Alan Gordon '06, English 156, Brown University, 2004
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This essay is Part II of Alan Gordon 's "Dreams in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea." The first part, which discusses Jane Eyre, reesides in the Victorian Web.
Dreams are prevalent in both Charlotte Brontë 's 1847 novel Jane Eyre, and in Jean Rhys 's 1966 postcolonial re-writing of it, Wide Sargasso Sea. In both works, dreams provide glimpses of the repressed or unexpressed emotions of characters. In both novels they also foreshadow events for the benefit of the characters and the reader. Dreams in Wide Sargasso Seaalso often contain parallel imagery to dreams of Jane Eyre. The novels, though, have different attitudes towards the distinction between dreams and reality. In Jane Eyre, dreams can drive or reflect waking life, but the two entities remain largely distinct. In Wide Sargasso Sea, dreams leak into the waking world of the narrators, thus giving the novel a dreamlike tone. While dreams in Jane Eyre are tidy and contained, the dreams of Wide Sargasso Sea are jumbled and swamplike.
In Jean Rhys 's postcolonial re-writing of Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, dreams serve many of the same functions that they serve in the original. The dreams of protagonist Antoinette are often clairvoyant like Jane 's. Both characters also reveal interior selves when dreaming; Jane 's
Cited: Adams, Maurianne. "Charlotte Brontë." Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Laurie L. Harris, and Emily B. Tennyson. Detroit: Gale, 1985. 83-87. Gilbert, Sandra M and Gubar, Susan. "Charlotte Brontë." Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Laurie L. Harris, and Emily B. Tennyson. Detroit: Gale, 1985. 87-93. Homans, Margaret. "Dreaming of Children: Literalisation in Jane Eyre." Jane Eyre. Ed. Heather Glen. New York: St. Martin 's P, 1997. 147-167.