Wide Sargasso Sea Mental Illness
In this paper, I will prove that Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea demonstrated the cause of Antoinette’s madness was caused by her husband’s actions and not by genetics. I will demonstrate through quotations and additional sources the mental breakdown of Antoinette. Antoinette Cosway, the protagonist of Jean Rhys’s novel Wide Sargasso Sea, demonstrates what occurs when one loses their sense of self when displaced from their home. Antoinette Cosway, has never felt at place in the world and this is apparent in the beginning of the novel. The Cosway family has lost their wealth leading them to feel out casted in their own community. She is constantly tormented about being a “white cockroach” from people around her and it again once she leaves her
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home country. “It was a song about a white cockroach. That's me. That's what they call all of us who were here before their own people in Africa sold them to the slave traders. And I've heard English women call us white niggers. So, between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all” (Rhys 93). Although she hoped to find herself once she gets married, that is not the case. Like the removal of Africans from their home country and taken to another part of the world, they are given new names and stripped of anything that may connect them back to their home. Although Antoinette is not an African herself, she is reaping in what happened to people in her community that she had once employed. This type of harassment is the beginning of her mental breakdown foreshadowed to come.
Moreover, Antoinette’s role in her marriage also added to her mental breakdown. The role will be proven by the removal of Antoinette from her home and stripping of her name mimicked the mental change slaves have gone through. “Bertha is not my name. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name. I know, that's obeah too” (Rhys 157). Antoinette denies her name change and accuses Rochester from changing who she is for his own personal agenda. To strip of her name, begins to strip of her of her identity and sense of self. “After this, Antoinette sees herself giving up the struggle for the preservation of her identity. She succumbs to the assumption of her husband and the society for she sees her fight as ineffectual” (Roper 30). Once Rochester changes Antoinette’s name to Bertha, she's goes into a deeper depression. Her chance to become an English woman is crushed and she has lost her only options. Her husband has taken away all the chances of becoming who she wants and fully given into the dark depression. She had chosen to go with Rochester and get married, she did not expect her life to go the way it has. The barrier that has gotten in her way was her own husband. In the article “Between and beyond Boundaries in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea” by M.M. Adjarian demonstrates how Rochester coerces his wife to subsume her identity and all the cultural and personal associations that go along with it into one he has constructed for her” (Adjarian 207). Rochester wants to build Antoinette into someone he can control due to his lack of being able to truly chose where he wants to be. “If she too says it, or weeps, I'll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She's mad but mine, mine” (Rhys 137). Rochester demonstrates his dominance within these lines. He understands that she is broken but believes that comforting her he can gain sympathizing. Acting this way is evidence of his sense of power and acknowledgement that he can control her.
Rochester’s misogyny towards his wife and control of her was the last piece to drive her into her mental abyss at Thornfield that occurs in Jane Eyre.
“Antoinette's psychological breakdown can also be linked to unconscious expectations she takes into her marriage with Edward Rochester, which, in the end, are never satisfied” (Adjarian 203). In the beginning of the novel Antoinette is looking for her place in someone's life. She is driven from her home; she's loses her mother and is then married off to a man who doesn't love her. Antoinette believes that her marriage will take her from her negative and allow to be who she believes to be. England is where she can achieve all the desires that she craved and she wouldn't be seen as a white cockroach. Her status would be different and she would be seen as the wife of an English man. “I have been too unhappy, I thought, it cannot last, being so unhappy, it would kill you. I will be a different person when I live in England and different things will happen to me” (Rhys 100). Yet instead she does not get these desires and once again is abused with slurs and abandonment. The one person that was supposed to give Antoinette these options ends up driving her further into an insulation. “When she sees that this is impossible and that she cannot achieve the wholeness and interpersonal union she desires because of her social and economic in betweeness, she gradually begins her downward spiral” (Adjarian
204).
In Faizal Forrestor’s article “WHO STOLE THE SOUL IN ‘WIDE SARGASSO SEA?" the readers get an insight to the idea that Antoinette’s breakdown was a catalyst for her to escape her hardships she endured in life through the racial issues at home and her life with her husband. Purifying herself with the fire and escape through the literal hell will allow her to be who she is. “Thus, Antoinette's death is the result of her ongoing search for "a door opened" where she is "somewhere else, something else” an exit out of insanity, out of the "cardboard" world of Jane Eyre” (Forrester 38). Once Antoinette has succumbed to her death, one can say that she finally has the option to be who she wants. Death has given her the freedom from the constraints set by a marriage and society. Rochester has chosen to regulate her and Antoinette finally sees this towards the end of the novel. “She sees her husband become resentful, vindictive and disoriented. She became his victim, a target for his mixed up feelings” (Roper 30). Rochester’s change of attitude goes to his misogyny ideal. A young man who was told that he had to marry a woman he did not know. Furthermore, his respect for her is lacked throughout the relationship and goes as far as sleeping with the maid. No remorse is given from. Antoinette’s mental illness was not her fault but caused by her circumstances..
home country. “It was a song about a white cockroach. That's me. That's what they call all of us who were here before their own people in Africa sold them to the slave traders. And I've heard English women call us white niggers. So, between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all” (Rhys 93). Although she hoped to find herself once she gets married, that is not the case. Like the removal of Africans from their home country and taken to another part of the world, they are given new names and stripped of anything that may connect them back to their home. Although Antoinette is not an African herself, she is reaping in what happened to people in her community that she had once employed. This type of harassment is the beginning of her mental breakdown foreshadowed to come.
Moreover, Antoinette’s role in her marriage also added to her mental breakdown. The role will be proven by the removal of Antoinette from her home and stripping of her name mimicked the mental change slaves have gone through. “Bertha is not my name. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name. I know, that's obeah too” (Rhys 157). Antoinette denies her name change and accuses Rochester from changing who she is for his own personal agenda. To strip of her name, begins to strip of her of her identity and sense of self. “After this, Antoinette sees herself giving up the struggle for the preservation of her identity. She succumbs to the assumption of her husband and the society for she sees her fight as ineffectual” (Roper 30). Once Rochester changes Antoinette’s name to Bertha, she's goes into a deeper depression. Her chance to become an English woman is crushed and she has lost her only options. Her husband has taken away all the chances of becoming who she wants and fully given into the dark depression. She had chosen to go with Rochester and get married, she did not expect her life to go the way it has. The barrier that has gotten in her way was her own husband. In the article “Between and beyond Boundaries in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea” by M.M. Adjarian demonstrates how Rochester coerces his wife to subsume her identity and all the cultural and personal associations that go along with it into one he has constructed for her” (Adjarian 207). Rochester wants to build Antoinette into someone he can control due to his lack of being able to truly chose where he wants to be. “If she too says it, or weeps, I'll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She's mad but mine, mine” (Rhys 137). Rochester demonstrates his dominance within these lines. He understands that she is broken but believes that comforting her he can gain sympathizing. Acting this way is evidence of his sense of power and acknowledgement that he can control her.
Rochester’s misogyny towards his wife and control of her was the last piece to drive her into her mental abyss at Thornfield that occurs in Jane Eyre.
“Antoinette's psychological breakdown can also be linked to unconscious expectations she takes into her marriage with Edward Rochester, which, in the end, are never satisfied” (Adjarian 203). In the beginning of the novel Antoinette is looking for her place in someone's life. She is driven from her home; she's loses her mother and is then married off to a man who doesn't love her. Antoinette believes that her marriage will take her from her negative and allow to be who she believes to be. England is where she can achieve all the desires that she craved and she wouldn't be seen as a white cockroach. Her status would be different and she would be seen as the wife of an English man. “I have been too unhappy, I thought, it cannot last, being so unhappy, it would kill you. I will be a different person when I live in England and different things will happen to me” (Rhys 100). Yet instead she does not get these desires and once again is abused with slurs and abandonment. The one person that was supposed to give Antoinette these options ends up driving her further into an insulation. “When she sees that this is impossible and that she cannot achieve the wholeness and interpersonal union she desires because of her social and economic in betweeness, she gradually begins her downward spiral” (Adjarian
204).
In Faizal Forrestor’s article “WHO STOLE THE SOUL IN ‘WIDE SARGASSO SEA?" the readers get an insight to the idea that Antoinette’s breakdown was a catalyst for her to escape her hardships she endured in life through the racial issues at home and her life with her husband. Purifying herself with the fire and escape through the literal hell will allow her to be who she is. “Thus, Antoinette's death is the result of her ongoing search for "a door opened" where she is "somewhere else, something else” an exit out of insanity, out of the "cardboard" world of Jane Eyre” (Forrester 38). Once Antoinette has succumbed to her death, one can say that she finally has the option to be who she wants. Death has given her the freedom from the constraints set by a marriage and society. Rochester has chosen to regulate her and Antoinette finally sees this towards the end of the novel. “She sees her husband become resentful, vindictive and disoriented. She became his victim, a target for his mixed up feelings” (Roper 30). Rochester’s change of attitude goes to his misogyny ideal. A young man who was told that he had to marry a woman he did not know. Furthermore, his respect for her is lacked throughout the relationship and goes as far as sleeping with the maid. No remorse is given from. Antoinette’s mental illness was not her fault but caused by her circumstances..