Life-Affirming Wisdom within Wide Sargasso Sea

A detailed Summary of Life-Affirming Wisdom within Wide Sargasso Sea

Life-Affirming Wisdom Within "Wide Sargasso Sea"

Encounters with pain and suffering whether mental or physical can often be a debilitating experience. However, through the course of a lifetime, one may develop life-affirming ideals to sustain a desire to live. By using these beliefs and gained knowledge, one may learn to cherish life or stability through emotionally difficult stages. At its inception, wisdom may not be utilized, "...and you only know a long time afterwards what it is..." (Rhys, 186). When it is used, or at an "awakening" moment of anagorisis, it can strengthen a person's resolve, or bring them to new decisions previously unconsidered.

Such is the case in Jean Rhys' acclaimed novel, Wide Sargasso Sea. In the course of the book, the main protagonists, Antoinette Cosway Mason and the unnamed husband (Edward Rochester, from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre) struggle with their love, lust, disappointment, and apprehension. Antoinette, the beautiful naive girl whose life has spun wildly out of her control, marries the cold, avaricious Rochester, who is stifled with Victorian conformity and resentment. Their sufferings shed light on the nature of tribulation, and wis

After the cataclysmic arson of her home (which destroys ever last material trace of Antoinette's life) and the subsequent destruction of her mother's sanity, Antoinette violently represses her emotions. She finds refuge behind aloofness, and learns to wield it like a weapon. "The girl began to laugh, very quietly, and it was then that hate came to me and courage with the hate so that I was able to walk past without looking at them." (49). Antoinette spends her time in a convent going through vague motions of life and blending into her environment. Antoinette imposes a blank death upon herself at the convent and matures physically, but not emotionally. Through her entire time as a child and in the convent, Antoinette nursed a desire for comfort and love. When she does not receive either feeling from those around her, she distances herself emotionally, feeling "numb", and only showing strong emotion when relating to her dreams. Later in the novel, Rochester remarks, "In any case she had given way, but coldly, unwillingly, trying to protect herself with silence and a blank face. Poor weapons, and they had not served her well or lasted long." (91).

The cold, avaricious Rochester, stifled with Victorian conformity and resentment, realizes that his only happiness will come from a blatantly stereotypical reluctance to accept anything different than what he perceives as his culture, or the English culture. This realization comes about with the unwitting help of his new wife, Antoinette Cosway Mason, and the nature of the islands on which he finds himself. They menace him, tempt him, and push him away, driving him to confusion and finally rejection of anything alike; leaving him to kill Antoinette emotionally and abandoning the islands to return to England.

... but it seemed to me that everything round me was hostile. The telescope drew away and said don't touch me. The trees were threatening and the shadows of the trees moving slowly over the floor menaced me. That green menace. I had felt it ever since I saw this place. There was nothing I knew, nothing to comfort me. (149)

'You have never learned to hide it,' I said.

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Approximate Word count = 2392
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous