14 June 2009
Wide Sargasso Sea
A couple of things to think about as you read (not necessarily to respond to): how is Eve Sedgwick's sketching out of Gothic convention borne out in Rhys's text? How does that potentially indexical relationship compare to the appearance of the Gothic in Beloved? How does the post neo-Gothic make use of form in the service of producing affects of terror? In what ways are those strategies both similar to and departures from the neo Gothic as in the Brontes, Melville, Gilman, Dickinson? How do names and the importance of "the call" or what one is called work in all four of the novels we've read? How does Rhys's invocation of Bronte's name refer to an adherent haunting while simultaneously effecting a "making of the world" in Elaine Scarry's sense? Time to start pulling things together...
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Paravisini-Gebert observes that a colonial setting has been widely exploited as an ultimate source of “otherness” in literary texts, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries. The least understood elements of colonial cultures were effectively weaved into the texture of Gothic novels. Charlotte Brontë successfully capitalized on the reputation of the colonies as bizarre places that give birth to strange people unable to adapt to a more “civilized” way of living. A Creole character of Bertha Mason who is portrayed as an animal and violent creature is probably the most pronounced source of mystery and horror in the book. Besides her origins in the West Indies, a superior physical power (for a woman) and a wild temper further intensify Bertha’s “otherness”, especially when evaluated against Jane’s reserved nature and cultivated manners. In spite of Bertha’s presence throughout the text we never hear her story – she has been deprived of her voice – by her own escalating insanity. Wide Sargasso Sea becomes Bertha’s opportunity to tell her story on her own terms. It is peculiar that even though Jean Rhys works strictly within the frame laid out by Brontë, she completely re-defined the dynamics of the original text once she allowed Antoinette to reveal her side of the story. From a ghost figure haunting Thornfield and preventing noble Mr. Rochester from the union with his beloved Jane Eyre, Bertha has become a walking conscience and a victim of social injustice. The collision between the cold intellect and rationale, on the one hand, and passion and intensity, on the other, was bound to be explosive. Antoinette is a living testament to the stifling circumstances of the women at that time. By marrying an Englishman and agreeing to go to England she is bound to become mad or at least to be labeled as such. There is no way the English society would have accepted her passion, her intensity, her exotic beauty. By taking her out of the native land and renaming her with a more “appropriate” English name Rochester deprives Antoinette of her identity and paves her path to the insanity. He exercises his right over her and turns her into a lifeless marionette. As a victim of a particular social system she parallels the fate of Beloved who has become a walking testament to the injustice of the slavery in the United States.
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be a disturbing trend of uncomfortable marriages in many of the works we’ve seen. Frankenstein’s marriage to Elizabeth was anticipated but certainly unfortunately timed. Sethe’s marriage to Halle lacked a ceremony as well as a type of legitimacy due to their slave status. Plenty of women in Jane Eyre are abruptly married (at least it seems that way in the narrative). In Rebecca (which I will try to refrain from complaining about) the second Mrs. De Winter (her name is never given, I looked it up) gets married very suddenly to Mr. De Winter (he proposes while he’s in the bathroom!). Moreover, we never see the previous marriage between Rebecca and De Winter; it is barely described. Now, in Wide Sargasso Sea, the marriage between Antoinette/Bertha is skipped in the narrative and explained in the plot by Rochester having a fever.
ReplyDeleteI think it is safe to say that most of these marriages did not end well.
However, what should we make of Jane Eyre herself? Is her marriage to Rochester typical, exceptional, or somehow both?
In light of Antoinette’s point of view, it seems as though Jane avoids many of the pitfalls that Antoinette fell into in the areas of their lives that might seem comparable. Antoinette suffers from insane parents while Jane suffers from nonexistent parents, but it seems that Jane is the stronger for it while Antoinette inherits their craziness. Antoinette goes to a convent and views it as a hiding place, but Jane uses her experience in school as a way to develop her own character as an adult. Perhaps the strongest difference (which may not be clear) is that Antoinette chooses to marry Rochester at the first opportunity while Jane initially rejects Rochester. I am tempted to declare Antoinette “bad” and Jane “good” in light of this distinction, although I must keep in mind the unavoidable influence that their respective environments had on Antoinette and Jane.
In regards to what Josh mentioned about the absence of a first name for the second Mrs. De Winter, I have noticed there is an importance given to names of many of the female protagonists. Jane Eyre, first of all is weighty as the title of the book. She goes by an alias when she is living with Mary and Diana and St. John, but when her true name is revealed, she finds her family, and her fortune, which is her independence, and ultimately the one condition under which she can allow herself to marry Mr. Rochester.
ReplyDeleteAntoinette's name is taken from her, and over time she is only called Bertha, a name given to her because someone else felt it fit her. Not only that, but her last name, Mason, is the name of the man who drove her mother to insanity, one of the catalysts in a never ending downward spiral.
A name represents one's identity in a literal way, but also goes hand in hand with the plight of those subject to colonization. Colonization is another way to take what is familiar from someone and claim power of them by renaming or condemning.
In discussing the spatial metaphor of depth as representative of the human self, Sedgwick says "It is the position of the self to be massively blocked off from something to which it ought normally to have access" (13). Can this psychological/spatial model be a reference to madness, where what's blocked off is part of the self?
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking of the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper trying to merge with herself, the self she sees projected in the wallpaper, what Gilbert and Gubar describe as "the narrator and the narrator's double" (91) In Wide Sargasso Sea, madness has an overwhelming presence. Annette and Antoinette cannot stay consistently connected to their own selves nor can they maintain a normative connection to the outside. Sedgwick says, "The self and whatever it is that is outside have a proper, natural, necessary connection to each other, but one that the self is suddenly incapable of making" (13).
What prevents this connection? At the beginning, Antoinette notices the outward projection of her mother's self when she catches her talking to herself: " Oh, let me alone', she would say, 'let me alone,' and after I knew that she talked aloud to herself I was a little afraid of her" (18). What makes her crazy? The legacy of slavery?
Once Daniel's letter breaks the news about the Cosway history of lunacy, her husband neglects her and Antoinette starts to break down.. She seeks Christophine for her Obeah spells (magic, supernatural -- another gothic convention) in hopes of reviving her husband's love for her -- without it, she goes mad. In Frankenstein, the creature, if he is Victor's double, pursues his "self" at the first half of the novel and then the pursuit pivots with Victor as the pursuer chasing the "self", his double, the creature. The inability to unite what feels like a fragmented self is characteristic of Beloved, too. Beloved tries to re-member, reunite, reincorporate herself with Sethe. Or perhaps it's Sethe who's trying to collect her self, she's perhaps trying to reconcile the infanticide and work out her past. Haunting and madness in the gothic novels we've read seems the same.
Gilbert and Gubar point to patriarchal socialization as the cause for emotional disturbance, Spivak does not see it "only in psychological terms" rather, she sees Bertha Mason (madness) as a product of imperialism. Certainly slavery is the maker of madness or haunting in Beloved and WSS. Can the dissolution of self, then, be linked causally to imperialism, to the economic engine of slavery, to the patriarchal access to the modes of production and the public sphere -- is madness the result of Western capitalist expansion?
Also, jumping off from Molly's thoughts on the name, Spivak points out that " Rhys denies to Bronte's Rochester the one thing that is supposed to be secured in the Oedipal relay: the Name of the Father, or the patronymic..." (252) The Rochester character doesn't have a name.
ReplyDeleteRhys says he's "the victim of the patriarchal inheritance law of entailment rather than of a father's natural preference for the firstborn: in Wide Sargasso Sea, Rochester's situation is clearly that of a younger son dispatched to the colonies to buy an heiress" (251).
Eve Sedgwick describes the basic function of the gothic novel as a literary approach and application that “opens horizons between social patterns, rational decisions, and institutionally approved emotions; in a word, to enlarge the sense of reality and its impact on the human being” (3, “The Coherence of Gothic Conventions, Sedgwick). For our purposes, and also to more specifically direct Ms. Sedgwick’s definition, insert “woman” in place of “human being.” That is to say, what makes “gothic” literature so, well, gothic, and emotive, is its emphasis on the overflowing consciousness of female kind. It is no wonder that the gothic novel first came into the social literary consciousness during the 19th/late 18th century; this was a time period that was especially oppressive to women, and all minorities, in light of the expansive, patriarchal, imperialistic fever that struck the “civilized” western world at the time. Slavery and female hood could be considered analogous states of servitude at the time: throughout Jane Eyre, Frankenstein, Beloved, and Wide Sargasso Sea, a female’s duties and worth are measured by her marriage, performed labor, and veiled social submittal: i.e. Jane feels her worth is in her work, Elizabeth is brutally murdered as a reward for her wedding night, Sethe crippled by her unwomanly pride and indentured mindset, and Antoinette beaten into madness by a yoking union and displacement, respectively. These women protagonists all face peril and devastation that is specific to their sex. This leads me to a question I have been pondering: Is the oppressed nature of females in these gothic novels a product of plotline and a narrative technique, or is it a reflection of the authorless state-of-mind that plagues female authors, as detailed in the Gilbert and Gubar reading? That is to say: what is the creative and mental link that bends the thought processes of these female authors, joining their works thematically even though they are penned in varied time periods? I believe that there is a widespread female obsession to articulate, as Eve Sedgwick puts it, “unspeakable.” Even in modern times, despite our great social reform in this country, women are often marginalized in terms of how the public views their ability and societal worth. It is still a struggle for women to find equality in the workplace, in their marriages, and especially in license to be creative. We are still taught to maintain a shred of female secrecy and mystery, and it is a direct consequence of this necessary shroud that we find ourselves authorless and rootless, even in modernity.
ReplyDeleteI would like to address the ways in which Jean Rhys appeals to this sense of the unspeakable in Wide Sargasso Sea, and also to discuss the ways in which I believe the author failed to maintain a consistent shroud of intended mystery. I applaud the author’s effort to bring light to a lesser character in Jane Eyre who, I believe, is the most tragic and influential character in that story; if Toni Morrison were Charlotte Bronte, she would have written Bertha’s story, not Jane’s, for it is the true embodiment of misunderstanding, confusion, and oppressions in greatest contrast to the imperialistic attitude of patriarchal England at the time. I think it is interesting how Rhys does not try to make Antoinette/Bertha appear “normal” in any respect to the reader. She is always strange, always on the edge; unreachable. However, the male narrator in Sargasso is surprisingly accessible and sympathetic: that is to say, Rochester’s cognitions are more accurately articulated throughout, making him a more identifiable narrator and a stronger literary voice than Antoinette. Therein, in my opinion, lay the novels’ largest flaw: it is as if Rhys understands and apologized for, as Morrison puts it, a “story that should not be told.” Rhys splashes the text with a male voice to give the story weight. But for me, this leaves much of Anoinette's unspoken mystery silent.