| Wide Sargasso Sea - Extract n°1 |
Commentaire Wide Sargasso Sea - Extrait 1
Du début à "But not any longer. Not any more" (p.7)
[ Corrigé, note : 16/20 ]
Jean Rhys was born in 1890 in Dominica , from a Welsh father and a white Creole mother. She came to England when she was 16 and then in Paris 15 years later. In 1939, she had published four novels and a collection of short stories. Still behind her pen name, she wrote in 1966 her last novel , Wide Sargasso Sea, which had a great success. She died in 1979.
With this last novel, Jean Rhys wanted to explain why Bertha Mason, in Jane Eyre, became crazy. Indeed, she didn't like the way Charlotte Brontë described this woman. A writer herself, she wanted to write a prequel to the story of Jane Eyre.
Wide Sargasso Sea is a multiple voice narrative divided into three different parts, told by three different narrators.
The first part takes place just after the Emancipation Act which freed slaves in 1933, Antoinette, the mains character, is the first narrator of the novel. In Jane Eyre, she's Bertha Mason, a name her husband gave her in Wide Sargasso Sea to bemuse her.
The second part is the longest. It is set in Dominica, at Massacre and is told by Rochester, an English man and Antoinette's husband ; even if his name is never mentionned , we can deduce it from Charlotte Brontë's novel.
The last part takes place in Thornfield hall, Mr Rochester property. It is told by Grace Poole, and a few lines by Antoinette herself.
Even if this novel has been inspired by Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys keeps her originality because of these three narrators. The similarities between Jean Rhys and her main character, Antoinette, is very interesting and it is important to understand why the author decided to write Bertha Mason's story.
This first extract introduces the setting , the context and the caracters of the novel.
The scene is set in Jamaïca, more precisly in Coulibry Estate, a mansion near Spanish Town. Spanish Town is the capital of Jamaïca, a big market of slaves , but there's not any road to Coulibri Estate. The only date mentionned in the novel is the Emancipation Act in 1933 which changed many black people's life.
The main characters are also introduced :
- The Cosways which live in Coulibri Estate is composed of Antoinette, who's still a little girl, her mother Annette, who's a widow, her young brother Pierre and a few servants who have decided not to leave after the Emancipation act. They are not wealthy and broke.
- Pierre staggers when he walks and can't speak. He's mentally retarded and requires attention. Annette spends most of her time with him.
- Christophine is one of these servants who stayed. She's from Martinique, like Annette and was a wedding present for her. Jamaïcan people are afraid of her, because she practices obeah, a kind of black magic. She's really strange, different from the other women : physically, she's much blacker and wears black clothes. She's able to speak patois, french, and good English when she wants to. She doesn't often laugh and her only friend is not a Jamaïcan.
- Godfrey and Sass are two other servants that Annettes doesn't like much, they are said to be « a big strong boy » and a « rascal ».
- Mr Lutrell was the only friend of the Cosways. « Was », because he commited suicide, he shot his dog and swam out. The English gouverment has promised him a financial compensation just after the Emancipation Act, but it never arrived ; he was so desperate that he prefered to kill himself. This death will be one of the clues that shows Antoinette's family's isolation, one of the main theme of the novel.
Indeed, isolation is really stressed by Jean Rhys.
First of all, Coulibri Estate itself is far away from Spanish town, and the only road which links the two places is « very bad »and « that road repairing [is] now a thing of the past ». Then, the two deaths underline a gloomy atmosphere ; Mr Lutrell's suicide, and the horse which has been poisonned. Coulibri Estate is seen by Jamaïcan people as an « unlucky place », and no one wants to go there anymore. Annette is a Martinican, and Christophine practices obeah, they are poor and Christophine is feared , so they are rejected.
After the doctor's visit, who must have said to Annette that his son's state will never change, Annette decide not to go out anymore, suddenly.
Antoinette explains that she « got used to a solitary life ».
This place considered as haunted and unlucky underlines the supersition of Jamaïcan people, which is also a theme of the novel. Antoinette is not old enough to understand what happen, but the reader is. Jamaïcan ladies come and help Christophine. She doesn't pay them but they bring her presents and then they whisper in the kitchen. They probably want her to practice obeah on them. Christophine is a kind of shield for the Cosways, a shield against the crowd. As Antoinette says, the Cosways are lucky to have her with them instead of having her against them.
The poisoned horse is also a sign of malediction. The horse was their most precious belonging and also their only link with the social life. This death is a way to frighten the Cosways and make them leave.
An other important theme that this first extract -and the hole novel- deals with is the gossips and the racial hatred from the free Blacks and the Whites.
The first words of the novel are « They say ». But who's this « They »? No one knows exactly at the beginning, but we will soon discover that « they » represents the black people who hate Annette and her family and that will burn their house. « They » is also mentionned later : « They laughed ». Probably the former slaves. They make fun of Annette, they want to have their revenge. By not identifying them, they are more dangerous, « they » represent a mysterious force that threaten the Cosways.
This danger is also evoqued in the description of the garden. Before the Emancipation Act, the Cosway's garden was like the Garden of Eden of the Bible. But now, without any slave to take care of it, the garden is going wild , not well-kept anymore. In the past, it was heaven, now it's hell. Antoinettes compares the orchid tree to an octopus, as if the garden was going to emprison and swallow people. Even if Antoinette is too young to remember a prosperous situation, this has consequences on adults.
As if this social hatred was not strong enough , the link between Annette and her daughter is going to be definitly broken. After the doctor's visit, Annette doesn't take care of her daughter anymore. She doesn't want her to touch her or to come too close from her. She cuts herself from Antoinette and spends all her time with Pierre, her son. Antoinette becomes to be afraid of her mother ; Annette doesn't trust anybody, she accuses her servants to stay only because of food and bed, but she's lucide in her analyses and knows that something terrible is going to happen. In fact, Annette is also frightened.
Antoinette considers Christophine as a surrogate mother , because someone has to play the part of the mother she's loosing. But it doesn't mean that she doesn't love her real mother. On the contrary, she needs protection and love ; that is symbolized by the « black cloak », like a black coat which can keep her safe. She doesn't understand why her mother is cutting herself from her.
The last sentence of our extract is « But not any longer. Not any more. ». This break in the novel is heavy of sense. Being safe, recieving love from her mother, having a pretty comfortable life, is finished. Not any hope.
To conclude, Wide Sargasso Sea begins -and ends- in a dramatic context. The links between the characters, and between them and the world, are tensed, the reader keeps his breath. He feels that something terrible is going to happen. Something terrible that will break the thin link that remained. From the beginning to the end , this link will be broken, cut once, twice, hundred times ; lots of metaphors, dramatic and tragic situations, not any way to escape and crazy characters, here is what makes, for me, this novel so interesting.
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