Before I start discussing Wide Sargasso Sea, I would like to express a few things that have been bothering me about the whole writing process I have experienced in this class. Lately I have been feeling like a broken record in the sense that I feel like I keep repeating something that either I said or someone else said in my 20th Century Novel class. One way in which I feel like a broken record is that I tend to base my reflection essays on blog posts; which I don't mind because I believe that is part of the purpose of having this English blog. But other times, I feel like a broken record because I will regurgitate a critical point that either I or someone else has said in class in the form of a blog post, which then turns into a (more or less) polished paper. For example, I did a panel presentation on The Sun Also Rises which talked about Imagism, then I mentioned Imagism in a previous blog post, which then turned into a paper which I had to revise. I know that just sounds like a regular writing process, but I just hate the nagging feeling that I get that says that I am not being original with my content. So therefore, I will try and be original with my content in this blog post.
Throughout part one of the book, Rhys uses a very choppy writing style to disorient the reader. Maybe it's just me, but part two doesn't seem to be nearly as choppy as part one. Everything in part two is much clearer. I think this tells us a lot about Antoinette's psychology compared to Rochester's psychology. Antoinette and Rochester clearly have two different backgrounds. Antoinette grew up in Jamaica in a tense social climate. Antoinette seems to have inherited so many different things that caused her to have a completely understandable identity crisis. She inherited her parents' white skin, her fathers hate among the slaves he owned, and Christophine's songs, stories, and recipies. On the other hand, Rochester was born and raised in England where he didn't have to face any of this kind of tension and confusion. When they marry, they seem to complete each other. I keep getting the idea in my head that Antoinette is like Tarzan and Rochester is like Jane*. Like Tarzan, Antoinette was stranded on a foreign land and adopted certain customs to get by. Like Jane, Rochester is the British denizen who travels to a faraway land and falls in love. They are both polar opposites and they seem to complete each other.
*I would like to take this time to shoot down the elephant in the room. The Tarzan and Jane analogy falls apart when you draw parallels between Tarzan being raised by apes and Antoinette being raised by Christophine (a black woman). I am aware of what this analogy implies, and I do not think or condone the thinking that black people are like primates. I just thought it would still be interesting to share this analogy.
1 comment:
The Tarzan-and-Jane thing works as far as it goes--there is a vast gulf separating these two people. They are "alien" to one another, and this inherent mutual strangeness is compounded by mutual suspicion (is he only after her money? are these people hiding something from him?). For a brief period they do seem to find these differences fascinating and attractive--there does seem to be the possibility of love, maybe, for a romantically inclined reader. But the context, the historical baggage, the cultural difference all quickly proves too much.
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