A look into Wide Sargasso Sea Essay

In what appears to be a recreation of the novel Jane Eyre and the main protagonist deeply etched in its lines, Wide Sargasso Sea has given its author, Jean Rhys, quite a number of literary distinctions such as the Heinemann Award as well as the coveted W. H. Smith Award, thus securing her a well-deserved spot in the world of the written arts. Although one may be able to observe that, to some interesting degree, Rhys’ novel strongly echoes Jane Eyre in a number of ways and that, hence, her work cannot stand by itself as a lone and solid literary work without depending too much on what has already been written, Wide Sargasso Sea delivers by tempting the mind to look deeper into the context of the story. Not only is one prompted to internalize on the lives of the characters involved and the situations that have kept them both together in a single place and romantically miles apart while living together. The reader is all the more prompted to juxtapose the literary content into the context of the social developments that have shaped the course of the novel. A look into the main characters, Rochester and Antoinette, provides us with a fitting yet succulent glance of the underlying precepts behind the length of the novel. One cannot simply deny and shy away from the fact that, after reading Wide Sargasso Sea, much is to be discerned and contemplated on the behaviors of the characters and the very societal setting that has molded them to what and who they are. Rochester and Antoinette: similarities and differences The characters of both Rochester and Antoinette bear the same characteristic of madness, illustrated to some degree in the former character’s attempt to ditch-off Antoinette by turning towards infidelity and intentionally letting her hear all about his conceited deeds. The fact that Rochester verified the instance when she slept with another woman further illustrate the point that he does not yearn for Antoinette as much as his coldness and arrogance would bitterly consume his outward feelings toward her. Madness has consumed Rochester and his treatment of Antoinette, devouring and distorting his perception of the place where they lived, choosing his England more than anything else whilst staying in a seeming paradise. The madness that has dissolved the humanly precepts of Rochester does not necessarily amount to that of a madman exiled in a sanitarium somewhere in a desolate region. Rather, the context of the madness that have seemed to corrupt his thoughts can all the more me concretized with Rochester’s efforts to keep Antoinette away from him as much as possible, with the very idea that she has turned into a lunatic. Rochester appears to have countered or met the madness in Antoinette by employing actions that can be interpreted as way beyond normal thinking, one that is not commonly done by the normal individual. His deliberate intent of letting Antoinette understand that he has purposely committed infidelity is what a normal person will not usually do, is beyond the point of tolerance, and is exceedingly beyond the limits of a married man. Madness has indeed taken its course in the veins of Rochester as his treatment and attitude towards Antoinette plummet to an unceasingly growing emptiness. Antoinette, on the other hand, has been depicted almost throughout the stretch of the novel as the mad woman that she is, as the Creole taken down by the sheer weight of madness and by the mounting confusion that creases her understanding of her personality and, far more importantly, of her understanding of who she really is. It is not difficult to ascertain from the descriptions of both the personality and actuations of Antoinette that she has been slurred down by the very idea of â€Å"madness† that the people surrounding her have casted upon Rochester’s wife.