Alternating Narrative Voices
Jane Eyre: first-person narrative, an autobiographical
voice
Wide Sargasso Sea:
Part I: Antoinette
Part II: “Rochester”Antoinette“Rochester”
Part III: Grace PooleAntoinette
Why does Rhys assign Rochester to be predominant
voice in Part II?
To avoid the suppression of alternating voices as in
Jane Eyre
Testing narrative reliability—which narrative is to be
trusted? See R’s self pity (99)
Two Quotes about Christophine
• Spivak on imperialism: “Christophine is
tangential to this narrative. She cannot be
contained by a novel which rewrites a canonical
English text within the European novelist
tradition in the interest of the white Creole
rather than the native.” (p.246)
• Parry on Spivak: “what Spivak’s strategy of
reading necessarily blots out is Christophine’s
inscription as the native, female, individual Self
who defies the demands of the discriminatory
discourses impinging on her person.” (p.248)
Christophine: Between Imperialism and
the Native Voice
Analyze the powerful presence of Christophine.
How does Rhys describe her appearance and her
linguistic competence? What is the significance of
the fact that she disappears before the end of the
novel? Gayatri Spivak and Benita Parry have very
different view of Christophine. What is your stand
in this argument and why?
• Two major scenes of Christophine in WWS
• Christophine and Antoinette (p.64-71)
• Christophine and Rochester (p.90-97)
Christophine and Antoinette
• A surrogate mother for Antoinette—giving
Antoinette advice, singing her to sleep—kiss
her (90)– a human touch that softens A, who
has been rejected by everyone else—see the
“sun” in Antoinette
• A model of self-independence for Antoinette
• Antoinette depends on Christophine but still
cannot get out of the racial stereotypes
internalized by the white people—calling C
“damned black devil from Hell” (81)
Christophine and Rochester
• multiple tongues —speaking French patois,
English, and the native language vs the
monolingual Rochester
• The native talks back: judging R (92)--No
longer a mimicking parrot (cf Annette’s parrot
Coco)—force Rochester to repeat her words—
a reversal of the colonizer/ colonized role in
which the colonized is mimicking the master’s
metropolitan language and discourse
• A site of alternative power—an obeah woman
Obeah and Voodoo
Christophine as an obeah woman (a Nanny figure)
--Antoinette’s fear--imagining the occult objects
hidden in the room (p.18)
--black people’s fear of her--Améle (p.61)
-the love portion (p.82) and the sleep medicine for
Antoinette (p.91)
• Obeah as a part of Caribbean existence
--a creolized practice of African religions and
Christianity (memory of Africa)--negative + positive
--negative: evil magic (esp. for the white colonizers)
--positive: as a source of rebellion against slavery
(ex. Nanny and the Maroons in Jamaican legends)
Obeah as Metaphors in WWS
• letter to Francis Wyndham (4/14/1964)
p.138-9 Rhys’s “writer’s cramp” and the help from
“Obeah Night” about R’s reason for hating A (1413)--a poem written in the name of Edward Rochester
or Raworth--“I think there were several Antoinettes
and Mr Rochesters. Indeed I am sure…. Mr R.’s
name ought to be changed…. In the poem (if it’s
that) Mr Rochester (or Raworth) consoles himself or
justifies himself by saying that his Antoinette runs
away after the “Obeah nights” and that the creature
who comes back is not the one who ran away….
Antoinette herself comes back but so changed that
perhaps she was ‘lost Antoinette’.” (140)
Zombie and colonialism
• Definition of zombie (64): symbolic of
social and individual alienation
• Antoinette turning into a ghost (102)—the
haunting ghost in Thornfield (111)—”Her
‘real’ death is her subjugation by
Rochester—by the colonizer—the long
slow process of her reduction to the zombi
state chronicled in the novel” (Sandra
Drake 200)
New Orleans Voodoo Museum
• zombies
humfo altar
Names
• name and identity--the African belief in name (88)
• Daniel Cosway--Esau (73) ( sb. cheated out of his
birthright) /Is he a Cosway—Daniel Boyd? (77,
94)—the importance of claiming the family name
• Antoinette
Bertha (68, 81, 88, 106-7)
Marionette (90, 92, 103)--Why does Rochester
change her name and the significance of this change
of names? What is the significance in calling her
Marionette (a doll)?
• the unnamed male narrator in Part II (‘the man in
Part III--Why does she keep him unnamed? (Why
does she want to have him sign his name in “Obeah
Night”?)
Love, Sex, Betrayal and Hatred
• signs of betrayals--cock crowing (40, 71, 97-98)
• Rochester’s affair with Améle--People around
Rochester and change their attitudes toward him
after this one-nigh-stand Améle, Baptiste (85),
Antoinette--physically transformed (87)—R feels
everything as “hostile” (90)
• His double standards: promiscuity (84, 88, 99)
• R’s possessiveness: “my lunatic” (99)
• Rochester’s hatred (83, 102-3) // (143)
• the untold/undeveloped love story between
Antoinette and Sandi (30)--hints at their sexual
relationship (72-3, 75, 109-10)--white dress (76) for
Rochester and red dress for Sandi (109)
Spaces: the Caribbean vs. England
• different gardens: Coulibri and Granbois “enclosed
garden” (p.36)
• Rhys’s one-room heroines—the final limit of
hopelessness Antoinette has not locked herself
up—for Grace it’s a shelter against the black and
cruel world (105-6)
• Places without looking glass: the convent (32), the
house in England (107, 112)—What is the
significance of looking glass?
• England as world “made of cardboard” (107) What
is the significance of this metaphor? Why does
Antoinette insist that she has lost her way to
England?
Questions about the Ending
• What are the significances of the red dress in
Part III? (109)
• Compare the fire scene in Part I and that in
Antoinette’s dream in part III. Is there a
parallel between the parrot in the first fire and
Antoinette in the second?
• What is the significance of the ending of the
novel? Critics have argued that this novel has
an open ending. Is Antoinette mad? Can she
escape from the narrative containment? Has
she burned down the house?
The Ending
The red dress—the color of fire and the flamboyant
tree, the smell of the WI—a symbol of her
Caribbean identity and of her memory of Sandi
(109-10) vs the gray wrapper (110)—the color of
England and sign of R’s neglect
The two fires: Fire brings back her child hood memory
(111-2)—the ambivalent power of fire—warm,
purifying, protective but scorching (112)
Holding the candle down the passage—a conformity
to and a reversal of the Victorian angel in the
house—illuminating, destructive—breaking her
state of zombification (202)