Natural Imagery and Individual Agency in Wide Sargasso Sea

The ending of Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys humanizes Antoinette, Bertha in Jane Eyre, subverting the popular belief that she is Mr. Rochester’s insane wife. Rhys’ descriptions of Antoinette reveal that her entrapment does not drive her to madness, but severs her self-identity and eliminates her sense of agency. Her actions of rebellion against Mr.Rochester are often regarded as crazed, but when viewed in context are exceedingly rational. Rhys compares Antoinette’s plight with slavery in an extended metaphor to explore the experience of being the “other,” giving a voice to one that would normally go unheard. Rhys uses natural imagery, specifically the symbol of fire, to restore Antoinette’s sense of identity, enabling her to perform her final act of agency by becoming the ultimate sacrifice.

Antoinette’s entrapment disconnects her from the natural world, severing her sense of identity. The closest thing Antoinette has to nature in her room in Thornfield is “two black chairs carved with fruit and flowers” (Rhys 161). The artificiality of the fruit and flowers here is contrasted with her verdant homeland in the Caribbean. This disconnect from her homeland precipitates an identity crisis, which  culminates in this scene. She watches herself “...drifting out of the window with her scent, her pretty clothes and her looking-glass” (162). The kinesthetic imagery reveals a loss of self, as she watches the person she thinks she is drift away. The scene also shows a disconnect between her past and present self. Her old sense of identity derived from her physical beauty, but without a mirror she cannot be certain her appearance is unaltered. This quote also touches on the theme of voyeurism in the text, which connects to identity formation. In this scene, Antoinette’s disconnected identity is mirrored in Rhys’ manipulation of perspective. Grace is responsible for watching over Antoinette, who watches herself drift away, while looking at herself in the looking glass; each person, including the reader, has their own conception of Antoinette’s identity.                 

Not only does Antoinette become detached from herself, but she loses touch with reality. She explains that the “nights and days and days and nights…[slip] through [her] fingers” (166). The repetitive diction mirrors the monotony of her days, as time is no longer linear for her and the concept of a day is meaningless. The circular sentence structure parallels her distorted sense of time, each day like the one before it, an inescapable loop. Rhys develops the metaphor of slavery to compare Antoinette’s sense of confusion to the one experienced by the slaves during The Middle Passage. Both the slave masters and Mr. Rochester left the slaves and Antoinette respectively in the dark in terms of their physical location. Antoinette’s portrayal of her environment as “cardboard” parallels the experience of the slaves’ on the ships, whose own sense of positionally was warped because all they could see was the sea (163). Antoinette uses the language of the other to describe leaving the ship, as she“walk[s] into their world” and cannot make sense of it because of its unfamiliarity (162). Rhys does not believe that Antoinette’s situation is actually comparable to slavery, but uses this as a tool to comment on the imbalance of power, especially with regard to Antoinette’s inability to understand her new environment.

There are several instances where Antoinette acts out violently against her entrapment because this is the only response that could elicit a reaction. Antoinette had wanted to talk reasonably with Rochester and tell him she would “not trouble [him] again if [he] [would] let [her] go,” but he never entered her room (161). This exemplifies her lack of agency in the situation. Rhys draws a comparison between the room Antoinette enters in her dream and the red-room in Jane Eyre.  Jane’s fears, frustration and anger culminate in the red-room, causing her to erupt into a fit of what an outsider could regard as hysteria. Rhys suggests that like Jane’s emotional outburst, Antoinette’s outburst is not a signal of insanity but an inevitable result of entrapment. Additionally, in the red-room Jane sees a “streak of light” that she thinks “[is] a herald of some coming vision from another world” (17). This comparison helps Rhys foreshadow Antoinette’s later accumulation of strength and entanglement with the supernatural.

While Antoinette’s physical and mental state in the beginning of Part 3 is very poor, it slowly improves when she rediscovers her red dress. Initially, Grace Poole uses visual imagery to describe Antoinette as initially “shivering” and “so thin,” highlighting her fragility   (159). In the same discussion, Grace references Antoinette’s “fierce” “spirit” foreshadowing a later increase in physical strength (162). Her poor physical state is intertwined with her disconnected identity. She yearns to ground her identity in a physical source. She is desperate to find “something you can touch and hold like [her] red dress” (166). She can only begin to differentiate reality from the imaginary through the tangible. Her desperate search for the red dress departs from earlier characterizations of Antoinette in the novel, when she preferred to wear “a fresh white chemise” (76). She was inclined to please and seduce Mr. Rochester, symbolizing her obedience to him and the patriarchy he represents. Now, she is drawn towards red, reconnecting her to the natural landscape of the Caribbean, establishing her identity independent of Mr. Rochester. She equates the color of the red dress with “fire and sunset”, which matches Christophine’s description of her and solidifies her identity as a girl that has “the sun in her”(143). Antoinette “look[s] from the fire to the dress and the dress to the fire” (167). The repetitive diction is used to highlight the synergy between the two, while the bright imagery signalizes an increase of strength and power. Further, the language in the passage shifts from choppy to poetic when she first sees the dress, exemplified by the alliteration of “flamboyant flowers” (166). She initially connects the scent to tactile entities such as “cinnamon and dust” and soon gains the power to recollect the more abstract experiences such as “the smell of the sun” (166).  

 By the end of the novel, Antoinette’s identity reclamation through the red dress leads her to a state of clarity. The sentence structure becomes repetitive when she recounts her dream, often beginning with “I” (169). This establishes a clear chronology as opposed to the prior disjointed sentence structure. This repetition also aligns with the auditory imagery of the “clock ticking” to reinstate a distinct sense of time (169). Rhys introduces multiple images of clocks, including a “grandfather clock” to emphasize  Antoinette’s resynchronization with reality (170). When the fire begins to spread through Thornfield,  Antoinette “[sits] in silence” as “shouting” and anarchy erupt around her (170). She finds tranquility as the other members of the house emerge in a state of turmoil, reversing the power dynamics. One of the final images is Antoinette looking to the sky and seeing “...all [her] life...in it” (170). In this moment, she is able to reflect on her life in its entirety. She sees the “stephanotis and the jasmine” from the Caribbean, as well as the “chandelier and the red carpet downstairs,” no longer separating the past from the present (170). This moment of clarity allows her to perform her final act of agency.

Rhys uses religious diction to criticize the hypocrisy of English society and sanctify Antoinette’s decision to sacrifice herself. She compares the room in her dream to “a church without an altar” (169). The exclusion of an altar hints at the controversial relationship wealthy landowners, such as Mr. Rochester, had with religion. Religion provided them comfort and solace, and many would pray to God regularly. However, Rhys dramatizes their selfishness by removing the altar from the church, underscoring the way they use religion to benefit themselves but do not partake in its virtue of charity. Antoinette continues by saying that “Gold is the idol they worship” (169). Jesus denounced wealth and advocated for helping the poor. It is implied that the “they” refers to the landed elite in England, who worshiped the wealth Jesus renounced. Antoinette’s gold and wealth caused Rochester to marry her, leading to her subsequent entrapment. In this moment she sees herself as “the woman with streaming hair”  and surrounded by a “gilt frame” (169). In these two visuals, she has become one with the fire, making her untouchable. The gold frame circumscribes her, encasing her physical body, but is unable to confine the part of her connected to the eternal realm. Alternatively, the frame illustrates her wealth’s role  in contributing to her entrapment by Mr. Rochester, and her later demise. However, she refuses to be controlled by Mr.Rochester or his money any longer, and chooses to become the sacrifice in the altar-less church. While the fire gives Antoinette power and “protect[s] her, it also “scorch[es] her (170). It is a double edged sword that enables her to reclaim her identity, but requires she sacrifice herself to do so.

Rhys uses Jane Eyre’s character of Bertha to critique the effects of the patriarchy and imperialism, arguing that both leave individuals on the margins of society with little to no free will. The ending alludes to Antoinette’s destruction of Thornfield but never states it explicitly. As a result, the power shifts from Antoinette to the reader, as it is up to them to infer what happens next. Although Antoinette reclaims power at the end of the novel, her identity was and will continue to be defined by the society around her. Her sense of agency is circumscribed by imperialism and the patriarchy. Once Antoinette agrees to marry Mr.Rochester, her only sense of agency lies in her decision to live or die. The next logical step once Antoinette rejects whiteness is death, either physical or social. There is no place in society for a Creole girl who refuses to accept whiteness as the ideal. If Thornfield is a symbol of the patriarchy, then Rhys argues it is impossible to destroy it without destroying oneself as well, as the patriarchy is ingrained in all societal structures.