By Arcanix
“It’s a man’s world”. James Brown’s “biblically chauvinistic” lyrics in his 1966 hit record have always seemed comically ironic. Consider, for example, that 1966 was also the year that Jean Rhys’s feminist masterpiece, “Wide Sargasso Sea” was first published. It is a piece of writing that emphatically subverts the concept of male superiority. Moreover, it achieves this ambition in a style that is distinctly feminine.
The novel is, ostensibly, a meditation on the post-colonial racial dilemma. The setting is 1834 British-owned Jamaica in the wake of the abolition of slavery. The protagonist is Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole woman. As an heiress to her family estate she is obliged to marry an Englishman, Mr Rochester, who legally assumes full ownership of her possessions and inheritance. In this farcically unfair relationship, Rochester slowly deprives Antoinette of her selfhood. Conflicted and stricken by rejection, Antoinette is driven to madness.
Rhys is skilled in the art of narrative mode. She cleverly projects the opposing points of view of Antoinette and Mr Rochester. Both characters feel trapped in different ways. Rochester is presented with the prospect of marriage to Antoinette as a consolation prize. (His elder brother is to inherit the entirety of his father’s estate.) On the other hand Antoinette has no sanctuary from her husband’s derision. Poignantly, she has no materialistic ambition. While she is content for Rochester to take ownership of her estate she instead becomes stricken by fear of rejection and the absence of love.
So, from Mr Rochester’s point of view, from the male point of view, we see Antoinette as unreasonable, hysterical and weak. Mr Rochester is warned (maliciously) that Antoinette’s family has a history of madness. Ironically, his resultant distrust causes her to descend into the very insanity he is so concerned about. Her ensuing wretchedness is viewed with contempt by Rochester and he curses having been “forced” to marry her. We, the readers, know who the true victim is.
Rhys wrote the book as a response to the influential 1847 novel, Jane Eyre. Contained in that book is an unflattering portrayal of a violent madwoman, Bertha Mason, the first wife of Mr Rochester. Rhys chooses to give that madwoman a voice of her own. She paints a heartbreaking portrait of a delicate young woman who is stripped of her identity. Antoinette’s fear and despair become apparent as her very name is slowly taken away from her. Her maiden name, Cosway, is changed to Mason when her mother remarries. Then she takes the name of her husband, Rochester. Finally Rochester symbolically deprives her of her first name (He renames her Bertha). Psychologically she is an empty husk. We begin to understand the sad circumstances that underlie the miserable figure in Jane Eyre.
Hamlet famously lamented: “Frailty, thy name is woman!” Rhys responds to this misogynistic view by subtly revealing the influence of patriarchal tyranny. She does this while endowing her heroine with a distinctly feminine tenderness; Antoinette balks at the thought of leaving her poisonous husband. This is important because it shows male and female readers alike that a shift in expectation is necessary when considering the opposing point of view. Rhys’s landmark novel is an invaluable asset to the feminist movement. Thanks to her we can better understand how and why the world belongs to men and women equally.