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• 1 2024-06-20T06:54:39-07:00 Isolation & the Self 11 plain 2024-07-12T06:53:20-07:00

       In both novels the lead characters struggle with an understanding of the self, endeavoring to do so with opposing methods. Brontë’s Jane reconciles the self in moments of privacy and reflection, with isolation providing the freedom from social constraint needed for self awareness. Antoinette, however, is trapped in a world of flawed perspectives where the details are filled in with assumptions.

       Searching skipgrams in both novels, I was able to find instances and associations of reflective imagery that indicate the elevated role of the mirror in self discovery in Jane Eyre and its diminished relevance in Wide Sargasso Sea. Skipgrams are words found in association with a target word, starting with adjacent words and working outwards, skipping a number of words between. In my research, I used skipgrams of 5, meaning any word within 5 of the target would be returned as a result and counted. The resulting word list in Jane Eyre carries two primary connotations: lavish wealth, and the journey to self-understanding. Of the first, a skipgram search of the words glass and mirror points to a scene in Thornfield wherein a sitting room’s “grandeur” is described, as are several New and Old World decorations. Unlike the literal reflective words “glass” and “mirror,” skipgrams of “reflect” tended to produce results connotating Jane’s inward progress. Consider this word cloud of words associated with “reflect.”
  

  Words of travel accompany reflection, with “journey” and “progress” evoking the feminist self-discovery ascribed to Jane in Gilbert & Gubar’s “Plain Jane’s Progress.” “Content” and “leisurely” indicate comfort and ease in exploring the self in such a space, yet this progress is hindered by the evocation of “confused,” “abandoned,” and “eddying.” Obscured amongst this slew of loaded meanings is the motif of darkness within Jane’s reflection, with “black” and “darkness” itself appearing. This motif plays into Western color symbolism, with black representing the unknown and evil as opposed to white’s association with purity. Brontë utilizes both this color symbolizing and Bertha’s ethnicity to draw parallels between Jane’s dark reflection and the imprisoned woman. Mid-century critics describe Bertha as a dark mirror to Jane, yet the racial connotations in this metaphor are difficult to ignore. The words associate with mirror oscillate between positive journey’s of self-discovery and confusion and struggles. The occurrence of “black” and “darkness” seems to fall into the latter category, with Jane fearing this side of herself when she sees it. Brontë turns the marginalized other into a part of the self that Jane fears and must come to terms with.

       Searching the same words in Wide Sargasso Sea returns considerably less. Within the selections I used, “mirror” and “reflect” do not appear, and instances of “glass” typically do not refer to a looking glass. However, this may be a sampling error, as Spivak cites two instances wherein Antoinette perceives Tia’s face as her own reflection through an illusory looking glass (p. 250). I suggest that the lack of recurrence of this symbol bolsters its relevance rather than diminishing it. Rhys is borrowing a symbol important to self-actualization in the original text, one which reduces a colonized person to a symbol, deploying it in a similar way where Antoinette interprets a further marginalized person as who she could be.

       While personal understanding is not found in the mirror in Wide Sargasso Sea, the way characters try to be understood can be found in their dress. Jean Rhys has frequently used dress to connote social position in her novels and WSS is no exception (Joanou p. 123).
  

  In this word cloud, more frequently occurring skipgrams of “dress” are shown in a darker red. “Red” and “Tia” appear as the focal point, in the novel occurring in the final and first acts, respectively. In act 1, Antoinette’s childhood friend Tia swaps dresses with her after bathing. This childhood frivolity explodes into disaster when she returns home in the poor girl’s dress and it is revealed that her mother doesn’t have another that appropriately reflects the family’s standing. Innocently, the girls adopted each other’s mode of dress and thus social status, an exchange revealed to be impossible through Antoinette’s family’s reaction. The immobility of social status is also seen through color in the first act. “White” often modifies dress in this early act, with it being pointed out that a white dress dragging through the dirt displays one has the wealth to clean or replace the garment. 

       The capacity of clothes to reveal (a version of) the self can be interpreted further through the recurrence of “know” and “hidden” as skipgrams of dress. With clothing bearing so much symbolic significance to the characters within the world of the novel, what they know and what they hide from others is represented in their garb. Antoinette must be in her white dress so others know she is of the planter class, yet her family dresses her as to hide that she only has one clean dress. The real self is dressed up to appear as an idealized self, or a self desired to be seen by others. In Jane Eyre, the importance of the internal and external interpretation of self is inverted. Dress skipgrams appear to bear little symbolic importance. In fact, Jane’s routine description as plain coupled with Rochester’s disfigurement ahead of marriage implies a lack of importance of exterior display. As Gilbert and Gubar point out, the conclusion in the isolated Ferndean implies that “True minds, Charlotte Brontë seems to be saying, must withdraw [...] in order to circumvent the structures of a hierarchical society.” (p. 369). It would be uncritical to leave the physical descriptions of Bertha unaddressed. If physical beauty doesn’t matter, Bronte’s characterizations of Bertha would be unnecessary. Yet even in a story where outward appearance is downplayed, ugliness or otherness is still used as shorthand for danger.

       Despite diverging methods of exploring the presented self, the novels both employ an othered character as a reflection of the lead. For Jane it is Bertha and for Antoinette it is Tia. The imperialist dimensions of these devices will be explored in the next section, as will the motifs of servitude and their reflections of colonial attitudes.