paper

Madness leaks out of 19th century literature and most abundantly in Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea in the exploration Bertha. Madness with the idea of animality, and in terms of its description and behavior will be interpreted as it applies to Bertha Mason. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys presents the reader with the character Antoinette, or as this paper will refer to her as Bertha Mason. Rhys ‘novel examines such issues as color conscious, and segregation within the black community. The novel is a portrait of Bertha Mason, and her withdrawal from her home in the Caribbean to England with her husband Rochester. She is a half black , half white woman who wishes that she was either , rich , beautiful , intelligent , lighter skinned or a man anything else besides who she was , and anyone else other than a person with a background full of discrimination and a family history of insanity through neglect . It is with this idea of belonging to neither class but having a husband who seems to have a problem with lower social classes especially the black class which drives Bertha to her end state of described insanity .In Rhys’ novel the topic of color difficulty is ingrained in Bertha from both her grandmother and mother and reiterated through various people in the novel such as her husband Rochester. With these thoughts of not being able to belong and having nothing to change her situation, Bertha becomes distinctly isolated from her surrounding environment which fuels her feeling of neglect from her family and especially her husband. There is witnessed a certain detachment within the main character. This detachment is best exemplified in Bertha’s further passiveness with her husband. She deals with him categorically, listing him as rich, but failing she feels in his duty as a husband to her, especially when he has an affair. Not only is Bertha apathetic but prejudiced with anyone who does not match up to her preferences .Bertha’s thoughts toward servants. Although at times