Wide Sargasso Sea

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Comparison to Jane Eyre• Wide Sargasso Sea transforms Rochester's first wife fromBertha Mason, the infamous “madwoman in the attic”, to thelively yet vulnerable Antoinette Cosway. no longer a clichéor a “foreign” lunatic, but a real woman with her own hopes,fears, and desires, telling us her side of the story.• Both novels are Gothic texts (mystery and madnesshaunting the lives of the characters) but• in Jane Eyre the series of mysteries areresolved following a narrative trajectorywhich is clearly defined;• in Wide Sargasso Sea the emphasis is not on thesolution but on the recognition of mysteries:nothing is what it seems because there is alwaysanother side to everything... 6
Jane Eyre – Antoinette• The characters of Jane Eyre and Antoinette are very similar insome ways …independent, vivacious, imaginative, passionate youngwomen with troubled childhoods, they have both beeneducated in religious establishments and looked downon by the upper classes; they both marry Mr Rochester andrealise his inner tendency to possess not only objects but alsopeople…;but extremely distant in othersAntoinette is more rebellious and less mentally stablethan Jane; she gradually loses the notion of who she really is;alienated and menaced in her own land, despised everywhereelse, she displays a deep vein of morbidity verging on a deathwish and, in contrast with Jane's overt Christian faith, she holdsa cynical viewpoint of God but firmly believes in “obeah”. 7
Page 1 and 2: Mid-20th century novelist fromDomin
Page 3 and 4: 4. JEAN RHYS• 1939: after Good Mo
Page 5: Wide Sargasso Sea• The opening of
Page 9: Mr Rochester: perpetrator or victim

Wide Sargasso Sea

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