Introduction to Wide Sargasso Sea

My name is Danielle Rodriguez. I am a third year Ph.

D candidate at Newcastle University,

and I will be presenting on an introduction to Jean Rhys's wide Sargasso Sea so wide.

Sargasso Sea was published in 1966 by Jeane Risse.

She was living in Cornwall at the time,

and at the time of publication she was thought dead

because her books have been out of print since 1939.

This is the last of her novels, and it was published. She was 76

it is designed as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre,

which was published in 18 47.

Generous was given a copy of this novel in 1945 by her third husband,

and she decided that she was going to use

Wide Sargasso Sea to give Bertha Mason a life.

So

it tells the story of the woman who became the madwoman in the attic,

Um,

the Bertha Mason who burns down Thornfield towards

the end of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

It took Reese almost 20 years to write it. Um, it was written,

um, when did she was kind of

in obscurity,

and it critiques not only the institution of marriage but the institution

of slavery and the violence and

domination associated with slavery and colonialism.

It's divided into three parts, as is Jane, are divided into three parts.

The first is narrated by Antoinette and details her childhood,

including her stay at a boarding school before

she came before she met Edward Rochester.

Um, and it also details her life on a decaying estate with her mother.

Um, she's lonely and isolated, and it is set directly after emancipation.

Um, she and her mother are impoverished and marooned.

There's a significant word, um, by on this estate alone,

surrounded by resentful black population.

Antoinette's mother is very distant from her.

And like Jane, she's very lonely, and she has a kind of loveless childhood.

Unlike Jane, however,

she does not have a grand rebellion at the beginning of this of this novel,

both a very insular girls.

But Antoinette is not as judgmental as Jane is

one of the most crucial scenes in this part.

And indeed in the whole novel is the burning of calibri,

which foreshadows the burning of thornfield in Jane Eyre.

Um, there s statehouse.

Calibri is burnt down by one of the unknown, um, resentful black population

and her brother and Antoinette's brother dies as a result,

and one of her the only person she can kind of call the fret call.

A friend also betrays her.

After that, her mother's health deteriorates,

and she sent to a convent school until she is brought back by her stepfather.

Part two is narrated by an unnamed man who marries Antoinette.

But of course we understand him to be Jane Eyre's Edward Rochester.

Uh, she, uh,

Reese denies him a name in much the same way that he renames Antoinette birth.

He insists on calling her Bertha from out of nowhere.

Nobody knows where this name Bertha comes from,

and when it does interrupt this narration very briefly to detail the kind

of the deterioration of her marriage and her attempt to save said marriage.

Edward can't remember anything much about their marriage,

so the narration begins just after the marriage and the first day of the honeymoon.

He has sensibly overwhelmed. You know everything is too colourful.

It's too hot, it's too bright.

The smells are too much for him, and he's been in a fever for the last week,

and he can't really understand what's going on around him,

but he vaguely understands

that secrets are being kept from him.

He can't understand the servants at the honeymoon house.

He doesn't understand the landscape and he cannot read their faces.

So he's always really paranoid that something that some danger

is a foot.

He has an obsession with racial and sexual purity,

and he is suspicious of Antoinette's past life.

She keeps secrets from him

not out of malice, but because she has long learned that, you know words are useless.

There is no point in her telling him her story because she, quite frankly,

wants to forget,

because her story is the story of Creole slave owning on West Indian islands,

and that is a part of their history that everybody would like to forget.

It's a very painful memory, and Edward, of course, can't understand this.

In fact, during this this period of narration,

she repeatedly says to Edward, You don't understand us or you are mistaken.

She says that to him about four or five times.

And he of course,

comes from a more kind of enlightenment or rational tradition in

which there is one history in which there is one story,

and there is one truth.

She tells him that you know there is more than one story, and this enrages him.

Some of the novels most dramatic scenes and most significant

dialogue is in this this section or part two,

and eventually the honeymoon is cut short and Edward drives Antoinette mad.

She becomes Bertha.

There's a scene where she looks like what Bertha looks like in Jane Eyre,

and he forcibly moves her out of Jamaica and brings her to England.

Part three is very short, its first narrated by Grace Poole,

which is significant because not only is Grace Poole in Jane Eyre,

the woman in charge of Bertha Mason,

she is also mistaken for Bertha Mason various times when the first fire is set off.

For when noises are being heard in demonic laughter is being heard at Thornfield.

The excuse given to Jane is that it's Grace Poole,

Um, so But then Antoinette breaks into Grace Poole's narration,

which is kind of telling the story of how she got here in

the first place and how she was engaged to be Antoinette's carer.

But she does make the point that Antoinette never loses her spirit.

This is also significant.

And like Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre is punished and put into a red room a cell, as is Bertha,

because she is a spirited child.

When Antoinette resumes narration,

the tone is more immediate and impressionistic,

and we're never quite sure if it's real,

Um, and this details when she actually makes the decision to burn down Thornfield.