Wide Sargasso sea door Jean Rhys

Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys

First published by André Deutch 1966
Published in Penguin Books 1968
This edition is published in 2000
Number of pages: 149


Characters
Antoinette
Antoinette is a Creole girl living in Jamaica. Because of her white coloured skin she is discriminated by the children of her age. Due her childhood she has to defend herself against racism. She often discriminates too. As it is the only way to defend herself towards the mean words of the people around her. Antoinette does not have a lot of friends. She is very attached to her garden, which is the only place she feels safe in. She believes the people around her, do hate her. She has never known love from her mother and is raised by her housemaid Christophine, who she calls her best friend.

‘’I never looked at any strange Negro. They hate us. They called us white cockroaches. Let sleeping dogs lie. One day a little girl followed me singing, ‘Go away white cockroach, go away, go away. I walked fast, but she walked faster. ‘’White cockroach, go away, go away. Nobody wants you. Go away.’ (page 9 )

Since the very first beginning of her childhood, she is not sure of her identity. She does not feel like an English girl and she can not see herself as inhabitant from Jamaica. The family of Antoinette is hated for a reason. The mother of Antoinette is a widow of a slave-owner and the daughter of a slave owner herself. The family of Antoinette is fighting against social isolation. The mother of Antoinette can not handle this very well. Antoinette is rejected by her mother. Her mother gets completely mad, when Antoinette is of the age of eleven, because of the social prison she is living in. When she falls apart, she is brought to a ‘madhouse’’ as Antoinette calls it. By then, Antoinette clarifies her mother for dead.

When Antoinette is at the age of twenty, she marries Mr. Rochester from England, a man chosen by her stepfather. She falls in love with him too quickly. As a tradition of the English marriage, women assign their possessions to her husbands. Before she knows it, her whole property lays in his hands. After her honeymoon, she discovers that Richard does not love her and abhors living with her. She then slowly grows mad like her mother.

‘’Antoinette re-enacts her mother’s experience: she marries an Englishman and is driven mad by the tension between his assumptions about her and demands on her, and her precarious sense of where she belongs. (page xiii)’’

Antoinette thinks of England as unreal.

For Antoinette it is a place of ‘’swans and roses and snow’’(p.70) For Christophine it is ‘’cold to freeze your bones and they thief your money’’ (p.70)


Christophine
Christophine is the housemaid of the family of Antoinette. Christophine is a Martinique girl by origin. She is bought as a slave by the father of Antoinette to serve her and her mother. After a couple of years, slavery is discharged, and Christophine continues as a paid worker for the Cosway family.

‘’So I asked about Christophine. Was she very old? Had she always been with us? ‘’She was your father’s wedding present to me – one of his presents. He thought I would be pleased with a Martinique girl. I don’t know how old she is now. Does it matter? (page 8)

Christophine has a strong opinion towards the husband of Antoinette, Richard. She makes it very clear from the beginning that she does not approve his behaviour.

‘’Your husband certainly loves money, she said. ‘’That is no lie. Money have pretty face for everybody, but for that man money petty like pretty self, he can’t see nothing else.’’ (page 72)

This quotation, spoken by Christophine, illustrates the reason in her eyes, why Mr Rochester actually married Antoinette. For her heritage and money, not because he was in love with her.
Christophine is a smart woman, her strong character is not afraid to stand up for her own rights.


Time
This novel is not precisely dated. I googled the time and I came to an answer. The writer of the book; Jane Rhys says in an interview that she has been married ten years at the time she writes her story. If we assume that to be the year in which it was published, it would be 1847.

‘’Jane Rhys changes the date of Wide Sargasso Sea to the period when the Creole planters were most disoriented and, from her perspective, to be pitied. ‘’(page xxiii)


Place
‘’Coulibri, a mortal paradise on mirroring and doubling, reiterating the trope of the looking glass.’’

The first part of the book takes place in Coulibri. The surroundings of the island are extremely beautiful and often described in the book. The island is situated in the Sargasso Sea.

‘’ A bamboo sput jutted from the cliff, the water coming from it was silver blue. It was cold pure and sweet, a beautiful colour against the thick green leaf.’’ (page 30)

The second part of the book takes mostly place in Granbois, in Dominica. Where Mr. Rochester and Antoinette are living together. They are moving from Coulibri to Granbois, because Mr. Rochester can’t stand the place.

The third part takes place in England, where Antoinette lives in the Rochester Mason, which is estate of Mr. Rochester’s family. Antoinette lives there with a servant named Grace, who is guarding her.


Structure
The book is separated in three parts. The book perceives the different stages in Antoinette’s life. In ‘’part one’’ the reader gets to see the childhood of the little Antoinette. In part two, Antoinette is married and grows mad after the rejection from her husband. In part three, Antoinette is abandoned by Mr. Rochester and shipped over to England. So that she can live in the Rochester Mason, with a servant who keeps an eye on her.

Because of the separation, the book is clarifying and much easier to read. Between ‘’part one’’ and ‘’part two’’ is a time gap of a couple of years, but between the second part and the third part there is only a change of direction in the story. The third part of the book is the shortest part and the most bizarre. Because of her madness, Antoinette looses control and burns the house down while everybody is asleep. Here comes the story literally to an end.

‘’Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do. There must have been a draught for the flame flickered and I thought it was out. But I shielded it with my hand and It burned up against to light me along the dark passage.’’ (page 124)


Point of view
The point of view changes from Antoinette and Mr. Rochester.
In the first part of the book, the story is all about Antoinette’s childhood. The main character is Antoinette and we only get to see her thoughts. In the second part of the book, the point of view changes between Mr. Rochester and Antoinette. Antoinette is still the main character and we don’t get to know Mr. Rochester very well. We only get to see the thoughts about Antoinette. This is very interesting, because we then see the crazy behaviour of Antoinette through the eyes of someone else. In the third part, Mr. Rochester is out of the picture. The story is all about Antoinette again.

‘’She was only a ghost. A ghost in the grey daylight. Nothing left but hopelessness. She lifted her eyes. Blank lovely eyes. Mad eyes. Looking at her, seeing the hatred in her eyes – and feeling my own hate spring up to meet it.’’ (page 110)


Title of the book
‘’The plot is like the Wide Sargasso Sea, where weeds tangle together and resist being unravelled. Stories drift into one another inconclusively.’’ (page xxii)

Facts
The Sargasso Sea is a region in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. It is known for being so salty that almost no sea life exists there, excepting a few species of seaweed and eel. It has rather a sinister reputation in folklore. It contains the Bermuda Triangle, and many other strange disappearances have occurred there. Due to air and ocean currents, there is almost no wind over the sea, and many ships have been becalmed there.

The Wide Sargasso Sea refers, on one level, to the sea itself. The sea separates England and the Caribbean. England is the country where Antoinette has her roots and the Caribbean are the surroundings where she grew up. The title could also be referring to the ‘’inner death’’ of Antoinette. This because of the fact that the sea is so extremely salt that nothing can survive there. When we look at Antoinette’s live, we could say that she also did not survive the Wide Sargasso Sea.


Opinion
When I read this book in my summer vacation, I soon discovered that this small book wasn’t the most easy to read. Some privileged information on history was necessary. Because I did not read Jane Eyre, it was even harder to step into this story. The subject of the book was new for me. I did not read a book like this before. The mental problems of Antoinette were hard to understand. I did not fully understand where her madness came from. But I think that mental problems are almost always hard to understand.

The book reminded me in some way of a modern version of Pride and Prejudice, but with drama included. The unfortunate marriage of Antoinette soon turns out into horror. Something that was very sad to read. A lot of women in Arabic countries still have to marry men chosen by family. It made me think of their mental situation. How would they be doing?

After reading the book, I watched the movie. I have to say that it clarified a lot. I got more notion of the problematic behaviour of Mr. Rochester. In the book he did not appeal as a cruel man to me. But in the film he represents the coldest man I have ever seen. Of course this is an interpretation of the book, but when I read again parts of the book, I could understand it better.

The events in the story are not very spectacular. The feelings of Antoinette and her mad thinking are more important. The book is centred on that. I could not picture Antoinette in my mind. Her character felt very unrealistic to me. If I were in her position, I would behaved much different. Her decisions are not clear. A normal woman would not have stayed with a man that makes you that unhappy.

The construction of the book, which was split in three parts, was really helpful to understand the time change. It also helped me to search quotations. The book itself was not easy to read. Because of the undefinable character of Antoinette and her husband, it was hard to keep up the headline. The English language was also quite complicated. The English books I read normally are more joyful and written in a talkative way. This book was written way back, so the time difference is noticeable during reading. Jean Rhys often uses words in another language that I don’t know, probably African. Something that was outstanding. Words like ‘’Dou dou’’, ‘’Béké’’ and ‘’Tim-Tim’’ where used a lot. Often words for nick-names, like ‘ Dear little darling’’ that Christophine and the other people of Jamaica uses.

The ending of the book was the strangest part of the book. Antoinette burns the house down. This all happens at the last page. The reader does not get to know what’s next. It is clearly an open ending.
The only thing we know is that the future looks really bad for Antoinette!