Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys used to say that “no one knows anything but himself or herself.” Yet literature takes up the paradoxical task of giving us a closer experience of the inexpressible otherness. With Wide Sargasso Sea she leads this task to its extreme point: madness, the absolute otherness. She wrote the story of Bertha (or Antoinette) who is Mr Rochester’s wife in Jane Eyre and has become mad. The book ends with Bertha’s relating a dream that she had and which drove her to burn the manor and to commit suicide. The wonder of it is how the author managed through writing to abolish the frontier between us who are considered as sane and her, the insane woman. Through Bertha we are made to live a very unsettling experience of a dream and of madness, which blurs the gap with the other and forces us to reconsider our vision of alienation. Her strikingly vivid account of a dream immerses us in her mind and make us painfully aware of her humaneness.
The situation for the reader is very uncomfortable as it is a dream and thus not reassuring, usual and logical vision of life. Things are never completely clear and the usual bearings are confused. Time and space are shifting and allow no certainty. Two places far away from each other suddenly mingle (images of the manor in England and of the Caribbean are mixed). It is not sure when events took place (“yesterday” or “quite long ago”). Memories and impressions become suddenly compressed but we never know exactly how long Bertha’s actions take. For example how long did she stay in the red and white room? The frontier between reality, dream and memory is blurred what produces a strange feeling of mixed familiarity and unknown or unusual. The description of the manor and her assertion that things are as she remembers them makes her dream takes an aspect of reality. But at the same time her memories are very precise (with even more details; for example she does not simply say that there are flowers but that she sees “the orchids and the stephanotis and the jasmine”) and collide with the present of the dream with a counterpoint of phantasmagoria (the ghost). The result for the reader is an impression of having lost his bearings.
Yet it is normal that a dream does not abide by the usual rules of reality. Thus it delays our becoming aware of her madness and makes it easier for us to enter it. We see clues of it without realizing immediately what they mean. Her speech seems at first very logical (“for… and so…”) but her conclusions and her reactions are surprising (there is no logic in concluding that they worship gold just because she saw a gold object and fleeing from a painting). We progressively come to see her as an unreliable narrator and build another image of her. We wonder if the atmosphere of fear and danger which she conjures up with a threatening and unspecified “they” comes from a real danger or from paranoia. Likewise her relationship to the fire, spreading it carelessly and considering it as a beautiful protector, suggests that she is a pyromaniac. Her sense of danger is not the same as ours for we would be more afraid of the fire than of a ghost (which is a painting) and we would never believe the wind to be able to lift us. Her problems of identity are underlined by her saying “someone screamed” and then realizing that it was her. Was it her also her who laughed at the beginning or did she have a hallucination? Still, thanks to the dream we have entered her alienation and we understand her. We are with her alienated from the other characters.
Dreams reveal what troubles our minds thus they give a very interesting insight in a character’s feelings. It enables us to see that she is not a mad animal with no reason at all but a very sensitive and desperate woman looking for a way out of her prison. The recurrence of “but” conveys both the idea of everything being against her and of her powerlessness and confinement. Her loneliness and isolation is highlighted by her refusal to speak to the others. She cannot or does not want to communicate with them (she does not answer to the man calling “Bertha” nor to Grace Poole and tries not to make any noise) because they do not understand her (“they think I don’t remember but I do”). She is alone in a hostile world characterized by a diffused fear and hatred. Her sensitivity appears under her words and her comparisons (such as the one between her hair and wings). She does not belong there. We even wonder if she is not herself the ghost for she wanders silently in the castle, careful not to be seen, her hair stream like those of the woman painted and she always seem to be flying rather than running. Her language is gripping, fascinating and haunting by its numerous repetitions which give a tone of urgency to it. The important point is that the reader’s process of assimilation to the protagonist can still take place. We feel concerned by her fate.
We understand her desperate and maddening need to escape this place which is associated to death. The dark, the white ( a cold, inhuman color), the clock, the candles burning out and the couch so soft and deep that it seems to invite to a neverending sleep (the last sleep), everything speaks of death. It is made more obvious by the contrast with the place of her childhood which is described as full of life, plants and colors. But her present situation always catches her back just as the calls of the parrot are replaced by those of the man. Her longing for the past reveals itself in the profusion of details and the precise, personal aspect of its description (its characters are called by their first name while the man is characterized by his hate and her keeper is named by both her Christian and family name). There seem to be no familiar person nor thing in the manor. The rhythm of this passage is as frantic as her frightened race and emphasized by her refusal to stop and watch (twice she says “but I did not stay to watch”). The comparison with the Church reflects her need for spiritual comfort but in this place it is denied to her. The fire which for us symbolizes destruction then becomes a symbol of life, light, color and warmth. It becomes her ally. It colors the sky and her seeing all her life in this color is another proof of her close death (it is a common belief that someone who is about to die sees back one’s whole life). Her desperate need makes it understandable that she wants to believe the wind capable of lifting her up and taking her away flying and fleeing. A doom-laden atmosphere hovers on the scene and the end of the story (the end of her life) announces itself. Because she says “now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do” her dream seems ominously prophetic as if madness made her a seer but it is just normal that she reproduces it in reality for it offers her an escape. The last words complete a circle with the beginning of the dream and we know that if we want the description of her last moments and of her suicide we just have to read again her dream. The last image of her walking in the dark with a small candle could be compared to her being on her way out of despair with the small light of the hope given by her dream and at the same time she seems more fragile than ever. Thus it is a most beautiful and striking image much more telltale than if the book ended on her jumping and crushing herself on the ground. Its emotional effect on the reader is overpowering and forces us to accept her choice as unavoidable.
Thanks to this text our vision of Jane Eyre and of alienation is deeply and irreversibly modified. It does not make Bertha less than a human but on the contrary a deeply and beautifully human being who needs help. It has reversed the process of alienation as the other characters are isolated while we are with her. She cannot communicate with them but literature makes it possible with us.
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