ANTOINETT ; WIDE SARGASSO SEA
Wide sargassso sea of jean Rhys attempts to fill the blank of a fictional charecters life style. Rhys creates a biography for bertha mason. the insane wife of Edward Rochester Charlotte Bronte's 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 Brontë's one-dimensional madwoman, Rhys enables us to sympathize with the mental and emotional decline of a 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 ancestorsCaribbean culture into which she
is born. She 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.
Wide sargassso sea of jean Rhys attempts to fill the blank of a fictional charecters life style. Rhys creates a biography for bertha mason. the insane wife of Edward Rochester Charlotte Bronte's 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 Brontë's one-dimensional madwoman, Rhys enables us to sympathize with the mental and emotional decline of a 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

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