At the beginning of part two in Wide Sargasso Sea, we are introduced to Rochester, Antoinette's fiancee and soon to be husband. He hails from England and participates in this set up marriage, arranged by his father and Antoinette's stepbrother, although during most of the time it is being set up he is feverishly ill. After being married to Antoinette, he begins to receive letters from Daniel Cosway, who says he wants to expose the trap that Rochester has fallen into. After reading a letter and meeting with Daniel, Rochester ends up confused and suspicious. Daniel says that "...the girl is beautiful like her mother was beautiful, and you bewitch with her." He implies that Rochester was enchanted by Antoinette's beauty and thus fell into the trap laid out by her family to inflate her social standings and ensure her well being. He's clearly bothered by this fact, and despite Antoinette's best attempts to explain her situation to him, he becomes more and more distant from her.
Now, at this point, you can feel a little bit of sympathy for Rochester. He's been "bewitched", and definitely feels bothered and bewildered. He agreed to get married while ill, and had no idea about any of Antoinette's life before they met. However, Rochester suddenly becomes malicious and jealous further into his marriage with Antoinette. He ignores Antoinette, and has an affair with a servant girl, Amelie, while Antoinette is in the other room. He blames all his problems on her and his sudden withdrawal of love makes her into the monster he believed she would become, taking after her mother. If this part of the book was written from Antoinette's perspective, we would feel absolutely no sympathy for Rochester. He could completely and fully be the villain, the inciter of Antoinette's so-called madness. From Antoinette's perspective, it might not even be madness, just drunkenness and heartbreak. At this point in the book though, my sympathy and compassion for Rochester has run out. Knowing how the book ends and the plot of Jane Eyre, I take no issue with seeing Rochester as a villain who strips his wife of her identity and money, locking her in the attic. I'm interested to see how terrible his treatment of Antoinette will become, although I can't say I'm excited.
My emotions ran very similarly to yours while reading this book. My sympathy with Rochester lasted very slightly longer than yours, but I quickly ran dry once I saw how full of hatred he had become. However, I also began to lose a lot of my sympathy for Antoinette in the end. Like Rochester, she's had a rough time of it (especially in her childhood), but I think she has also made many mistakes that have led into their mutual decline. It's more forgivable than Rochester's errs because she was never in a position of power like he was, but I still found myself losing sympathy for everyone in the last sections as their mistakes grew worse.
ReplyDeleteI was kind of the opposite. I mean Antoinette started it, she gave him poison/love potion. Rochester started off will no ill intent. All he ever did was in retaliation to Anionette actions. Sure I agree that Rochester probably goes too far, especially when he thinks of lockering her in the attic. But I still feel bad for his situation and don't think it is completely his fault.
ReplyDeleteIn this situation I find it hard to take a side since both seem to be doing dumb things. It seems that as Antoinette is getting the worse side of the deal so I feel worse for her but throughout the book they are both making mistakes. I feel that neither are blameless.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of love as a form of "bewitching" suggests that Antoinette's desperate measures with Christophine's love potion exist on a kind of continuum--a more extreme version of how falling in love works anyway. There's a deep suspicion toward beauty in this novel--the landscape is described by Rochester in similar terms, beautiful but overwhelming, secretive, menacing. Falling in love represents a loss of free will, a kind of falling under a spell and a loss of rational capacity--the tainted wine just makes that process more literal.
ReplyDeleteI think the role of narrative perspective takes on an incredible importance within this book, like you mentioned. Any sense of sympathy we feel could be determined solely by who is telling the story at that point, which makes it super hard to understand and interpret the ways we feel about this novel. In my case, most of my sympathies were with Antoinette, though Rochester's decision and emotions were justifiable at first. It's just hard to read our own feelings in this book, and tell if where we're putting our sympathies is "righteous" or not -- and I think Rhys very much did that on purpose.
ReplyDeleteI find myself standing with Ezra a little because of how misunderstood Rochester is throughout the novel. It doesn't seem like Antoinette really takes the time to see things from his side, she just assumes that he doesn't understand her and that's what's wrong. It's actually kind of selfish of her to be honest. Now, Anoinette has had some pretty difficult hardships herself, so by no means has she lived an easy life. It makes me wonder if Antoinette hadn't used the love potion Christophine had given her, if she had just kept talking with Rochester and explaining her situation, would they have worked out?
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