There seems to be a trend in some of these books that we have read in which characters stay in bad relationships. It is as if they chose to ignore their issues, and since we have an overview of the situation, we see that this turns out badly. This trend is especially seen in The Sun Also Rises and Wide Sargasso Sea. In The Sun Also Rises, the bad relationship is the one between Brett and Jake, where Jake is in love with Brett but since they can never be together, she continuously hurts him.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette finds herself in two separate bad relationships which she can’t seem to get out of. The first is when she was a child. This relationship is between Antoinette and her (so called) friend Tia. Their friendship is full of conflict but there were the two main times that pointed towards a bad relationship. The first was at the pool when they get into a big fight about somersaults. This encounter went beyond a normal fight between children and after that happened I thought that they would not like each other anymore. But it turned out, I was wrong because not much later when Antoinette’s family is leaving she tries to run to Tia and plans to live with her. Tia’s response is to throw a rock at Antoinette and this is what finally makes Antoinette realize they are not friends. This is the first example in the book of Antoinette not understanding the relationship she is in, which leads to more problems.
The second relationship is the one between Antoinette and Rochester. Their marriage is strange from the beginning since they barely knew each other at the time of their marriage. This lack of communication between them continues throughout the book and we see that despite being in this bad relationship they never break apart. There are times when Rochester is given the chance to simply leave, but for some reason he does not take it. Antoinette on the other hand loves Rochester, but he is just rude to her and sleeps with other people (This is very much like Brett and Jake). The relationship is failing, but Antoinette is trying so hard as is seen with the love potion, but all this makes it worse. The moral these books tell is that if the relationship is going very badly it might be better to just leave.
I think Rhys purposely gives Antoinette bad relationships. The only somewhat stable relationship Antoinette has is with Christophine. I also think Antoinette's bad relationships are supposed to be largely responsible for her "descent into madness". In order for Rhys to turn Antoinette Cosway into Bertha Mason, she had to emphasize the bad relationships in Antoinette's life.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading both the post and this comment I'm kindof viewing our books in a new light. It seems clearer to me now that the characters' bad relationships move the plot along. Without conflict between Rochester and Antointette, their story would be one of pleasant domesticity and thus there would be no Bertha Mason. Another example of this could be the relationship between Septimus and the doctors. If they had a good realtionship, Septimus might not have jumped out of the window, and Clarissa never would have thought about it at the party. Maybe its obvious to say that relationships move a plot along, but that fact seems more clear to me now than it did before.
DeleteOne crucial difference here might be that Jake is free to end his relationship with Brett whenever he wants. If he's "stuck" with her, that's at least partly his own choice (although we do talk about love as generating involuntary actions on the part of the one in love, and there is a sense that Jake can't quite *help* falling for Brett over and over, but at least he's aware of that, and is able to frame it as some kind of choice). Antoinette has so little choice about *anything* in her life, least of all her relationships--if she did have choice, we get the strong indication that she'd be with Sandi, who up until she leaves the island forever continues to visit her and clearly cares about her. But this relationship was forbidden by her stepfather and made completely unmentionable by her marriage to Rochester. She is married more or less without her consent (she makes a halfhearted attempt to get out of it, but Rochester lays on some sweet lines and convinces her to take the chance), and once she's married, she's basically signed all of her freedom (and wealth) over to her husband. So she really has no choice but to "stay with" Rochester--a point made painfully clear when he literally takes her back to England as a prisoner.
ReplyDeleteI also think that Antoinette doesn't know as well how to distinguish bad relationships from good ones, since she's had so few relationships to begin with, and only one good one (Christophine) to judge by.
ReplyDeleteI think that Antoinette also had a not-so-positive relationship with her mother as well. I think Rhys makes a point of showing that Antoinette doesn't have anyone that she has a great relationship with, except Christophine. Antoinette's isolation is largely due to people thinking that she's mad/she'll be mad, which actually contributes to her "descent into madness". According to Christophine, Annette had similar circumstances; people assumed she was mad and treated her like so. While Tia's relationship with Antoinette may have not contributed to her "madness", many others assume she'll be mad as she ages, and modify their behavior around her due to that.
ReplyDeleteYou are completely right that this novel has been chock-full of troubled interpersonal relationships. In this post, you discussed The Sun Also Rises and Wide Sargasso Sea, but I can also easily think of examples from nearly every novel we have read-- Meursalt's lack of real affection for Marie comes to mind, as well as Milkman's physical relationship with Hagar which ends so badly that Hagar sets out to kill him.
ReplyDeleteRuth and Macon's relationship also really fits this pattern as well. In fact, I'd say it's second only to Antoinette and Rochester's in its unsettling vitriol. And unlike Milkman and Hagar, they never even consider leaving each other (though Macon takes the liberty to see others). I guess back then divorce was uncommon, and on the surface they are "respectable" people, so divorce wouldn't fit with the image that Macon likes to maintain for himself.
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