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Long H. Do

Professor Kopper

Comparative Literature 10: The Uninvited Others of European Literature

January 22nd, 2018

In “Wide Sargasso Sea” – a vivid depiction of life and decay in the Caribbean – Jean

Rhys highlights the interchangeability between people and property. From the old estates of the

Cosway family to the servants that they owned prior to the Emancipation Act, images of property

permeate the novel. That said, on the postcolonial landscape of “Wide Sargasso Sea,” not even

the supposedly owners are immune to the threat of dispossession and reification. Central to

Rhys’ work, property not only reflects the characters’ condition but also marks the nature of the

relationship among them.

During the novel’s first half, Rhys parallels the instability of Antoinette and her mother

with the decay of the property that they own. To set the overall tone for the novel and predict the

later fate of these two characters, the author uses a lot of dark images, such as Annette’s shabby

riding clothes, her dead horse whose “eyes were black with flies” (16) or her garden where “the

smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell” (17). Most notably, Rhys forms a

metonymic relationship between Annette and the house that she refuses to leave. First, the author

uses the renovation of the house to its splendor to echo Annette’s elevated status after her second

marriage. Then, Rhys coincides its fiery collapse with Annette’s tragic undoing, describing how

“there would be nothing left but blackened walls and the mounting stone. […] That could not be

stolen or burned” (41). On one hand, by emphasizing how the fire destroys it all, Rhys

anticipates the irremediable madness that soon defeats Anette. On the other, by depicting the
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marks of ruins as indelible and even intrinsic, the author foretells how Annette’s overarching

shadow would forever haunt her daughter. In fact, Antoinette, like her mother, becomes

increasingly troubled as “Wide Sargasso Sea” progresses. By the end of the first chapter,

Antoinette’s instability is made evident by her incoherent narration which switches back and

forth between reality, memory and nightmares. As the next one begins, it is no surprise that she

loses her right to tell the story, among other things, to her newly married husband.

Starting from this new chapter, Rhys unveils how the two negotiate their identities as

both the owner and the owned. Initially, agreeing to marry Antoinette in exchange for thirty

thousand pounds, the husband is likened to property. At times, he would admit to this fact, telling

himself that “I have not bought her, she has bought me, or so she thinks” (63) or that “I have sold

my soul or you have sold it, and after all is it such a bad bargain” (64). Yet, it is worth nothing

here that the character often ends these remarks with ambivalence – “or so she thinks” and “or

you have sold it” as if they contain some degree of delusion. In other words, the husband has

never been ready to accept his position as a someone to be owned. If anything, he only sells

himself to this marriage to become independent of another man, evidenced by his unwritten

thoughts to his father - “I will never be a disgrace to you … No begging letters, no mean

requests” (64).

Having become a narrator, the husband can freely portray his wife as an inscrutable and

passive figure. Within the husband’s narrative discourse, one much influenced by his English

background, Antoinette is just “a stranger who did not feel or think as [he] did” (85). Later, the

husband furthers this perceived difference into a sense of superiority by suggesting that

Antoinette is abnormal and detached from real life: “Reality might disconcert her, bewilder her,

hurt her” (85). He also conveniently includes parts of Antoinette’s dialogues that would validate
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his position as the sane one and thus the owner in his marriage. For example, the husband quotes

Antoinette telling him that “Say die and I will die. You don’t believe me? Then try, try, say die

and watch me die.” (84). He immediately follows this quotation with his own reply – “Die then!

Die!” – as if to make clear his willingness to conquer her (84). Later in “Wide Sargasso Sea,” the

husband indeed realizes all those threats and literally pushes Antoinette towards her undoing.

However, perhaps to truly engage Antoinette and her husband in a dialectical struggle,

Rhys suddenly gives the narration back to Antoinette halfway through chapter two. In this brief

section, Antoinette recounts her meeting with Christophine and her desperate request for black

magic to control her husband’s feelings. The protagonist also mentions how she has been

effectively turned into a non-owner – “I have no money of my own at all, everything I had

belongs to him” (100). Here, the idea of possession continues to emerge, and this time it is

Antoinette who makes the attempt to gain back ownership. “I would make him love me” –

though desperate, Antoinette definitely seems more active and understandable than the image

created by her husband (102). That said, if Antoinette depends on black magic to gain her

husband’s affection, he uses the English law as the main instrument to subjugate his wife.

Therefore, just like how the law has invalidated black magic, Antoinette is merely fighting a

losing battle against her spouse.

In fact, after being poisoned with obeah, the husband even makes love to another woman

and maintain his coldness towards Antoinette. “I drew the sheet over her gently as if I was

covering a dead girl” – he eventually wins back the story and continues using this authority to

portray Antoinette as a half-dead, unstable woman (125). It becomes clear that the husband has

succeeded in giving his wife the first of a human’s multiple deaths - “the real one and the one

people know about” - that were mentioned earlier in the novel (116). Under the husband’s
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storytelling, there is no longer any “Antoinette” but only “this red-eyed wild-haired stranger who

used to be my wife” (135). Having projected upon his wife the image of a madwoman – an

image that can be passed on and inherited like a property – the husband easily turns his wife into

one of his own. By claiming that “She’s mad but mine, mine” (150) or “My mad girl” (150), the

husband showcases his ruthless determination to conquer Antoinette – to own her regardless of

what she becomes or how she thinks. As he finalizes this project, the husband utters his cruelest

remarks:

“I too can wait – for the day she is only a memory to be avoided and like all memories a

legend. Or a lie...” (156)

As a character, the husband may manage to possess Antoinette’s money and estate, but as a

narrator, he succeeds in a far more difficult task – to possess her viewpoints and sanity and then

throw them away so that he can seal her fate as “a ghost” (154), “a mad girl” (154) and

eventually “nothing” (156).

In addition to comparing Antoinette to her mother, Rhys delineates the complex

trajectory of this protagonist through two supporting characters, namely Christophine and Daniel

Cosway. Introduced to readers as Mr. Cosway’s wedding present to Annette, Christophine is a

loyal servant whose presence, at least in the novel’s first half, fortifies Antoinette’s status as an

owner. Later on, as Christophine turns out to be a rather independent figure, Antoinette is shown

losing her power and status accordingly. Meanwhile, the disinherited Daniel serves as a mirror

that partially foreshadows the latter fate of Antoinette. In fact, Daniel himself points to this

similarity during his conversation with the husband - “Pretty face, soft skin, pretty color – not

yellow like me. But my sister just the same.” (114). Having nothing to his name, Daniel only

possesses a resentment towards those he perceived as rich owners like Antoinette. The character
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attempts to destroy Antoinette by making comments such as “no money can pay for a crazy wife

in your bed” (90) and endeavors to become an owner himself by blackmailing the husband (114).

Rhys certainly repeats parts of this image in the third chapter, in which the sense of

dispossession turns Antoinette into a resentful and destructive force.

Indeed, having been deprived of the most important thing that she has left - her autonomy

as a human being - Antoinette ponders on her own existence in the novel’s last section: “What

am I doing in this place and who am I?” (162). Convinced that “[t]he cardboard house that I walk

at night is not England,” the character locates her existence on a dimension different from that of

the human characters around her (163). In fact, now referred to as Bertha Manson and confined

to a prisonlike attic, Antoinette has officially become property. “If I had been wearing my red

dress, Richard would have known me” - pleads the character after being unacknowledged by

Richard (168). Here, Antoinette resigns herself to the fact that she is no longer recognizable as a

human being, and that her existence can only be marked by an act of branding - by the presence

of another commodity such as the red dress.

Yet, even to this point, Rhys seems reluctant to fully portray her protagonist as an object.

Once again, the author gives the narration back to Antoinette and lets the character resist, no

matter how desperate such actions might be. Rhys emphasizes how Antoinette, aware that the

Letter of the Law has bound her to her current situation, attacks Richard at the exact moment the

word “legally” is uttered (165). Ending the novel, Rhys lets Antoinette ultimately resolve her

relationship with the husband by setting his house on fire. It is worth noting that throughout, the

husband could have just let Antoinette go to spare himself the trouble of a “mad” wife. Yet, he

continues holding on to her, probably for there cannot be an owner if there is nothing for him to
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own. Letting Antoinette destroy all of the husband’s property – from his estate to his imprisoned

wife – Rhys enables the protagonist to prevent him from enthroning himself as the owner.

Throughout “Wide Sargasso Sea,” Jean Rhys uses property as both a metonym and a

metaphor for the novel’s main characters. Initially, the property that accommodates Antoinette

and her mother reverberates their decline, as well as foreshadows the entropy that the story

eventually tends towards. As “Wide Sargasso Sea” progresses, Rhys highlights a more direct

similarity between people and property. In doing so, the author also explores the increasingly

complex relationship between Antoinette and her husband, in which both try in vain to control

the other. Additionally, Rhys equates the possession of people and property with the control of

the novel’s narration, thereby inviting readers into the world views of the novel’s central

characters. In this reinscription of Jane Eyre, Rhys does not alter the ending for

Antoinette/Bertha, but by letting this character start and finish her own story, the author may

have succeeded in complicating the “madwoman in the attic” myth often attached to her

protagonist. To refuse to be owned, after all, seems quite rational for any human being.
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Works Cited

Rhys, Jean, and Edwidge Danticat. Wide Sargasso Sea. Reissue edition. W. W. Norton &

Company. 2016.