The full blazing technicolour of the madwoman in the attic

On Redbrick, Birmingham English Department Society (BEDSOC) committee member Gabby Nero reviews Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea for black history month.

When I read Bronte’s Jane Eyre, I was dissatisfied with the savage portrayal of Antoinette. Imagine a beautiful, dazzling -indeed, so dazzling that it is almost illusory- Caribbean landscape. As the novel progresses, it is no surprise that the landscape becomes more threatening from Mr Rochester’s perspective, which reflects his detachment from the Dominican landscape. This is the drought of that pearl glazed, dazzling seashore. We become more imbued with Mr Rochester’s unreliable view as he becomes more distanced from Dominica and the Creole landscape and culture. This includes Daniel Cosway’s letter to Mr Rochester, detailing that the Cosway family have not told Mr Rochester about their past. The depiction of Antoinette as mad is a complete dismissal of the colonial figure because of their discomfort with it. Except this is just the crux of what Rhys is asking for. The colonised, the colonizer, the native and the non-native, white and black… these binaries don’t have to be isolated, but the reader can educate themselves about black history to alleviate the pressure that the colonial subject endures in retaining their identity. Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest is portrayed as a brute, a noble savage, but it is somehow perplexing that he could speak so eloquently. Antoinette and Caliban have an affinity to their respective islands and cultural landscape which no other character has. Indeed, it is ignorant to view Caliban simply as a noble savage or Antoinette as ‘the madwoman in the attic’, rather than the full blazing technicolour of their individual identities.

The Funeral Of Aunt Branwell on AnneBrontë.org.