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Sexism In The Wide Sargasso Sea

1080 Words5 Pages

“If I was bound to hell let it be hell. No more false heavens. No more damned magic. You hate me and I hate you. We’ll see who hates best (Rhys, p. 170). In the highly revered novel “The Wide Sargasso Sea”, the author Jean Rhys, attempts to illustrate the prevalence of ingrained racism, sexism and white male despotism through a story of lust and tragedy. Likewise, set on a post-Emancipation Proclamation plantation in Jamaica, the audience is initially introduced to the young daughter of the ex-owner, Antoinette. In this, due to her father’s untimely death, her mother’s mental decline and the fact that all of the former slaves who continued to inhabit the plantation deeply despised her family, Antoinette was essentially left to fend for …show more content…

Rochester are apparent through their shared struggles and emotional misgiving. Likewise, considering both of her parental figures were not wholly present, Antoinette suffers great loneliness and feelings of being out of place. In furtherance, along with her father dying at a very young age and being shunned by the former slaves who held an indelible grudge against her family, her mother Annette, grew very cold and distant towards her as a result of her mental issues and grief regarding her ailing son, Pierre, and thus Antoinette was all but abandoned by all except from her housemaid Christophine, who at times acted as a motherly figure. Due her solitude, Antoinette creates a lonely world for herself to exist in, in which a wall is built in order to protect herself from experiences which could mimic her past of pain and …show more content…

Rochester as her housemaid Christophine, is often seen acting as a motherly figure and acts as her protector against Mr. Rochester’s attempts to control and abuse her. In furtherance, although they have a strange relationship, seeing that Christophine was given to her mother as a wedding present, she and Antoinette still share a nurturing relationship which Mr. Rochester simply does not have. In further detail, though, Antoinette still suffers from not having two parental figures, she still has somewhat of a caretaker and “base” to report back to when she needs it. Despite, Antoinette 's lack of two paternal parental figures who deeply care for her, Christophine acts as a pseudo-mother figure who looks after Antoinette, which counters she and Mr. Rochester’s

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