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Wide Sargasso Sea Gender Analysis

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Resistance to Traditional Gender Roles in Wide Sargasso Sea The short literary work, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys explores the life of Antoinette Cosway, a young white Creole heiress who marries a white English man, Edward Rochester. Rochester’s name is never mentioned in the novel but it is implied that he is the character from Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre. Antoinette’s marriage to Rochester is forced and arranged by her step brother Richard Mason. Antoinette and Rochester both lived in Granbois, Jamaica and later in their marriage relocate to England. The novel is polyvocality meaning that it is primarily narrated by many voices that of Antoinette, Rochester and Grace Poole. Rochester merely agrees to marry Antoinette to become a rich man in the English society; no feelings attached. During the course of their marriage he suppresses her to the point where she goes lunatic. The reader will be able see how Antoinette’s resistance to patriarchy gets her confined; through her marriage to Rochester, her sexuality and her psychological state because of the cultural programming of gender roles in colonized British Jamaica. Rochester sees marriage as a form of economic power and dominance. He agrees to marry Antoinette so that he could sustain and support himself. “I have sold my soul or you sold it, and after all is it such a …show more content…

Rochester promises Antoinette “peace, happiness, safety” in bargain of their marriage which according to Lois Tyson is the patriarchal concept of masculinity (Rhys 47). Men are expected to provide security for women. According to Robert Kendrick, Rochester accepts her only because of the symbolic value she carries within the dominant order- her fortune and her beauty make her a prized possession for him, an easy way to acquire his status as an “independent”

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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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