Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea
hyena’ standing on its ‘hind legs’. 6 Before attempting to marry Jane, Rochester says he will ‘figuratively speaking – attach you [Jane] to a chain’, 7 a clear sign that marriage will be restrictive to Jane due to the gendered roles adhered to in Victorian society, in contrast to her prior rebellious independence. When compared to when ‘Rochester, with more rope, which was at hand bound her [Bertha]’, 8 it becomes clear that in the novel the language that contains and chains up gender rebellion is very similar to that which contains the racial other. In the same way that female rebellion is labelled hysteria to justify suppression, the racial other is refused their status as human to justify their treatment. Before we are introduced to Bertha Mason as a character, we are introduced to her as an object of gothic horror in: ‘What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell.’ 9 Spivak argues that Bertha’s ‘function is to render indeterminate the boundary between human and animal and thereby to weaken her entitlement under the spirit if not the letter of the Law’. 10 This vindicates Jane’s moral and legal position through racial means. Aside from creating the novel’s famous gothic ambience, Bertha’s role in the narrative is not that of an actual character but instead a plot device, catalysing and hindering Jane’s relationship with Rochester at Jane’s convenience with her presence and absence – a quality determined by gendered and colonial structures. Jane’s feminist ending is in fact only afforded by colonial oppression and her complacency with it, jeopardizing her position as a progressive. The novel concludes with Jane and Rochester’s reunification and union, the couple now sharing a more balanced relationship. Rochester is diminished by colonial structures, as Bertha, inspired and maddened by years of colonial abuse and complacency, burns down Thornfield and partially blinds Rochester – killing herself in the process. This not only frees Rochester from his previous marriage, allowing him to marry Jane, but evens his dynamic with Jane. She also is elevated, inheriting a fortune from her estranged uncle, its source being imperial commerce. The novel’s feminist features are entirely reliant on the subjugation of the racial other, but Jane’s lack of acknowledgement of their humanity within her narration subdues her hypocritical qualities as well as the colonial. Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea serves as a prequel to Brontë’s novel which reclaims Bertha’s subjectivity by constructing the character of Antoinette Cosway behind the name, exposing and beginning to reconcile the limitations of the classic novel. Jane Eyre is entirely narrated by the titular character, delivering a singular authoritative history, but the existence alone of Rhys’ novel destabilizes its certainty. Several voices often give competing versions of the same events in Wide Sargasso Sea which, with Rhys’ distinctive stream of consciousness prose, highlights the limitations of singular perspective, suggesting it is unable to encompass the whole truth. There are many parallels between Jane and Antoinette: both emerge from isolated impoverished childhoods, pass through restrictive educational institutions, and become involved with Rochester. However, the strict moral codes of Victorian England are absent; instead, the turbulent context of post-emancipation Jamaica serves as Rhys’ backdrop – one ignored by Brontë almost entirely. Racial tension, cultural hybridity and the lingering trauma of slavery is ever present in Antoinette’s life as the descendant of a slave-owner, while
6 Brontë 1847: 338. 7 Ibid., 312. 8 Ibid., 339. 9 Ibid., 338. 10 Spivak 1985: 249.
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