Living in the In Between -- It Ain’t His Fault!

After having two days to panel presentations, one last thought about Wide Sargasso Sea that has stuck out to me is the way Antoinette seems to live in the “in between” in her life; never really fitting in with one specific group of people. This observation comes from a combination of two panel groups: Jasmine, Zoe, Lily, Cameron, Ben, and Clark. It’s interesting to observe that, in class, most people tend to blame Rochester for Antoinette’s plummet into insanity. I know that I’ve done my fair share of defending Rochester in class and on the blogs (which does not totally imply that Rochester is free of guilt in this situation), but I have found myself feeling the need to stick up for my good buddy once more.

After finishing Wide Sargasso Sea, we can see how Rochester’s actions of kidnapping Antoinette, bringing her to England, and then locking her up in his attic to punish her for the trouble she has caused him in their marriage could very well drive anyone insane. But he doesn’t act alone. Antoinette’s place in society (or lack thereof) also plays a huge role in driving her to the cliffs of insanity. As stated in one of the panel presentations, Antoinette lives in the “in between”: She is too white to be black, she’s too black to be white, too young to understand her mother, too rich to be poor, too poor to be rich, too Creole to be English, too English to be Creole, etc. She just doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere. There is just always something off about her according to every standard she’s surrounded by. When Rochester enters the scene, he observes that Antoinette has “alien eyes”; she is unrecognizable because he just can’t place her. She is a stranger to everyone around her.

Antoinette just ends up having a constant identity crisis throughout her life. At first, she is Antoinette Cosway, then she becomes Antoinette Mason, and then, once Rochester comes into play, she is renamed Bertha Mason, the name she is stuck with (involuntarily) until the day she dies. She has never been able to connect with herself because she just keeps changing. Even at the end of the book, Antoinette/ Bertha dreams she jumps towards Tia as she leaps off the balcony of Rochester’s estate in England, one last chance to be with Tia; one last chance to try to belong to someone/ something.

Throughout the novel, Antoinette struggles with finding where she belongs. Even at the end, she still is unaware what her place is in society and within herself. Having this extended amount of an identity crisis makes me believe that this uncertainty was also a huge reason why she went crazy in the end. Although Rochester doesn’t help the situation, he also isn’t the main catalyst for Antoinette’s madness. Her need to find where she belongs and what her purpose is in life is what drives her to set Rochester’s estate on fire, as she states, it’s what she must do. Rochester just happens to make worse of a bad situation.