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• 1 2024-06-20T07:57:31-07:00 Empire 6 plain 2024-07-12T06:53:38-07:00

       In the pursuit of self-actualization, both Jane and Antoinette are in a privileged position above other peoples despite being marginalized themselves. While both novels deal in themes of servitude and class, Rhys’s work displays a self-awareness of positionality and the limit to her voice that Brontë’s lacks. To this point, I will first revisit the intersectionality between imperialism and exploration of self from the previous section before moving on to the depiction of servitude and slavery.
  

       In searching for skipgrams of “glass” for analysis of self-reflection, I found one passage of interest among the selection. Jane arrives at Thornfield and waits in a lavish sitting room. Of note are two geographic adjectives “Bohemian” and “Parian.” Bohemian is derived from Germany, fine European glass on display, while the mantelpiece they rest upon is Parian, the capital letter indicating marble from Paros, Greece. While still European, these features are not English. Rather they are extracted, brought into the house to serve in Bronte’s “ice-fire” imagery. The sitting room encapsulates the imperial attitude of casually acquiring that which is “exotic” to adorn a shelf. Thornfield’s architecture is described in terms of old English oaks yet it is populated by foreign bobbles. Recall the occurrence of “darkness” and “black” in skipgrams of Jane’s “reflections.” Just as Rochester collects interesting ornaments to represent himself through his home (Bertha included), Jane has made Bertha an interesting little totem of a repressed side of herself.

       Even as colonizers collect things, they are dissatisfied by them. The liminal powerful white Creoles in Wide Sargasso Sea are determined to outwardly display their Europeanness, as seen in the importance of dress.
  As mentioned before, the frequent use of “white” and “clean” in dress displays wealth and class. However, the unnamed Rochester figure finds even this wanting. Antoinette wears a white dress he likes, which reminds her of a favorite painting, yet he is made uncomfortable by the way it falls from her shoulder (Joanou p. 136). Even as the colonized other attempts to mirror the colonizer, the uncanny reflection only further alienates him from his subject. The later turn towards “red” and “fire” in dress indicates Antoinette’s eventual rejection of this mimicry, turning to a garment that represents her ties to the Caribbean and a desire to dismantle her prison. However, this final act is where once again Antoinette imagines herself reflected as Tia. Rochester’s rejection of her dress critiques colonial efforts to turn the Other into the Self, yet it arguably appears in this reflection. Rhys’s subversion of imperial re-creation is indicated by her handling of enslavement.
      Skipgrams surrounding enslavement and servitude in WSS reveal a nuanced interplay of fears and comforts. For “slave” and “enslave,” familial words are numerous associates. Juxtaposing enslavement with the context of motherhood and other close relationships highlights the inhumanity of the practice, with “widow” connecting the joy of family to grief. “Owner” tops this list, even with emancipation the Antoinette’s Cosway legacy will forever hang over the family. Servants appear in both novels and are associated with vastly different semantics. In WSS, “gossiped” and “talk” appear with equal frequency alongside servants. The narrators of the novel, a white Creole and an Englishman, oscillate between trusting and fearing their black servants, either underestimating or suspicious of their words. Conversely, in Jane Eyre, the associated words are innocuous and matter-of-fact. While class and culture are derided in Jane Eyre, they are still an unquestioned reality. Rhys’s depiction of this relationship indicates the cracks and insecurities colonial oppressors see when trying to retain power. This depiction of insecurity reconciles a critical discourse around the reflection of the self in the other in WSS. Spivak wrote that, “No perspective critical of imperialism can turn the Other into a self, because the project of imperialism has always already historically refracted what might have been the absolutely Other into a Domesticated Other that consolidates the imperialist self,” bringing into question Rhys’s critique of imperialism as she has Antoinette project herself onto Tia (p. 253). Yet with the discomfort of the unnamed Rochester figure in the face of Antoinette’s mimicry and the display of fear around servants, Rhys seems aware of this colonial tendency and knowingly writes Antoinette as a perpetrator. As mentioned in the literature review, John Su has argued that Christophine’s departing words demonstrate Rhys’s awareness of her limited ability write an authentic black voice and an attempt to not limit that voice to what she can write. Rhys was aware she could fall into the same temptation as Brontë and use a marginalized person as a symbol. By evoking the reflection again, when Antoinette has become “Bertha” and is reduced to Jane’s reflection, Rhys critiques the trope and burns the whole thing down.