Writing beyond the Ending: Jane Eyre and WSS

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Writing beyond the EndingJane Eyre and WSS

• By turning a classic nineteenth-century novel
  inside out and giving its voiceless character an
  explanatory story, Rhys has constructed a
  critical examination of romantic thralldom and
  marital power--internalized and external
  institutions that support gender inequality.
  (45-6)
• By a maneuver of encirclement (entering the
  story before) and leverage (prying the story
  open), Rhys ruptures Jane Eyre. She returns us
  to a framework far from the triumphant
  individualism

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Writing beyond the Ending

• of the character of Jane Eyre by concentrating on
  the colonial situations.Wide Sargasso Sea states
  that the closures and precisions of any tale are
  purchased at the expense of the muted, even
  unspoken narrative, which writing beyond the the
  ending will release. (Remember, Doris lessing
  reminds us, that for all the books we have in
  print, there are as many that have never reached
  print, have never been written down. (46)
  --Rachel Blau DuPlessis

3
New Orleans Voodoo Museum

• zombies humfo altar
  

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Obeah and Voodoo

• Obeah as a part of Caribbean existence
  --a creolized practice of African
  religions and Christianity (memory of
  Africa)--negative positive --negative evil
  magic (esp. for the white colonizers)
  --positive as a source of
  rebellion against slavery (ex. Nanny and the
  Maroons in Jamaican legends)
• Christophine as an obeah woman (a Nanny figure)
  --Antoinettes
  fear--imagining the occult objects hidden in the
  room (p.18)
  --black peoples fear of her--Améle (p.61)
  --the love portion (p.82) and the
  sleep medicine for Antoinette (p.91)

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Obeah as Metaphors in WWS

• letter to Francis Wyndham (4/14/1964)
  p.138-9 Rhyss writers cramp and the
  help from Obeah Night (p. 141-3)--a poem
  written in the name of Edward Rochester or
  Raworth--I think there were several Antoinettes
  and Mr Rochesters. Indeed I am sure. Mr R.s
  name ought to be changed. In the poem (if its
  that) Mr Rochester (or Raworth) consoles himself
  or justifies himself by saying that his
  Antoinette runs away after the Obeah nights and
  that the creature who comes back is not the one
  who ran away. Antoinette herself comes back but
  so changed that perhaps she was lost
  Antoinette. (p.140)--zombie

6
Names

• name and identity--the African belief in name
• Daniel Cosway--Esau (p.73)/Is he a Cosway? (p.94)
• Antoinette Bertha (p.68, 81, 88, 106-7)
  Marionette (p.92)--Why does Rochester change
  her names and the significance of this change of
  names? What is the significance in calling her
  Marionette (a doll)?
• the unnamed male narrator in Part II (the man in
  Part III--Why does Rhys choose to let him be the
  main narrator? Why does she keep him unnamed?
  (Why does she want to have him sign his name in
  Obeah Night?)

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Love, Betrayal and Hatred

• signs of betrayals--cock crowing (p.71, 97-8)
• Rochesters affair with Améle after the obeah
  night (p.84)--Why is he having this affair? How
  do people around Rochester and change their
  attitudes toward him after this one-nigh-stand
  and why? (Antoinette, Améle, Baptiste)
• Rochesters hatred (p.102) // (p.143)
• the untold love story between Antoinette and
  Sandi (p.30)--hints at their sexual relationship
  (p.72-3, 75, 109-10)--white dress (p.76) for
  Rochester and red dress for Sandi (p.109)

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Christophine Between Imperialism and the Native
Voice

• Two major scenes of Christophine in WWS
• Christophine and Antoinette (p.64-71)
• Christophine and Rochester (p.90-7)
• Analyze the powerful presence of Christophine.
  How does Rhys describe her appearance and her
  linguistic competence? What is the significance
  of the fact that she disappears before the end of
  the novel? Gayatri Spivak and Benita Parry have
  very different view of Christophine. What is
  your stand in this argument and why?

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Two Quotes about Christophine

• Spivak on imperialism Christophine is
  tangential to this narrative. She cannot be
  contained by a novel which rewrites a canonical
  English text within the European novelist
  tradition in the interest of the white Creole
  rather than the native. (p.246)
• Parry on Spivak what Spivaks strategy of
  reading necessarily blots out is Christophines
  inscription as the native, female, individual
  Self who defies the demands of the discriminatory
  discourses impinging on her person. (p.248)

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Spaces the Caribbean vs. England

• different gardens Coulibri and Granbois
  enclosed garden (p.36)
• different dreams (nightmares) (p.47, 72)
• places without looking glass the convent (p.32)
  the house in England (Thornfield in Jane Eyre)
  (p.107)
• England as world made of cardboard (p.107)
  What is the significance of this metaphor? Why
  does Antoinette insist that she has lost her way
  to England?

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Questions about the Ending

• What are the similarities between the fire scene
  in Part I and that in Antoinettes dream in part
  III?
• What is the significance of the last paragraph of
  the novel?