Sargasso Sea, are they reflecting patriarchal surroundings for female characters.

Ans. :-

                   

In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys reveals patriarchal power as dominating and unhealthy. These patriarchal power structures are present in economic, legal, family and educational systems in Rhys's novel because they all belong to a patriarchal society.

In this novel Antoinette Cosway is isolated by her victorian husband who locked her up and drives her mad. She is left alone by her husband in the patriarchal society and become helpless and trapped like a ship struck in Sargasso Sea by the British. Throughout her portrayal of female characters in novel, Rhys exposes how women are legally and financially dependent on men around them. When we consider the situation of Antoinette's mother, Annette, who is economically dependent on men, we can at once notice that in patriarchal society economic inequality exists. Antoinette is not able to free herself from Rochester's brutality and cruelty because she has no financial independence. All of the money was given to her husband, Mr. Rochester when she married him.

Patriarchal law prohibits women from inheriting money if there is a son in the family, the inhertiance runs in the male line. In patriarchal society the man is the superior and educated being. Mr. Rochester gets irritated by Antoinette when he tries to teach her about England and she denies the beauty of industrialized England in comparison with West Indies.

A patriarchal society is a world in which men are the sole decision makers and hold positions of power. As a result, women are introduced to a world made by men, and a history refined by a man's actions. In this novel conceptions of gender are purposefully problematized. Women characters such as Antoinette and Christophine are pitilessly exposed to constraints of an impirial world. Wide Sargasso Sea presents a modern form of feminism which takes into account the intricacy of male-female interactions to find that efforts to surpass gender norms are despairing.

In the marriage of Mr. Rochester and Antoinette, Mr. Rochester is an oppressive force, a husband who wants to dominate his wife. We see Mr. Rochester's dominance in how he treats her wife as an object and ultimately muddels 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.

Jean Rhys revises and regualtes the level of masculinity of her characters throughout the story by presenting certain elements of weekness and vulnerability. One of the elements that depicts masculinity in the story is the characteristic of men in the story to own most of wealth in the community. Alexander Cosway, Mr. Mason, Rochester, and Mr. Richard Cosway all own substantial property in the initial stages of the story.

It is also important to note that men in society treat women as property as part of their show of masculinity. For instance, Alexander Cosway gives Christophine to Annette as a wedding gift. Men also largely dectate the roles that wome play in society. For instance, Rochester assigns Leah to take care of Antoinette in England. She works as a cook in his house in England and she is one of the three cooks aware of the existance of  "the mad woman" in the attic of the house. In another example, Mr. Mason, Annette's husband, leaves his wife with a black couple during her unstable phase. I effect he makes his wife susceptible to humiliation and maltreatment by the couple.

The author regultes the level of masculinity for the male characters by introducing aspects of weekness and vulnerability in the story. Rhya includes a seen in the story where Rochester gets a fever at Massacre, which makes him weak and vulnerable. In order not to make him seem to week, she mentions his resolves to stand in the rain instead of taking refuse at Caroline's house even in his period of sickness. Rochester also expresses his loss of control over his environment due to racial separation, diseases and alienation by the local community, stating that he feels ".... uneasy as if someone was watching him", thus indicating some level of paranoia.

Rhys finds it important to mention that Rochester's family in England leaves him penniless after giving all the inheritance to his brother. Lastly, Rochester's gullibility in believing Daniel Cosway's story regarding Sandy and Antoinette's possible sexual encounter during their childhood years back presents another form of weekness, especially because Rochester does not take any initiative to investigate the claims concerning his wife. Rhys also includes bastard boys in the story, as Antoinette's half brothers. The fact that they are male provides masculinity while society's view of them limits such masculinity.

Though, Mr. Rochester feel hatred towards Antoinette, he still feels that she belongs to him. He does not want Antoinette to lead an independent life, because it would result in loosing his patriarchal power and dominance over his wife. Therefore, he refuses to let her leave him. Despite the fact that Mr. Rochester married Antoinette only for her money, he still feels that he is attracted towards her wife’s exotic beauty and the beauty of her island. He does not want to fall for their charms and magnificence and thus he denies the attraction he feels towards the island and his wife.

I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rains. I hated the sunsets of whatever color, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it (Rhys).

This quotation describes Mr. Rochester as a colonizer. As an Englishman, he wants to colonize both his wife and her island. His strict Victorian breeding and patriarchal values makes him obsessed with control and dominance. He does not want to fall love with her wife and her island, even though he is attracted towards them, because of the fact that he wants to maintain his patriarchal power to control and dominate them. Thus, by acting blindly to the attractions he feels towards his wife and her island, he condemns Antoinette and her world and in this way he tries to protect himself.

In this way male characters are belong to patriarchal society. They treat the women as the same manner as somebody treat a slave or animal. Women were considered to be the source to bring sexual pleasures to their husbands in Victorian patriarchy. Women in Victorian societies are thought to be weak, helpless creatures that are unable to think for themselves. Men believed that it was the law of bible that males are superior to females, therefore they have a right to treat them as they like.

 

10】  Write a note on the pastoral reading of the novel.

Ans. :-

                   

Before discussing pastoral reading of the Wide Sargasso Sea novel, let's understand the meaning of pastoral in literature :-

Meaning of pastoral in literature :- 

                                                         

  

Pastoral literature is defined as a genre encompassing both prose and poetry that reflects on the natural world, generally focusing on the human relationship to nature in rural environments and painting it in an idyllic light. Pastoral literature has a long history. The word "pastoral" originally comes from the Latin word pastor, meaning "shepherd" or "herdsman." Virgil, the author of the classical epic The Aeneid, popularized pastoral poetry as a part of the epic poetic career: an aspiring poet begins with pastoral poems, gains fame and skill, and eventually crafts an epic as a magnum opus. 

A pastoral is defined as a work of literature that focuses on the relationship between humanity and nature in a rural environment. This is typically an idyllic relationship that lacks the stresses of urban life, focusing on simple, carefree shepherds.

Pastoral reading of Wide Sargasso Sea :- 

Wide Sargasso Sea is a postcolonial novel written by Jean Rhys. This novel is an indicative example of Great Britain’s postcolonial era and how the pastoral discourse accounts for the prominence of discussions of identity, displacement and landscape in Caribbean literature.   

Rhys has portrayed the themes of displacement, identity, refuse and  return through the concepts of the pastoral. Rhys shows the complexity of post colonialism by conveying  both pastoral and antipastoral  perspective.     

 

Theme of displacement and identity in relation to the pastoral :-

Ciolkowski, argues that Antoinette's narrative has the "impossible task in Wide Sargasso Sea to negotiate between the opposite logics of British   colonialism while  also wending her way  through the Creole culture and  post emancipation".  This struggle of loss of identity  and belonging in Wide Sargasso Sea  is perhaps the first representation in  the relationship with Antoinette's black childhood friend Tia. Antoinette's reflection upon Tia's betrayal when throwing a rock at her represents her views on her life and the social differences, that imperialism has brought.

When I was close I saw the jagged stone in her hand but I did not  see her throw it. I did not feel it either, only something wet, running down my face. I looked at her and I saw her face crumple   up as she began to cry. We stared at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers. It was as if I saw myself. Like in a looking-glass. (Rhys 23)

Antoinette’s struggle for identity is something that returns throughout the novel and it is understood that Antoinette never really comprehends the cultural and physical differences between herself and the former slaves.

Antoinette seems to love her home more than anything in the world. ‘I love it more than anywhere in the world. As if it were a person. More than a person” (Rhys 152). Although this is true, she also continues to show a curiosity and longing towards England. Another example of Antoinette’s identity crisis is when Amélie, one of the servants, sings about Antoinette, calling her a white cockroach. Antoinette says that 

That’s what they call all of us who were here before their own people in Africa sold them to the slave traders. And I’ve heard  English women call us white niggers. So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all. (Rhys 63)

It is evident that Antoinette is a confused character not knowing her true identity, something partly caused by the British imperialism and the emancipation of the slaves in Jamaica. 

Another example of Antoinette’s confused personality and obvious sense of belonging is evident in her husband’s perspective. “She was undecided, uncertain about facts – any fact” (52). This is when she was answering his questions about the snakes in Jamaica, her answers were ambiguous and obfuscated (52). Her confused personality can be explained by the fact Spivak brings up about Antoinette not having found her true identity and where she belongs. Huggan and Tiffin also present the topic of lack of belonging and claims that it connects with the loss of land (Huggan & Tiffin 83). The fact that Antoinette loses her land when marrying her husband could further explain her confused and indecisive character (Rhys 68).

According to Huggan & Tiffin, the another pastoral aspect which, recurrs in Carribean literature is the ruining of the garden which symbolises an anti-pastoral view where the garden, the rural area, is portrayed as something that eventually will be, or at least might be, ruined (Huggan & Tiffin 115). In Wide Sargasso Sea this is perhaps most evident in the fire caused by the former colonised people. Before the fire breaks out, Antoinette depicts the garden as a safe place: ”When I was safely home I sat to the old wall at the end of the garden.It was covered with green moss soft as velvet and I never wanted to move again. Everything would be worse if I moved” (Rhys 7). When returning after it has been restored Antoinette views the garden differently: ”Coulibri looked the same when I saw it again, although it was clean and tidy, no grass between the flagstones, no leaks. But it didn’t feel the same” (13). The quote suggests a change in the sense of safety and eternity. Before the fire, Antoinette never wanted to leave the place and afterwards she does not feel as at home anymore.

The terms of escape and return in relation to the concept of pastoral :-

In Wide Sargasso Sea it could be said that both Antoinette and her husband make some sort of escape and return at some point in the plot. As proven earlier in this essay, Antoinette is constantly glorifying England and her image of Britain is clearly beautified. ”Is it true,’ she said, ’that England is like a dream? Because one of my friends who married an Englishman wrote and told me so” (Rhys 47). When she realises that she is not loved by her husband she turns to Christophine for advice. Her solution is to go to England, however, she does not have the means to do so. When her husband takes her with him to England she still believes that England will improve her life. At the end of the novel, Antoinette commits suicide by setting fire to the house. In her mind she returns to Coulibri and her childhood. 

The wind caught my hair and it streamed out like wings. It might bear me up, I though, if I jumped to those hard stones. But when I looked over the edge I saw the pool at Coulibri. Tia was there. She beckoned to me and when I hesitated, she laughed. I heard he You frightened? And I heard the man’s voice, Bertha! Bertha! All this I saw and heard in a fraction of a second. And the sky so red. Someone screamed and I thought, Why did I scream? I called  ’Tia!’ and jumped and woke. (Rhys 123)

Furthermore, the husband could be said to make an escape when he travels from England to the Caribbean. His father has put a lot of pressure on him in order to become a successfull man and he thinks the solution lies in the Caribbean. ”Dear Father . . . I will never be a disgrace to you or to my dear brother the son you love. No begging letters, no mean requests. None of the furtive shabby manoeuvres of a younger son. I have sold my soul or you have sold it” (Rhys 39). However, after deep reflections he chooses to return to England. Already in the early pastoral poetry, the themes of refuge and return were evident (Gifford 1-2). 

In Antoinette’s narrative, which continues in Part Three and fives the final meaning to the events taking place in Part One, the alternative vision is expressed. The vision can only exist if the reality of England and the meaning of being a white woman in the context is denied. An identification with blackness is established as the only possible escape (Olaussen 77). This, therefore shows that Wide Sargasso Sea clearly depicts the two themes of escaping and returning that are frequently observed in the concept of pastoral.

Imgery and symbolism connected to the concept of pastoral :- 

Huggan & Tiffin claim that the use of animal imagery in order to belittle other characters, is often used in postcolonial literature (Huggan & Tiffin 135). This usage of symbolism and imagery is evident in Wide Sargasso Sea. For example, when Amélie calls Antoinette a white cockroach: ’The white cockroach she marry” (Rhys 61), Rhys shows the complicated relationship, not only between coloniser and colonised, but also between native inhabitants, emphasising the complex subjects of postcolonialism and emancipation.  

The history of human oppression of other humans is replete with instances of animal metaphors and animal catagorise frequently deployed to justify exploitation and objectification, slaughter and enslavement. (Huggan & Tiffin 135)

Huggan & Tiffin also connect the patronising animalistic imagery with the historical aspect of the novel. However, it is not only animals that are symbolically used in Wide Sargasso Sea and other postcolonial literature. It is evident that the husband sees Antoinette as a possession and means to get wealthy. When having sex he calls her Marionette instead of Antoinette, referring to her as a puppet (99-100). This shows a relationship of power and subordinate often used in the pastoral concept (Huggan & Tiffin 84).

Another animal imagery that reoccurs in the novel is the cock. It first appears when Antoinette is a young girl and overhears the other servants talk about Christophine and her magical powers. Antoinette is in Christophine’s room waiting for her and she imagines “white chicken feathers, a cock with its throat cut, dying slowly, slowly” (Rhys 13). The 

second time the cock appears it is the husband who narrates. It is just when the couple leaves the village to go to the summer house in Coulibri.

According to Huggan & Tiffin, the presence of biblical symbols as a way to emphasise the displacement and lack of belonging are frequent in the concept of pastoral (14). In the beginning of the novel, Antoinette is hiding in the garden when eaves-dropping on two gossiping women talking ill of Coulibri. “And what about the stables and the coach house dark as pitch, and the servants’ quarters and the six-foot snake I saw with my own eyes curled up on the privy seat last time I was here” (Rhys 12). The presence of the snake obviously is a clear symbol of the snake in the Garden of Eden. Snakes are commonly a symbol for danger and poison (Ferber 186).

The snakes reoccur in the novel once more when Antoinette and her husband are living in Coulibri. “When I asked her if the snakes we sometimes saw were poisonous, she said, ‘Not those, ‘but how can they be sure? Do you think they know?’ Then, ‘Our snakes are not poisonous. Of course not.” (Rhys 52). Even though the snake is a common Christian symbol for betrayal, Kubitschek, claims that “The voodoo-tradition, however, considers snakes not only sacred to Damballah, the mightiest of gods, but manifestations of him” (Kubitschek 25). This could be the reason as to why Antoinette replies in such an ambiguous way. The indistinctness in the way the symbol of snakes is present in the novel strengthen the notion of the ambiguous way the pastoral is portrayed. As already discussed earlier, Antoinette’s lack of belonging and loss of identity is portrayed through the pastoral and here we see it occur again, in the symbolism of the snake.  

Antoinette's constant struggle between Creole and English is evident in the representation of her pastoral view. She is idealising both cultures and places, perhaps more dominantly England during the plot. However, at the end, which is more significant, Rhys’ obviously chooses ‘side’ and let the idea of rural tradition conquer. Moreover, the husband is trying to make himself at home in the Caribbean, a method said to be common in the concept of pastoral. Similarly to his spouse, he too, idealises both places, showing the ambiguous perspective of pastoral in the novel.

Imagery and symbolism  has a great connection with pastoral and the illegibility and complexity it represents, especially in terms of post colonised is clearly represented in the imagery of the husband viewing Antoinette as a puppet and a possession of his. In addition, he sees Amelie as a creature. The imbalanced relationship is also conveyed in the symbolism of the cock as betrayal is an example of this. As in much other post colonial literature, the christian symbolism is present in Wide Sargasso Sea.  

11】Give a comparative analysis of Jane Eyre and Antoinett.

Ans. :-

                   

Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea are novels written by Charlotte Bronte and Jean Rhys, both represent the women in any historical period of protesting patriarchy and oppression. Jane Eyre is the character of Charlotte Bronte's novel and Antoinette is the character of Jean Rhys's novel. There are some similarities and differences between Jane Eyre and Antoinette. 

Jane Eyre :-

  

Jane is the protagonist and narrator of the novel Jane Eyre. She is an intelligent, strong and passionate, straightforward and honest and she will unveil the hypocrisy of people and institutions. An orphan since early childhood, Jane feels exiled and ostracized at the beginning of the novel and the cruel treatment she receives from her Aunt Reed and her cousins only aggravates her feeling of alignation. Afraid that she will never find a true sense of home or community, Jane feels the need to belong somewhere, to find "Kin", or at least "kindred spirits". This desire tempers her equality intense need for autonomy and freedom.

In her search for freedom, Jane also struggles with the question of what type of freedom she wants. From the beginning of the novel, Bronte describes Jane as a strong-willed, passionate and outspoken young girl. Jane regularly speaks out against the cruel treatment of her cousin, John and her aunt, Mrs. Reed. This results in Jane becoming isolated and alienated in the house, as she endures her punishments alone.       

When Jane moves to Lowood school, her life appears to be similar, as she has to endure horrible taunts and punishments from Mr. Brocklehurst. However, it is at Lowood Jane finds true friendship and love. Here, Jane is very loyal and kind towards Helen Burns, her best friend. When Helen dies, she is heartbroken and lost.

As the novel progresses, the reader sees Jane blossoming into adulthood. Jane is always described to be plain and doesn't see herself as a beauty. Nonetheless, she manages to fall in love with Rochester and eventually Rochester confesses his love for Jane. They plan to marry but their plans are thwarted when it is revealed Rochester already has a wife.

Jane suffers more heartbreak and vows to leave Thornfield, as she cannot marry. She leaves, sacrificing her chance of happiness. Jane becomes homeless and finds refuge at the Rivers' home. When it is revealed they are Jane's cousins, she offers them a portion of her newly inherited fortune has enduring their happiness. The novel ends with Jane finding happiness, as she marries Rochester as a confident, independent, young woman.

Antoinette :-          

The character of Antoinette derives from Charlotte Bronte's poignant and powerful depiction of a deranged Creole outcast in her gothic novel Jane Eyre. Rhys creates a prehistory for Bronte's character, tracing her development from a young solitary girl in Jamaica to a love-depraved lunatic in an English garret. By fleshing out Bronte's one-dimensional madwoman, Rhys enables us ti to sympathize with the mental and emotional decline of the human being.

Antoinette is a far cry from the conventional female heroines of nineteenth and even twentieth century novels, who are often more rational and self restrained (as is Jane Eyre herself). In Antoinette, by contrast, we see the potential dangers of a wild imagination and an acute sensitivity. Her restlessness and instability seem to stem, in some part, from her inability to belong to any particular community. As a white Creole, she straddles the European world of her ancestors and the Caribbean culture into which she is born.

Left mainly to her own devices as a child, Antoinette turns inward, finding there a world that can be both peaceful and terrifying. In the first part of the novel we witness the development of a delicate child one who finds refuge in the closed, isolated life of the convent. Her arranged marriage distresses her and she tries to call it off, feeling instinctively that she will be hurt. Indeed, the marriage is a mismatch of culture and custom.

She and her English husband, Mr. Rochester, fail to relate to one another and her past deeds, specifically her childhood relationship with a half-caste brother, Sullies her husband's view of her. An exile within her own family, a "White  Cockroach" to her disdainful servants and an oddity in the eyes of her own husband, Antoinette cannot find a peaceful place for herself. Going far beyond the pitying stance taken by Bronte. Rhys humanizes "Bertha's" tragic condition, inviting the reader to explore Antoinette's terror and anguish.

Thus, Jane Eyre was orphan since earl childhood. She lives with her aunt Reed and her cousins. They treat cruelly to Jane. She feels the need to belong somewhere. While Antoinete has family but after some times her father died and she didn't get love from her mother because of her mother's  madness. Jane is intelligent, storng and passionate, straitforward and honest and she will unveil the hypocrisy of people and institution. Antoinette is a sensitive and lonely young Creole girl who grows up with neither her mother's love nor her Peter's companionship. At the end Jane find happiness, as she marries Rochester as a confident, independent, young woman. While Antoinette goes mad because of her patriarchal husband.      

12】 "Wide Sargasso Sea is prequel to Jane Eyre". Explain this statement with illustration.

Ans. :-

                 

Wide Sargasso Sea is both a response and a prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. It is set in the West Indies and imagining the lives of Bertha Masson and her family. Wide Sargasso Sea is a visceral response to Charlotte Bronte's treatment of Mr. Rochester's mad first wife, Bertha, in her classic Victorian novel Jane Eyre. Jean Rhys reveals the horrifying reality that might be lie behind a man's claim that  a woman is mad, and humanisis Bronte's grotesque invention, the now archytypal and heavily symbolic 'madwoman in the attic'. The novel is justifying howl of anger and injustice and a skin-flaying revelation of personal sadism. 

Wide Sargasso Sea is also a valuable historical work, written in the 1960s but set in the early 1800s, which explores  Victorian paternalism, sexualised rascism and the complex social and political history of the West Indies. Rhys vividely imagines Rochester's time there where he met Bertha, who is Creole- a naturalized West Indian of European descent. 

The Emancipation Act freeing slaves but compensating slave-owners for their ‘loss’ has been passed, England and France are the dominating and competing colonisers while Spanish colonial exploration is a past influence, and many formerly profitable estates are in decline because of the absence of exploited labour and a slump in the sugar market.

The novel is alternately narrated by Antoinette (Bertha’s much more elegant real name) and Rochester and has three settings: Antoinette’s crumbling West Indian family estate, Coulibri; an unnamed honeymoon house on a different island; and finally the attic room in which Antoinette is imprisoned in Thornfield Hall in England.

In the West Indian settings Rhys skilfully evokes the seething impulses of anger, trauma, fear, mockery and suspicion between, amongst, towards and from former slaves originally from Africa, black West Indian servants who are the children of slaves, mixed-race illegitimate children of white plantation owners who impregnated female slaves, non-white naturalised Creoles, former slave-owners, house masters, newly impoverished plantation owners, colonial interlopers and prospecting entrepreneurs wanting to buy derelict estates. Despite the ending of slavery, the story is far from over: violent justice, a raw fight for survival and the possibility of yet more waves of exploitation are still to come. The hierarchy of racial difference is finely demarcated and noticed by everyone.

Antoinette is a lonely, intelligent, brooding individual who yearns for a mother figure (and finds one in her maid and ex-slave Christophine), yet the reasons for the rejection of Antoinette by Annette (her mother) are never made clear, while slanderous lies fill the space of ignorance and doubt.

Rhys is excellent when conveying the idea that certain things – like slavery – are so traumatic that they are unsayable, and that deliberate forgetting is a trauma response but also a survival mechanism. When Annette’s horse is poisoned by ex-slaves, Antoinette says, ‘I thought if I told no-one it might not be true’ (Part 1). Later, ‘I forgot, or told myself I had forgotten’ (Part 1). Annette wants ‘not to know that one is abandoned, lied about, helpless’ (Part 1). Discarded, slandered and vulnerable: Antoinette’s experience is to be exactly the same as her mother’s experience. The novel traces a repetitive, incestuous history with concise intensity, as if laying down a curse.

The story of Mr Mason and Annette gives a quick and nasty preview of what is about to happen with Rochester and Antoinette. From the earliest days of their marriage Mason dismisses everything Annette says, including her correct assertion that Coulibri is not safe and that the family should leave. Exactly as she warned, ex-slaves set fire to Coulibri, Annette’s son Pierre dies in the attack and Annette is traumatised by this and angered by the fact that her warnings were ignored. She shouts that Mason ‘sneered’ at her like a ‘grinning hypocrite’ when she warned him. Mason takes the opportunity to call her mad and have her locked away and treated ‘as though she were dead, though she is living’. As any reader of Jane Eyre knows, this is exactly what is done to her daughter too.

The fire that destroys Coulibri and kills Antoinette’s brother Pierre is itself a foreshadowing of the fire that destroys Rochester’s home at Thornfield Hall at the end of Jane Eyre – a fire started by Bertha/Antoinette, in which she herself dies. Both fires are expressions of the pain, anger, revenge and despair of the people who started them and Wide Sargasso Sea is chock full of fire images which give the reader an unpleasant frisson, such as when Annette carries Pierre’s body out of the fire at Coulibri with her hair ‘loose’, just like her daughter in the fatal fire of Jane Eyre.

As Antoinette comes of age she senses, and the reader knows, that her life is going to take a permanent turn for the worse. When Mr Mason visits her at the convent and says ‘You can’t be hidden away all your life’, she thinks, ‘Why not?’ and the reader feels terrible dread on her behalf. Just like her mother, Antoinette has accurate intimations of what is about to happen, experiencing an immediate ‘dismay, sadness, loss’. Annette’s money and property have passed into male hands already and the next wave of selling-off of women has begun: Mr Mason is going to sell Antoinette to Mr Rochester.

As she grows older, Antoinette’s dreams begin directly to reference the events of Jane Eyre, as if Brontë’s novel has already set down, like an immovable curse upon a living creature, what is to happen. Antoinette sees her own living death in Thornfield Hall where she is interred ‘when I go up these steps. At the top’. When she imagines being ‘cold and not belonging’ (Part 2) in England, she has finally met her literary destiny, ‘I have slept there many times before, long ago’ (Part 2). This is one of many poignant references to the cultural legacy of Brontë’s novel, in which the monstrous Bertha was read about, feared and hated as an obstacle to Jane Eyre’s happiness long before Rhys filled in the rest of the story a century later. Antoinette-as-Bertha goes on to become a legend just like the suffering women martyrs she is taught about at her convent school: a complex symbol of man’s inhumanity to woman; of repressed sexuality in the Victorian age; of women’s unvoiced but powerful anger; of the ugly truth about colonialism; and of a family secret which is hidden away to preserve the appearance of decorum.

Wide Sargasso Sea psychologically vindicates Antoinette and Annette, demonstrating their intelligence, powerful emotions, personal seriousness and correct instincts. But these traits are not enough to save them. Rochester exploits Antoinette financially, uses her physically, manipulates her emotionally, betrays her sexually, tortures her psychologically and incarcerates her bodily until she commits violent suicide. He enjoys the sympathetic ministrations of his devoted servant-wife Jane Eyre for the rest of his life.Thus, Wide Sargasso Sea is prequel to Jane  Eyre. 

Work Cited :- 

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