Lauren Lamonsoff 2/24/2014

AP English Mr. Elias

Before I begin with the given assignment, one of the questions in the back of Wide
Sargasso Sea directly used the word “you”(“In your opinion, could these barriers have
been surmounted?” in reference to the barriers between Antoinette and Sandi, question
number 5), implying a request for the reader’s opinion. Because of this request, I
choose to respond on a grander scale, and give my thoughts on the book in its entirety.

Things I disliked about Wide Sargasso Sea:

-It’s not Brontë.
-Switching of points of view between Antoinette and Rochester
-Lack of Jane Eyre references until the very end
-I found the first section useless other than making "Bertha" human to the reader. What
I wanted to see was a view from the attic, basically.
-The name “Edward Rochester” was never mentioned, perhaps to dehumanize him?
-The blurb says the novel is “skewed in its sexual relations” yet Rochester cheated on
Antoinette once, and was never forceful with her (otherwise argued by Christophine)
-Antoinette acted as though she loved Rochester, but it is never clear if it is love or lust
on her part

Things I liked about Wide Sargasso Sea:

-Part Three: it explained Bertha’s mindset and spiral and why she decided to set fire to
the house in England. I applauded Rhys for finally doing what I expected the novel to
be the entire time, the tale of the “madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane
Eyre”, as quoted in the blurb.

Other Thoughts:
After speaking with a Jane-fanatic like myself, I realized that I was not alone in my
opinions. The people around Antoinette poisoned her mind against Rochester from the
beginning. He was one of the people she was always conditioned to hate (“white
cockroaches”), and she was becoming one of them-one of him. But I think he always
took good care of her and for an arranged marriage, he did a good job. She was always
so negative, but she was a tortured soul. She could've accepted him more and loved
him more, but he did the best he could considering his past. He could've apologized
about cheating and tried to make it better instead of hardening his heart. When push
comes to shove he shouldn't ever lock a woman away. And poor Rochester, how he
heard all these rumors and couldn't know what to believe. He was inundated with
falsehood and in a strange land with a strange girl with everybody laughing at him,
including his wife. How could he survive? But still, the ends don't justify the means
here. Not to mention, after being violently sick in a strange land, too, waking up and
suddenly being married is quite a frenzy to be caught in. I couldn't possibly see straight,
if it were me, no irony intended. Rochester coped exceptionally well, and Rhys did not
give the reader enough information or give the reader a chance to pity Rochester for
being stuck in a whirlwind of emotion in a strange place and then being forced to marry.
He was the one who was bought the entire time, not Antoinette. Antoinette got to stay
in her home, with her comfort and servants around, not Rochester. He was a prisoner
on the island and a prisoner with a new wife he suddenly had to take care of. In my
Lauren Lamonsoff 2/24/2014
AP English Mr. Elias
opinion, it is manipulative of Rhys to pass Rochester off as a monster, when he is just a
poor tortured soul whose father’s and brother’s legacies haunt him and who is just trying
to catch up and live in the footsteps of someone much more powerful than he.

Now, the real question.

Question #12: UNANSWERABLE…for the most part.

“In Jane Eyre the madwoman in the attic is a very unsympathetic character, an obstacle
that stands in the way of the union of Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë
portrays Mr. Rochester as a man with a dark past who nevertheless is not to blame for
the burden with which he is saddled. Wide Sargasso Sea obviously sees this situation
from a different angle. What are some of the factors that might have led to the
difference between Charlotte Brontë's version and that of Jean Rhys’s work?”

-First, Rochester does have a dark past. A past of possible illegitimate children,
whores, murder, violence, and drinking. But, in Brontë’s novel, the ORIGINAL and
therefore factual (factual in a fictional sense), he also suffered from heartache. The
heartache of being forced into a marriage he didn’t want to be in, the heartache of
having a promiscuous and violent wife with whom he didn’t get along, and living in his
father and brother’s shadows. Does that not elicit a shred of pity? Empathy?
Sympathy? “Dark past” is hardly a set of words to describe Edward Rochester. So, this
part of this question is a little too biased for my taste. “Troubled” or “unfortunate” may
be a little more fitting.

-Second, Brontë NEVER says that Rochester is to or not to blame for his actions. She
leaves it up to the reader and his or her discretion to decide whether or not Rochester is
guilty. It is Bertha who punishes Rochester, not G-d, not Fate, not Ethics. Does Brontë
not portray Bertha as a madwoman, and her actions as radical? It is she who chooses
to punish her husband. Jane always speaks about remorse and repentance. When
Rochester says that Remorse is the poison of life, Jane replies that “Repentance is said
to be its cure, sir.” Jane never plays G-d, or decides who is guilty or innocent, nor does
Brontë. She leaves it to the reader. I don’t find the validity of this section of the
question.

-“What are some of the factors that might have led to the difference between
Charlotte Brontë's version and that of Jean Rhys’s work?”
“When I read Jane Eyre as a child, I thought, why should she think Creole women
are lunatics and all that? What a shame to make Rochester's first wife, Bertha, the
awful madwoman, and I immediately thought I'd write the story as it might really have
been. She seemed such a poor ghost. I thought I'd try to write her a life.”
-Jean Rhys, The Paris Review Interviews, III

Gourevitch, Philip, ed. The Paris Review Interviews. Vol. III. New York: Picador, 2008. Print.