It’s interesting to note that some of the academic commentators mistakenly attribute her mother’s birthplace and the origins of the nurse Christophine (one calls her a Haitian, no doubt because of that island’s strong associations with obeah) and even get Christophine’s name wrong.Īlthough there are parallels between Antoinette and Jane, between Antoinette and the Black child Tia, and even between Antoinette and her carefully unnamed husband (Rochester), this is a brilliant novel that does not depend on the reader’s knowledge of Jane Eyre like Antoinette herself, it stands alone.
This makes Antoinette even more alienated from the societies in which she dwells but of which she is not a part. That theme of having no home, no society, nowhere to go, and, essentially, being nonexistent, is integral to the storyline - and fits in perfectly with Bertha’s role in Jane Eyre.Īnother important point is that Antoinette’s mother (as well as her nurse) is from Martinique, a French island at a time when the French and the British were in bitter conflict. Rhys makes this even clearer with terms such as “white Creole” and “white cockroach.” This is an important distinction because it, combined with her French ancestry and poverty, sets Antoinette apart from the wealthy English and from the former slaves on the islands who are of African descent. In the context of the time, however, Creole meant a person of English or European descent living in the Caribbean. Raiskin, several commentators expound on their views of what that symbolism means from a Caribbean, British, and feminist perspective.įirst, I have noticed that several reviewers mistakenly assume Antoinette is of mixed race (the modern assumption about what Creole means).
In the Norton Critical Edition edited by Judith L. Jean Rhys, troubled by the one-dimensional Bertha Mason in Brontë’s classic Jane Eyre, or perhaps seeing an opportunity to take the depiction of Creoles out of the hands of English writers, decided to “write her a life.” The result is Wide Sargasso Sea, in which the Bertha Mason of Jane Eyre (Antoinette Cosway in Wide Sargasso Sea) finally steps out of the realm of caricature and becomes both human being and symbol.
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