Jean Rhys" novel Wide Sargasso Sea is a text that explores the concept of madness. It does this from many angles, including exploring the following questions: What is madness? Who gets to define madness? What does madness depend on? The characters that will be analysed in order to understand the concept of madness in this novel are Antoinette and her mother Annette, as well as Rochester.
English society with its morals and values, pronounces Antoinette as unsuitable to be an ideal "English" wife because according to their morals, a woman who does things excessively is an outcast. According to Laura E. Ciolkowski (1997:339), "Antoinette is deemed unsuited for English domestic bliss not because of any psychological disorder from which she might be suffering but because of the appetites and excesses she so liberally exhibits". Because Antoinette hands out food, drink and money to her relatives, this is equalled to madness. Rochester himself says of this,.
As for the money, which she handed out so careless, not .
counting it, not knowing how much she gave, or the .
unfamiliar faces appearing and disappearing, though .
never without a large meal eaten and a shot of rum, I .
discovered -sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles- if she .
asked no questions how could I? (p75).
.
Rochester further says, "[Antoinette will] loosen her black hair, and laugh and coax and flatter (a mad girl) . Shall not care who she's loving" (p136). Antoinette is thus deemed mad, because an ideal English woman would suppress her sexuality and sexual appetite. .
Because Antoinette has got coloured relatives, she becomes a threat to Rochester's pure Englishness. Being poor and vulnerable makes it possible for a Creole to commit miscegenation. It makes Antoinette very vulnerable and she becomes a source of corruption. Rochester somehow sees similarities in Anto8inette and the coloured servant girl, Amelie.
Wide Sargasso Sea Set in Jamaica during the 1930's, Wide Sargasso Sea is the story of Antoinette Bertha Cosway, a beautiful Creole heiress living on a decaying plantation. ... Her husband turns out to be a selfish, manipulative man, who pushes Antoinette into the precarious world of madness. Wide Sargasso Sea ends in England, where Antoinette is trapped in her husband's attic. ...
In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys has written a prequel to Jane Eyre. ... For Wide Sargasso Sea, it is narrated by different point of views, the reader cannot be certain which characters are good or bad, it allows the readers to form an opinion toward characters by themselves like modern world view. ... Lastly, it discusses about how convincing Wide Sargasso Sea is as a prequel story for Jane Eyre. ... It confirms the madness of Antoinette is partly, because she got locked up in the attic of the Thornfield Hall. ... In Wide Sargasso Sea, there is no power of women to rise above the oppression o...
The novel "Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys is the story of Antoinette Cosway's life. ... Finally, the image of the tree of life recurs at the end of the novel in one of Antoinette's dreams that show already her madness. ... Thus, Antoinette's madness is symbolized by the combustion of the "tree of life", because in the story it leads to the destruction of her life. ...