Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea
colonialism is equally as inescapable. Antoinette throughout the novel experiences unquestionably traumatic events which culminate in her mental instability, which is dismissed by the unnamed Rochester – a choice that could symbolize the widespread treatment of the character, extending to the author and audience themselves. Rhys cleverly crafts the mechanisms of Antoinette’s abusive trauma to be the same colonial ones she is silently victim to in Jane Eyre . As in Jane Eyre , this is mainly manifested through the actions of Rochester: he takes possession of Antoinette’s sexuality but refuses to engage with her at an emotional level, notably having sex with their servant Amélie while knowing that his wife can hear them, demonstrative of his colonial and exploitative treatment of her. Rochester strips Antoinette of agency within her own marriage and her fortune, and refuses to engage with her at an intimate level of understanding. He confuses Antoinette’s shame regarding her family’s colonial past with her attempting to hide hereditary madness. Daniel Cosway’s letters interrupt the narrative and plant seeds of false narratives about his wife, justifying to him the emotional detachment which permits his abusiveness. The central marriage of Rhys’ novel encapsulates how colonial dynamics are inherently isolating and inhuman. The same false narratives, financial gain and dehumanization, define it and Bertha’s treatment in Jane Eyre . The fabricated lens through which she is viewed in that novel is likely why Antoinette seemingly is unable to reconcile the veracity of England coexisting with her describing it as ‘their world’, and as ‘cardboard’, 11 indicating its falsity and fragility due to its reliance on incomplete narratives. Wide Sargasso Sea ’s ending overlaps with the events of Jane Eyre : Antoinette’s act of burning Thornfield is both suicide and resistance, a refusal to remain the object of Rochester’s text and defined by a system of narrative imposed upon her: Rhys allows her to reclaim her agency from both Brontë and Victorian society. Colonialism’s warping of the colonized’s expression is a key discourse in the novel. Rochester, who narrates the majority of the middle section of the novel, renames Antoinette to Bertha to try and erase her heritage, a sort of event which Thiong’o calls ‘a symbolic act of colonization, an erasure of self through language’. 12 However, Wide Sargasso Sea is not simply a tragedy about colonialism’s effects on culture, but an act of resistance against it. Christophine is a counter-voice to Rochester, challenging his narrative control in the novel’s second part, highlighted by the contrasting Creole language she employs. Not only does she influence Antoinette, but she confronts Rochester in the novel’s most striking scene. Her accusations are repeated in Rochester’s head in a moment of polyphony which forces Rochester to internalize the colonized’s voices and breaches his control over the narrative. This moment embodies Rhys’ wider aim to prove that the supposedly authoritative story of Jane Eyre cannot remain unchallenged due to its suppression of certain voices. Wide Sargasso Sea humanizes Bertha and by extension emphasizes the subdued cruelty which acts as Brontë’s scaffolding, and in doing so challenges the widely accepted position of the literary canon. This stems from the fact that the canon is a strictly defined collection of books, controlled by the absolute authority of scholars and educational institutions. Rhys destabilizes the canon in creating Wide Sargasso Sea , by challenging its boundaries, as the novel cannot exist without it and in doing so demonstrates that the canon is not universal or definitively complete. Critics like Spivak ‘contended that Wide Sargasso Sea is necessarily bound by the reach of the European novel’, 13 and is therefore
11 Rhys 1966: 117. 12 Thiong’o 1986: 31. 13 Spivak 1985: 259.
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