Jane Eyre

The purpose of this research is to examine Rochester's perceptions and behavior vis-a-vis the madness of Bertha/Antoinette in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, and how those reactions contribute to postcolonial Rhys's rereading of a Victorian imperialist text. The plan of the research will be to set forth the narrative context in which the theme of madness surfaces in each novel and then to discuss the different ways that Rochester's reactions to his wife's madness are articulated and developed through the action of each story and what makes them relevant to the postcolonial critique of Victorian literary convention.

The great secret that Rochester keeps from Jane, whom he has grown to love and whom he is determined to marry, in Jane Eyre, is the existence of his first wife, who is locked in a secluded room at Thornfield. In the novel, Bertha's attempt to kill Rochester by fire becomes Jane's opportunity to save his life--and to add to the suspense of the "odd laugh" in the hallway (Bronte 128). Rochester might reveal the secret at that point, but he allows Jane to think that Grace Poole has behaved in her "singular" (128) way. Only when Mason stops the hole-in-the-corner marriage of Rochester and Jane does Rochester reveal all:

Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family--idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard!--as I found out after I had wed the daughter; for they were

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my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all" (Rhys 102). Confusion of identity--always fraught with sanity peril--is further complicated by Antoinette's forever hearing that her mother was mad as well. The effect on the daughter was decisive: "They won't let Antoinette see her. In the end--mad I don't know--she give up, she care for nothing" (Rhys 157). "She" could refer to either Antoinette or Annette; the point is that the isolation dries up Antoinette's psyche, such that all she is fit for is bending to the will of those who take charge of her and testing the limits of others' will as far as possible. Thus the marriage to Rochester, and thus must she bear the growing intensity of his hatred when he discovers the dread secret. He wants pity because he is "tied to a lunatic for life--a drunken lying lunatic--gone her mother's way" (Rhys 164). Poor Rochester does not handle deception or psychic adversity very well, and by the time he has honed his hatred of Antoinette he takes his decision to lock her up as a perfectly natural and sane course of action. In that regard, Van Neck-Yoder cites Rochester's declaration that Antoinette is "my lunatic. She's mad but mine, mine" (197, citing Rhys 166). Van Neck-Yoder

Category: Literature - J