Women and the experience of womanhood in
wide Sargasso Sea
Wide Sargasso Sea was Jean Rhys's
effort to rewrite, or more accurately, to elaborate on and complicate, the
history presented by Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel, Jane Eyre. The eponymous protagonist of Jane Eyre develops into a fiercely independent,
self-assured, moral, and passionate young woman. The protagonist of Rhys's text
is the character who Jane will know later only as Rochester's lunatic wife who
is locked in the attic. Rhys tries to explore this character that Bronte left
it unexplained. Wide Sargasso Sea explores
a psychological condition of profound isolation and self-division the condition
is bound up with another of the novel's characteristically modernist themes,
the conviction that betrayal is built into the fabric of life. Wide Sargasso Sea also purposefully
problematizes its conceptions of gender. All women characters in Rhys's
fictions are mercilessly exposed to the financial and gendered constraints of
an imperial world. This imperial world is created and controlled by white men.
This is seen when Annette, marries a colonial master though she was financially
independent. Antoinette represents a particularly modernist perspective on the
suffering of woman basically the abstract sense of nothingness Antoinette
experiences is so much worse than the concrete and real suffering Jane endures
and can therefore deal with and even battle. Womanhood intertwines with issues of
enslavement and madness in Rhys’s novel. Ideals of proper feminine deportment
are presented to Antoinette when she is a girl at the convent school. She
starts mimicking the Victorian standards as she was staying in the convent.
Mother St. Justine’s praises of the poised and imperturbable sisters suggest an
ideal of womanhood that is at odds with Antoinette’s own hot and fiery nature. It
is in turn Antoinette’s passion that contributes to her melancholy and implied
madness. Rhys also explores her female characters’ legal and financial
dependence on the men around them. After the death of her first husband,
Antoinette’s mother sees her second marriage as an opportunity to escape from
her life at Coulibri and regain status among her peers. For the men in the
novel, marriage increases their wealth by granting them access to their wives’
inheritance. In both cases, womanhood is synonymous with a kind of childlike
dependence on the nearest man. Indeed, it is this dependence that precipitates
the demise of both Antoinette and Annette. Antoinette re-enacts her mother’s
experience, she also marries an Englishman and is driven mad. Both Antoinette and her mother are ghosts in
their own lifetimes.
Jane and Antoinette are both distressed by the
issues posed by being a woman in a male-dominated society, but both of them
deal with these dilemmas in a unique way. Jane has a very romantic and
Victorian approach, whereas Antoinette has a modernist approach. Jane battles a
distinguishable foe. She is very stubborn, refusing to be mistreated, whether
it is by Aunt Reed, and Rochester. She manages the socially ambiguous position
of governess with dignity and practicality. Jane Eyre takes a special interest in the lives of women
and the internal psyche of one particular, bright woman. Jane Eyre in itself is
a gothic text, the narrative trajectory is clearly defined and the demonic
figure is identified, which happens to be Mr. Rochester. The novel upholds a
belief that women can achieve their goals. Jane gets what she wants she marries
Rochester, she finds or creates a family, and she commands respects from
everyone and even gains financial independence Rochester loves Jane as a wife
and respects her for her intelligence and talents.
Wide Sargasso Sea maintains a steady
absence of faith in woman's ability to transcend the oppression of her gender.
Rhys's novel depicts the near impossibility of "success" for a woman
in a patriarchal world. This is a strikingly different kind of feminism.
Whereas Jane has developed many resources and defenses she can rely on to get
her through her tribulations, Antoinette is virtually defenseless. She rarely
protects herself, this is seen when she visits her mother who she knows is not
dependable and goes to her mother with love, only to be rejected yet again. She
has a similar episode with Rochester. Though she was aware that he does not,
she asks him if he loves her and invites the misery of his answer.
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