Wide Sargasso Sea was published in 1965 and immediately attracted critical attention. Its publication helped save Jean Rhys from death. he obscurity into which she had fallen after her earlier novels, published between the First and Second World Wars, went out of print Wide Sargasso Sea won Rhys the prestigious WH Smith Prize and the Heinemann Prize, and earned her a place in. the literary canon that the novel seeks to recreate the "real" story of Bertha Mason, Edward Rochester's mad Creole wife in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Rhys, explores the complex relationships between former West Indian slaveholding families, white West Indians and others. blacks and the new English settlers of the Caribbean after emancipation Rhys attempts to correct what she saw as an injustice on the part of Brontë by telling the story of Bertha Mason (referred to in the majority of Wide Sargasso Sea as name of Antoinette Cosway). , Rhys writes in her own notes that she "discovered what a big (and improbable) monster [Bertha Mason] was." She believed that Brontë "took her horrible Bertha from a legend [so she has] the right to take her". lost Antoinette."Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"?Get the original essaySet primarily in Jamaica and Dominica, Rhys's country of birth, Wide Sargasso Sea describes how Antoinette became the "madwoman of the attic", Bertha Mason, from Jane Eyre. In Brontë's novel, Bertha is a monster described as violent, mad and promiscuous: "he crawled, apparently, on all fours; "Grown and growled like a strange wild animal: but he was covered with clothes; and a quantity of black, graying hair, wild as a mane, hid his head and face. boundary between human and animal as well as between male and female; Bertha's gender is lost in Jane's description and replaced by the gender-neutral pronoun "it." In 19th-century England, the very existence of a "strange wild animal" would almost eliminate, in mind and in law, Jane's hope of marrying Mr. Rochester. It would seem reasonable to assume, given her lack of humanity and inability to interact socially with other characters, that Jane Eyre's Bertha is nothing more than a plot device, serving to present a legal barrier to Mr. Rochester's marriage to Jane while weakening his social position in the community. In contrast, Rhys creates a vulnerable young woman whom readers pity, seeking, unsuccessfully, to fit into a new world where old inequalities and prejudices are suddenly upended to cause her to become a "white cockroach." He is told to "go away, go away. Nobody wants you." The themes explored in the novel – notably those of race relations between newly freed slaves and their former owners and the status of women – attracted the attention of critics. . Some critics debate the merits of the novel, saying that it relies too heavily on Jane Eyre and cannot stand on its own. Francis Wyndham writes in the introduction to Wide Sargasso Sea that "it is in no way a pastiche of Charlotte Brontë and exists in its own right, quite independent of Jane Eyre". This, however, appears to be contradicted by Rhys's own notes, in which she demonstrates that she accepts the existence of Jane Eyre as essential to the functioning of her novel. Indeed, she seems only too aware of what she would lose by "parting with Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester - too good. (Indeed, may I?) Names? Dates?" Certainly, Wide SargassoSea forces readers to re-examine Jane Eyre. and consider the importance of race in the 19th-century English novel. There are, in fact, three characters in Rhys's novel who are directly linked to three characters in Brontë's: Edward Rochester, Bertha Mason, and Grace Poole. Rochester remains anonymous throughout Wide Sargasso Sea Part Two, referred to only as "this man" or "my husband". In this complex relationship between a novel and its prequel, names establish a clear connection; Rochester's anonymity in Wide Sargasso Sea underlines the implicit importance of his character and gives heightened authority to his narrative. The implication that he is the narrator of the second part, combined with the circumstances occurring in both novels involving a substantial amount of money changing hands. in the marriage of a Creole, demonstrate an obvious link between the two Rochesters. The surname of Bertha's stepfather and half-brother (originally Antoinette) is "Mason" in Wide Sargasso Sea, linking her character by first and last name to the Bertha Mason of Jane Eyre. Antoinette calls her “caregiver” Grace Poole – the name of Bertha’s caretaker in Jane Eyre. In this essay, Grace Poole only acts as further evidence to support the connection between the novels, as readers feel neither pity nor anger towards her character. Although Rhys claims to have only wanted to give Bertha a voice and a story, "I had material for the story of Mr. Rochester's first wife. The real story - as it might have been", he does not There is no doubt that Wide Sargasso Sea evolved in part into a complete prequel to Jane Eyre. The prequel to Jane Eyre was published well after the publication of Brontë's novel in 1847. Due to the long delay between publications, it is evident that the two authors did not communicate with each other, and even if a collaboration had been considered desirable, which is doubtful in light of Rhys's notes, it would have been impossible. We must remember that Jane Eyre was written long before Wide Sargasso Sea, and therefore I assume that Rhys's intention from the start was for readers to read Jane Eyre before his novel. After all, there is no debate as to whether Jean Rhys created her novel to serve as a prequel to Brontë's. I believe it is important to read Jane Eyre before its prequel, because the savage portrayal of the heartless Mr. Rochester from Wide Sargasso Sea - "Neither cry not. Cry wrongly with him" - would undoubtedly have thrown a wrench into disturbing shadow. about the caring and empathetic Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre: "Oh, Jane, how did I feel when I found you had fled Thornfield... What could my darling do, I asked, left destitute and penniless? Inevitably, Bertha Mason's unsympathetic view in Jane Eyre would be softened by her empathetic portrayal in Wide Sargasso Sea. Due to the fact that the two novels present such contrasting views of Bertha and Mr. Rochester, consonance cannot be achieved between their conflicting descriptions. Cognitive dissonance ensues, and one finds oneself torn, unable to decide which of the seemingly opposing character descriptions to believe; readers' sympathies tend to be with the incapacitated Mr. Rochester at the end of Jane Eyre, while readers of Wide Sargasso Sea tend to sympathize with the unjustly imprisoned Bertha. It is not possible for readers to pity both characters simultaneously, because both characters cannot both be victims. In my opinion, a satisfactory consonance can only be obtained if we separate the characters to the point that they are specific to their respective novel, thus completely detaching them from their partners. The question of whether the characters oftwo novels are factually analogous is indisputable. However, it is not inevitable that a character will influence the reader's opinion of their counterpart in the novel's partner once the reader comes to accept that the characters are unique in their own right. Certainly, mentally separating the characters from their partners is possible. , and indeed necessary to avoid intractable cognitive dissonance. However, this may not be entirely desirable; The vast Sargasso Sea could partially lose its underlying essence if a complete separation of characters were achieved, since Rhys documents his creation born out of his need to fill an apparent void left in Jane Eyre; she felt that Brontë did not give "the madwoman in the attic" a sufficiently complete portrait to make her a convincing character. Coming from a Creole mother herself, it is more than possible that she felt it was an insult that Bertha was described solely according to the stereotype of the 19th century "crazy Creole heiress": "But I, in reading later, and often, was offended by his portrait of the crazy 'paper tiger', the Creole scenes all false. "This note, written by Rhys a year before the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea, suggests a personal and almost unique anger towards Brontë's portrayal of Bertha in Jane Eyre, which she believes may have helped to justify her claim to use the character of Bertha Mason; to “repair” a racial injustice by Brontë. Rhys successfully explores the complex themes of social relationships in Wide Sargasso Sea in a way that is not possible in Jane Eyre. However, I do not believe, as she thought, that it is necessary to use well-known characters from a renowned novel to carry out such an exploration. Indeed, she wrote in her notes that “it is about this crazy Creole in particular that I want to talk, and not about any of the other crazy Creoles.” It is possible to argue that Rhys may have feigned such fascination in an attempt to justify to us, or perhaps to herself, why she compared her key characters to those in Jane Eyre . It is conceivable that her sole motive for forming these analogies was to save herself from the aforementioned obscurity into which she had sunk by launching Wide Sargasso Sea from the shoulders of an already famous novel; there would of course be no objection from the author of Jane Eyre. Besides the clearly comparable traits of the main characters of the two novels, other equally convincing dissimilarities exist; these dissimilarities come not from differences in the characters' behavior, but from not-so-obvious differences in the characters' speech style. More than a hundred years passed between the publication of the two novels, leading to distinct cultural shifts. Throughout the 19th century, imperialism was a component of almost all British literature. Wide Sargasso Sea was published more than twenty years after World War II, a war that ended the era of imperialism. It was written during the era of the American civil rights movement, during which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, thereby increasing the esteem of the black population within the community white American. Mr. Rochester describes his stay in the West Indies, one of the fields of imperial conquest of the 19th century, as hell: "One night I was awakened by his cries... it was a fiery West Indian night... “This life,” I said at last, “is hell! It's the air, it's the sounds of the abyss. I have the right to free myself from it if I can... Let me escape and return home! God!'... A cool wind from Europe was blowing over the ocean and rushing through the open window: thestorm broke out, streamed, thundered, blazed, and the air became pure... It was true Wisdom which consoled me at that hour. , and showed me the right way... The gentle wind of Europe still whispered in the cooling leaves, and the Atlantic thundered in glorious freedom... “Go,” said Hope, “and live again in Europe. .. You have done all that God and humanity require of you” Here a factual similarity can be clearly seen between the two Rochesters' dislike for the West Indies when reading the account of the Rochester's hatred of Wide Sargasso Sea. : “I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain I hated the sunsets, whatever their color, I hated their beauty, their magic and the secret that I would never know. I hated its indifference. and the cruelty that was part of her beauty. And above all, I hated her." Although their feeling is the same, the hundred years that have passed have left an obvious mark both on the attitude towards this hell and the style of speech of the Rochester of Wide Sargasso Sea. Rhys is noted for her technical style by Francis Wyndham in the introduction to Wide Sargasso Sea: "What struck me about the technical side... was the singular instinct for form which this young woman possessed, an instinct for the form possessed by singularly. few English writers and almost no female English writers. However, English grammar has evolved over these hundred years depending on the culture in which it was used. It is inevitable, then, that Rhys's depiction of his hatred of his surroundings carries neither the imperialist connotation of British superiority nor the fluidity of antiquated style common to 19th-century authors. Comparing these two passages, supposedly spoken by the same person, the Rochester of Wide Sargasso Sea seems infantile ("I hated... I hated... I hated... I hated... I hated") by in relation to the linguistic competence expressed by the Rochester of Jane Eyre ("This life, I said at last, is hell! It is the air, it is the sounds of the abyss!") a person expresses himself implicitly or explicitly is an individual tendency towards himself. Throughout the novel, the Rochester of Jane Eyre implicitly expresses his hatred, while the Rochester of Wide Sargasso Sea explicitly expresses his hatred five times in a single passage. This is due to Jane Eyre's Rochester's significantly greater control over language, which allows him to express his emotions more subtly while achieving equal, if not greater, impact than his partner in Wide Sargasso Sea. I submit that these passages alone constitute evidence of sufficient weight to deny the possibility that the two Rochesters are one and the same person. In the passage spoken by the Rochester of Jane Eyre, he justifies the need for a move beyond the laws of marriage as a divine injunction rather than a human motive in this flight to England. The indication of a divine injunction (“I have the right to free myself from it if I can... [I] have done everything that God and humanity require of [me]”) is completely absent in the Great Sargasso Sea; the human motive is obviously the only driving force (“I hated the mountains… I hated her”) of this Rochester. It is possible that between the settings of the two novels, Mr. Rochester's fury and explicitness may have cooled somewhat with age. However, he was nonetheless an adult in the Great Sargasso Sea whose language was already fully developed; I consider it improbable and unconvincing, probably to a greater extent than Rhys thought of the existence of Bertha from Jane Eyre, that the language of young Rochester of Wide Sargasso Sea evolved with his age into the language demonstrated by Mr..