Is Antoinette Mad?

“They drive her to it. When she lose her son she lose herself for a while and they shut her away. They tell her she is made, they act like she is mad. Question, question. But no kind word, no friends, and her husban’ he go off, he leave her...mad I don’t know--she give up, she care for nothing” (94). When it comes to Antoinette’s mother and her “madness”, in Christophine’s view, it was the people around Annette that drove her to what they called insanity. Once she lost her son and home in the fire, Annette fell into a deep depression that the people around her weren’t prepared to deal with. She wasn’t given proper treatment so she fell further and further down the deep, dark hole of depression, and later insanity. Instead of being shown love, she was shut out from those around her. She lost her sense of self and therefore drifted away from reality until she was unapproachable by others. In Christophine’s view, Annette didn’t have to go mad in the end; she could have lived on if the people around her hadn’t shut her own when the going got rough. Annette had some intolerable levels of hardship that weren’t correctly dealt with. She would not have gone mad if it weren’t for the treatment of others around her.

Now, years later, we have Antoinette’s. In her case, we can see how Rochester, whether or not if it was intentional, completely drove her to insanity in his treatment of her. After the poison incident, Rochester loses faith in their marriage and decides to punish her by kidnapping Antoinette and taking her back to England where he can trap her in his attic for eternity. In essence, Rochester drives Antoinette to madness, just like what happened with her mother. She is given no escape or individual life to live. She is left to suffer in darkness, unable to tell time or understand reality. She can’t control her emotions or remember her recent actions, as seen when Richard Mason visits and she bites him. So is she mad? I mean, yes, but her craziness was induced by Rochester and others around her. As Christophine says, they make her crazy. So, yes, she is mad at the end, but it isn’t her fault and could have been avoided.

It’s interesting how, with Rhy’s perspective on Jane Eyre, we are able to feel sympathy towards Antoinette at the end because we are aware what she’s gone through and how she’s been wronged her whole life. Whereas, in Jane Eyre, Antoinette (ie. Bertha) we would most likely have a judgemental outward opinion, like Jane. We would see Bertha’s appearance and actions as insane and possibly evil. By knowing Antoinette’s story, we can see the reason behind her actions and how she has been driven to madness. Our inside perspectives give us insight in the transition from Antoinette Cosway to Bertha Mason. She was forcefully taken away from her family and homeland to the foreign lands of England. She lost all sense of self, like her mother, and was no longer Antoinette, but Bertha. It seems as though the villagers’ predictions came true; Antoinette did go down the same road as her mother, but it, in both cases, it wasn’t their faults. They had some unfortunate help in their spirals down towards insanity.