Thursday, 10 March 2016

Antoinette

                                                            ANTOINETTE

Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea  attempts  to fill  in  the blank of a fictional character's life story . Here Rhys creates a biography  for Bertha Mason, the insane wife of Edward Rochester  in Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre. Rhys's novel begins with the narrative of Antoinette Cosway  who is a child living in the over grown and impoverished  Coulibri Estate in Jamaica . She lives alone with her mother Annette, her broyher Perre,and three black servants. Later she finds refuge in the closed, isolated life of the convent.Her arranged  marriage distresses her .The marriage is a mismatch of culture and custom.She and her english husband,Mr. Rochester, fails to relate each other. Meanwhile Rochester receives a lettr from a man claiming that he is a half  brother of Antoinette.Her past deeds ,specifically her childhood ralationship with a half-caste brother, sullies her husband's view of her.He begins to doybt his wife .He questions her racial purity .Rochester believes that he has been decieved by Richard Mason ,his own father,and by Antoinette. He thinks that they hid the fact of  Antoinette's  promiscuity and her propensity for madness. He spurns the sexual advances of his affectionate wife, and begins to sleep alone. Cristophine advises her to get seprated from her cruel husband.

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