jane eyre wide sargasso sea essay topics

In her letters, Jean Rhys wrote about her concern that Wide Sargasso Sea would be viewed as just another adaptation of Jane Eyre, of which, she remarked, [t]here have been umpteen thousand and sixty already. Today, critics view Rhys's novella not as an adaptation but rather as a revision of the nineteenth-century classic. How does Wide Sargasso Sea revise or alter the way one reads and understands Jane Eyre? Along these lines, what narrative techniques did Rhys employ to differentiate her text from the earlier work of Charlotte Brontë? You should think about the particular amendments Rhys made to certain details of Brontë's novel, and/or the specific aspects of Brontë's story that she chose to emphasize; for example, elements of the characterization of Mr. Rochester. Finally, consider Rhys's deliberate additions to the Caribbean plotline, such as the invention of Christophine. What is the function of such supplements? Wide Sargasso Sea is a study in unfulfillment, in unreconciled oppositions and contrasts, the critic Thomas F. Staley once declared. Choose one of the work's many pairs of binary oppositions - examples of which might include black/white, sun/shade, life/death, slave/master, truth/fiction, day/night, past/present, sympathy/hatred, attraction/repulsion, knowledge/denial, familiar/strange, male/female, England/West Indies, and madness/sanity, just to name a few - and analyze how and what the juxtaposition of antithetical entities contributes to the novella. Perhaps because Jean Rhys was writing within the limitations established by an earlier literary classic, Wide Sargasso Sea seems to present Antoinette's ultimate fate as an inevitable, foregone, pre-determined conclusion. Daniel Cosway insists, for example, that madness runs in the family, and Annette certainly proves to be psychologically unstable, so it is hardly a surprise when we see Antoinette.
The following are all quotes from Jane Eyre describing Bertha Mason: Edward Fairfax Rochester, of Thornfield Hall, in the county of —, and of Ferndean Manor, in —shir, England, was married to my sister, Bertha Antoinetta Mason, daughter of Jonas Mason, merchant and of Antoinetta his wife, a Creole, at —church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. ‘Bertha Mason is mad; and she came from a mad family’ idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard! – as I found out after I had wed the daughter; for they were silent on family secrets before. Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parents in both points. I had a charming partner – pure, wise, modest: you can fancy I was a happy man. I went through rich scenes! Oh! My experience has been heavenly, if you only knew it! You shall see what sort of being I was cheated into espousing, and judge whether or not I had a right to break the compact, and seek sympathy with something at least human.’ ‘What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight tell: it grovelled, seemingly on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.’ Did reading Wide Sargasso Sea change or add to your perception of Jane Eyre’s portrayal of Bertha’s ethnicity? How do you feel about intersection of gender and ethnicity in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea? Do you think Wide Sargasso Sea supplements an omission in the original by providing an alternate reading of some of the characters’ lives? How do you feel about the way Jean Rhys went about this? Is her rewriting enough to address some of the gaps in Jane Eyre?.
Rhys gives us few examples of healthy parent-child relationships in the novel, creating a fictional world in which family—like nationality, race, and gender—becomes dangerously unstable and fragmented. All identities are disrupted in the novel, leaving Rochester and Antoinette to struggle alone with a daunting question: Who am I? Both characters are rejected by their parents and thrust into a world that does not embrace or affirm them. Parallels to their situations appear throughout the novel, particularly in the situation of Daniel, whose father, Alexander Cosway, treats him with open contempt. Unnatural and grotesque, this childhood rejection aggravates these characters' sense of isolation. Questions of family in the novel also highlight the legacy of slavery and the paternal role taken by slave owners, who exploited and abused their children. Antoinette and her mother appear to be driven to madness by a world in which they are neither accepted nor loved. Rhys thereby suggests that insanity is less a genetic trait than an environmentally triggered one. In doing so, she contests the notion that emotionally unstable people are biologically inferior or tainted. Rhys suggests that female hysteria, a condition applied as a label to many women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, results from the repressive and suffocating dependence of women in a world of men. Her characterizations of Antoinette and Annette, both associated with the racially mixed world of the West Indies, attribute insanity to a sadness exacerbated and cultivated by others—a sadness that stems from their cultural displacement rather than their exotic background. Rhys thereby humanizes the image of the raving Creole heiress that Brontë paints in Jane Eyre, inviting us to sympathize with the mental breakdown of a lonely, misunderstood woman. Christophine plays both a maternal and paternal.
Published twenty-five years after Jean Rhys’s previous book, Wide Sargasso Sea was Rhys’s last novel. Different in some respects from the rest of Rhys’s work (Wide Sargasso Sea is set in the Caribbean, not in London or Paris, and occurs in the nineteenth rather than the twentieth century), Rhys’s last novel continues her passionate explorations into the lives of tragic heroines who are alone, outsiders, and underdogs. Continuing in a long tradition of women’s writing, Rhys explores the cultural alienation that results from imperialism and gender roles. Wide Sargasso Sea is Rhys’s revision of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre. The novel’s position within the literary canon is thus significant both as a continuation in the tradition of women’s writings and as a rebellion to a woman’s text within that tradition. Voicing approval and contempt, Rhys creates a dialogue with her literary predecessor. Rhys grants Antoinette what Brontë denied Bertha, a voice. Rhys does the same for Jane Eyre’s Rochester. The two main characters in Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette Cosway Mason and the unnamed Englishman, tell their versions of the tale in their own voices. Wide Sargasso Sea is in three parts: Antoinette’s childhood, the newlywed period, and Antoinette’s period of imprisonment in the attic of her husband’s English home. Of the three parts, the first and third are told in Antoinette’s voice. The second is told primarily in the Englishman’s voice but is interrupted by a brief section in. (The entire section is 650 words.).
Wide Sargasso Sea was Jean Rhys's effort to rewrite, or more accurately, to elaborate on and complicate, the history presented by Charlotte Brontë's classic novel, Jane Eyre. The eponymous protagonist of Jane Eyre develops into a fiercely independent, self-assured, moral, and passionate young woman. The protagonist of Rhys's text is the character who Jane will know later only as Rochester's lunatic wife who is locked in the attic. Rhys explores this character who Brontë herself acknowledged was left somewhat unexplained (Thorpe 175). This exploration takes the form of a three part narrative, the middle part being in the first person voice of Rochester (although he is never named), the other two being the voice of Antoinette (who will later become the madwoman Bertha of Jane Eyre). This narrative structure skews ideals of imperialism (and therefore patriarchy) by challenging concepts of narrative authority, particularly of a white male authority, as Rochester is inserted in between Antoinette's two accounts. Antoinette, much like Jane, grows up in a world with little love to offer her. Both women are cared for as children by inattentive and dysfunctional relatives, both lose their first friend, and both have a profoundly isolated and lonely childhood. However, while Jane is able to define herself by rejecting the labels others place on her and form a very sturdy and distinguished identity, Antoinette is baffled by having a body, a life, a spirit. She is ignored by almost all but Josephine and has little interaction with others, which arrests the development of her sense of identity. Schapiro notes that Wide Sargasso Sea explores a psychological condition of profound isolation and self-division.. the condition is bound up with another of the novel's characteristically modernist themes: the conviction that betrayal is built into the fabric of life (84). Wide.
Study Guide: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jane Rhys - Free BookNotes Previous Page | Table of Contents WIDE SARGASSO SEA: FREE STUDY GUIDE / BOOK SUMMARY STUDY QUESTIONS / DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Why is Christophine disliked and feared? 2. Who negotiated the marriage between Antoinette and the Englishman and how did these men benefit from the marriage? 3. What did Aunt Cora give to Antoinette and why did she feel her niece would need them? 4. Why did Antoinette choose not to take Christophine’s advice? 5. Why did Amelie sleep with Antoinette’s husband? 6. What is the significance of Antoinette’s husband’s drawing? 7. In what way, if any, did Christophine contribute to Antoinette’s madness? 8. Can Wide Sargasso Sea stand alone as a novel or must it be considered only as the prequel to Jane Eyre? 9. Whose narrative voice is more believable, Antoinette’s or her husband’s? Why? 10. Describe at least two scenes from Part Three and explain how they are based on events from Jane Eyre. Your browser does not support the IFRAME tag. ESSAY TOPICS / BOOK REPORT IDEAS 1. Using adjectives that Antoinette’s husband used when referring to the servants, explain how these words illustrate his attitudes and fears. 2. What animal signified betrayal? Describe the scenes where it appeared and identify the betrayers and the betrayed. 3. Annette wanted to leave Jamaica. Christophine advised Antoinette to leave Jamaica. Why was leaving Jamaica a solution to the Cosway women’s problems? 4. Describe the parent/child relationships in Wide Sargasso Sea. 5. In your opinion, did Antoinette’s husband cause Antoinette to go mad or did he merely speed up the process? Use examples from the novel to support your answer. 6. Contrast Antoinette’s and her husband’s perceptions of nature. How do these differences account for their actions? 7. What do you think was Rhys’ motivation for giving the madwoman in the.