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 silent on family secrets before. Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points (Bronte 251).
It is rather the pot calling the kettle black for bigamist bridegroom Rochester to complain that Mason family secrets were kept from him before his marriage. Even so, the narrative of Jane Eyre positions him as the victim of duplicity while reinforcing the image of Bertha as a madwoman. When Rochester takes Jane to see Bertha and Grace Poole, the des...