Wide Sargasso Sea

By Jean Rhys

Part Two

A Marriage and a Change of Narrator: This section opens in Rochester's voice and he tells of the beginnings of their marriage and honeymoon (bear in mind however, that at no point during the novel is he named - perhaps Rhys refuses him an identity in the same way he later refuses Antoinette/Bertha). Rather than seeing it with optimism it is viewed as an ending: "So it was all over", "Everything finished" (p.55). He surveys the town and sees in it only sadness and secrecy and confused by the town name 'Massacre' and the people- the sly smiling Amelie, the crying boy, Caro the gaudy old woman, the Young bull and Emile the man who des not know his own name. Later he is bemused and uneasy at the giggling Hilda and his gaze is forced away by Christophine's. But most of all he is confused by his wife and her "Long, sad, dark alien eyes" (p.56). He is a stranger in a foreign land with a stranger for a wife. All his English reservations and assumptions of dominance and control are under threat. He is no longer in control as he warns Antoinette: "You'll get soaked". She takes no notice and runs to see her friend and finds he later must obey her command ("Put your coat on now" (p.59)). He is filled with mistrust and disturbed from his rest by the sound of crowing cocks (p.58) - a symbol or warning of betrayal perhaps after the biblical example. Feelings of security elude him (p.63) and he notices the erosion of imperialist influence and codes of practice with the books that are eaten away (p.63).

Settling In?: He is married to a stranger and behind his weak optimism "It will all look very different in the sun" (p.56) is resentment:

"I was married a month after I arrived in Jamaica and for nearly three weeks of that time I was in bed with a fever" (p.56)

The reader realises he is a sold into this marriage as Antoinette is by her family; we can no longer vilify Rochester as we would expect to and sympathy is extended towards him. The suppressed letter to his father forms the 'correct' explanation for the tragedy of Wide Sargasso Sea:

"Dear Father. The thirty thousand pounds have been paid to me without question or condition. No provision was made for her (that must have been seen to). I have a modest competence now. I will never be a disgrace to you or to my dear brother the son you love. No begging letters, no mean requests ... I have sold my soul or you have sold it... " (p.59)

Instead, he writes a polite and formal letter about the property and its beauty, and a report of some events and impressions which is followed by his assertion that, "There are blanks in my mind that cannot be filled up" (p.64). Perhaps this is done in order to alert the reader to the sublimation and suppression that happens in the mind as well as in the letter.

The next section is his memories of the wedding and the time around it "very strange, but it meant nothing to me" (p.64). He doesn't understand the wedding guests looks or why Antoinette initially refuses to marry him. It is a short flashback which is then consumed by the continuing tale of their marriage and his impressions of Jamaica: the food is "too highly seasoned" and the flowers are "overpoweringly strong" (p.69). They talk of each of their homes seeming dream-like to the other and tensions begin to surface, ignoring them and concentrating on her beauty he toasts to their happiness, but this is undercut by the short but poignant sentence "A short youth mine was" (p.70).

Rochester's voice is intermingled with black voices and seems quite incongruous and prim in comparison to Antoinette's easy manners and bantering in patois ("horse piss like the English madams drink" says Christophine). Rochester returns thus: "her coffee is delicious but her language is horrible" (p.71). Antoinette's boyish agility and stone throwing equally baffles him and the reference to her teacher Sandi, is left in mid air, without explanation and resounds with what is left unsaid (p.74)

As readers we are similarly alert to the divergence between what is said by Rochester and what he feels, he gives her empty promises and reassurances for her safety. Her fears that he will take away her happiness meet not with a firm loving answer but a weak reasoning question: "And lose my own? Who'd be so foolish?" (p.77). He then commands her to "Die then! Die!" and debases their relationship to a purely sexual level (to die being a metaphor for orgasm) but also admits how close she has come to her own version of dying. "I did not love her. I was thirsty for her, but that is not love" (p.78) what he sees as a sexual game becomes sickeningly tense, tangled and threatening "Desire, Hatred, life Death came very close in the darkness" (p.79).

The Letter: Daniel Cosway sends a letter entailing all the sordid details of Antoinette's family history, as if he is warning Rochester of what to expect from his own wife, inferring that lunacy, drunkenness and sexual scandal should be expected from the girl herself. He manages to imply that it is a conspiracy against Rochester and that many were involved to entrap him and that many view his ignorance with pity: "many think I shameful how that family treat you and you relatives" (p.82). Its effect is to stir hatred in Rochester as he stamps the orchid he associates with Antoinette, perhaps foreboding the violent treatment she can expect from his wounded pride and shame at his ignorance of her family history. Despite the fact that it is not entirely her fault and that she tried not to marry him, it will be her who suffers. He shows little sympathy towards her after Amelie's attack and taunts. Amelie's smiles, we begin to realise, by the vehemence of Christophine's threats of bellyache (p.84), pose a sexual menace. When Rochester is lost in the forest begins to tie in the themes of secrecy as he questions the grunting Baptiste about the road remains, presents the motif of Obeah as the girl screams and runs away in terror and Rochester becomes interested in Zombies (bear in mind the derision the children treated Antoinette with calling her a zombie in Part One).

The Voice of Antoinette: This section (p.89-98), narrated by the heroine, details her visit to Christophine's and her fondness for the older woman as she speaks endearingly of the smell of cotton and washing habits of the Jamaican women. Unfortunately she rejects Christophine's sensible advice to leave her husband and instead wills her to give her a love potion. Here we can see her desperation and her unhappiness as she realises her situation and his lack of love and impatience with her. During their conversation we learn of Antoinette's financial vulnerability and Robert Mason's machinations against Aunt Cora's attempts. We also learn that he has begun to call her Bertha - taunting her and expecting her to be mad like her mother. In changing her name he essentially oppresses her identity and imposes another. As such, it is a cruel act of patriarchal and imperialist domination to enforce an identity on his wife, mastering her not only financially but also attempting to tyrannize her mentally. The cock, significantly, is crowing again: "That is for betrayal, but who is the traitor?" (p.97)

Daniel Cosway: the split narratives, the local gossips and lies and Rochester's bewilderment all make it hard to decipher what is the truth out of what we hear. Amelie says he is a superior man who reads the Bible (p.99) but she also says he is a bad man trying to make trouble (p.100). However, should we trust her reports bearing in mind she then slyly mentions Sandi and a rumour of Antoinette's marriage to him? Also, is Daniel to be believed when his report of Antoinette is preceded by a diatribe of bitterness against his father? Should we believe his tale of Christophine going to jail or his tale of Antoinette's relationship with Sandi, especially as his biblical devotion seems somewhat awry and dedicated to revenge and sanctioned anger. The message he chooses to have above the mantelpiece is 'Vengeance Is Mine' and his view is "You take too long Lord"(p.100). He is after all trying to bribe and threaten the "fine English gentleman" that he seems so respectful towards.

Confrontation and Betrayal: Antoinette approaches him "why do you hate me?" (p.104), but he is detached and instead of listening, thinks about his own resentments and is boiling with suspicions as he sees similarities between her and Amelie: "perhaps they are related. It's possible, it's even probable in this damned place" (p.105). Antoinette tries to articulate her side of the story; "the other side" - that which Jean Rhys manages against Jane Eyre in creating Wide Sargasso Sea. Her lie about her mother become explainable: a) she is told to lie and b) "There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about" (p.106). It is a startling prophecy of her own end, as her spirit and body divorce in madness. She retells parts of the story that we have heard from part one except with an adult's perspective. It is particularly interesting to see how she realises the scar Tia gave her during the fire had marked her physically and mentally ("I think it did spoil me for my wedding day and all the other days and nights" (p.110)). Her mother's madness comes to be explained and we see the shocking treatment and abuse that she is left to when Mason moves away. Later as Christophine points out, we see more how Annette was driven into the madness that all assumed of her and the oppression which psychologically damaged her (p.129-30).

We see a similar treatment in store for Antoinette, when the situation is distressing enough he begins to call her Bertha despite her pleas not to "on this night of all nights, you must be Bertha" (p.112). The tragedy is drawn taut by Rhys at this point as Rochester shows sincere desire for Antoinette, but the potion must essentially ruin that trust and longing "she need not have done it" (p.113). It makes him ill and he begins to hate her and eye her coldly. The mirrors to the past are laid on thick as Rochester notices the frown between her eyebrows, "s if it had been cut with a knife" (p.114) just as the younger Antoinette had noticed on her own mother; it is a sign of pain, misery and disturbance - he covers her "s if I covered a dead girl" (p.114). Perhaps this is recognition in him of the first death which has begun; that of her spirit.

He betrays her sexually when he sleeps with Amelie and gives little care that she can hear them. This not only disturbs and traumatises Antoinette, but also the cook storms out and Baptiste begins to treat him with contempt and coldness. Another letter stirs trouble as Mr Fraser warns against Christophine and her jail history. It is with this that he confronts his wife and the old matriarch. Antoinette is in tears as she explains how he has made her hate the countryside that she has loved. He has polluted her one security and her upset turns to bitterness and hatred against him: "before I die I will show you how much I hate you" (p.121). He tells her calmly that he does not love her, which tightens her already highly strung mood; singing a nonsense song amid recounting memories and then biting him when he tries to hold her and the cursing him vehemently. Christophine intervenes. She accuses him of marrying for money and 'breaking her up': "You are a damn hard man for a young man" (p.128) - it is Christophine alone whom Rhys allows to offer a hard analysis of Rochester's actions and challenge him; he makes him fearful and as such he forces himself to be "alert and wary, ready to defend myself"(p.130). He threatens her equally with Mr Fraser's letter, which wields power and civil oppression despite Christophine's earlier proud statement which cannot hold true in a world of financial and imperialist power: "No chain gang, no tread machine, no dark jail either. This is a free country and I am free woman" (p.131).

Leaving: Whilst he writes his letter of betrayal the cock crows again. He is plagued by the memory of Christophine's pleas to love her. But instead he watches the trees being battered whilst he thinks of revenge - "I could not touch her. Excepting as the hurricane will touch that tree" (p.136) Symbolically the weather is changing, "No sun" (p.136) as similarly Rochester will take the sun from her, her spirit and her love as he seeks to own and punish her "my lunatic... If she smiles or weeps or both. For me" (p.136). He contrasts her past enthusiastic babbling and tales (p137-9) with the present blank indifference. His feelings swing giddily between regret and sadness to hate and resentment and bitter proud wish for revenge as he remembers Daniel Cosway's words(p.140) - his hate conquers hers - all that is left of her is "a ghost in the grey daylight". There is little pity but only paranoia and hatred in him which he sees as "Sane" (p.141). The sobbing child who follows them, Baptiste's contempt, the expectation of rain all serve to heighten the sadness and grimness of the situation.