Wide Sargasso Sea tells the story of Antoinette, a girl brought
up in colonial Jamaica in the 19th century. Her family used to own a
plantation, but falls into poverty after the death of her drunk, lazy father.
They are despised by the Jamaican’s living around them. One day, hostile
neighbors storm Antoinette’s house, setting fire to it, and killing her
brother. After spending the rest of her childhood in a nunnery, Antoinette
marries a man, Mr. Rochester, in an arranged marriage. At first they seem
intoxicated with each other, but he hears rumours that Antoinette’s mother was
crazy, and fears madness is in her blood too. He becomes distant, capricious
and cruel, and this precipitates the very thing he fears; Antoinette’s slide
into madness.
This book was written as a prequel to Jayne Eyre. I think
that’s a good idea, and the execution is quite clever – but since I haven’t
read Jayne Eyre, I can only really judge Wide Sargasso Sea on its own.
“I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.”
Why I hated this book
So why did I hate Wide Sargasso Sea? I think there were four
key reasons.
Firstly, I hated how complicated it made life seem. Wide
Sargasso Sea suffers from the ‘literary delusion’. Moments in our lives are –
fundamentally – fleeting and ephemeral. They are gone in a breath. Literature, on the other hand, writes about a
world whose essence is the opposite; sentences in books are permanent and re-readable.
I think this creates an inherent tendency for fiction to overstate the
complexity, meaning and importance of every day life. A real person might have
complicated motives, but they are mostly instinctive, half-formed and
transitory. In literature, too often, motives are fully formed, intricate and
imbued with a wider symbolic meaning. Wide Sargasso Sea falls dangerously far
down this hole. Everything is just so,
clinically complicated. I felt like I
was wading through treacle.
“I watched her die many times. In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty. Only the sun was there to keep us company. We shut him out. And why not? Very soon she was as eager for what's called loving as I was - more lost and drowned afterwards.”
Secondly, I hated its attitude towards mental health. In Wide Sargasso Sea, mental illness is described
in an incredibly imprecise, wishy-washy manner. This book was written in the
sixties, and I think its attitude has dated badly. It reminds me of a world of
lobotomies, and ‘raving loonies’. The
book describes Antoinette acting a bit oddly, but to me seems to lack a real
curiosity about anything real that’s going on in her head. What kind of mental
illness is she suffering from? What logic is she using to justify her behaviour?
How is she trying to cope with it? I understand it is supposed to be symbolic,
but it just seems like a shoehorned, generic plot device to bring the drama to
a crescendo. Even as symbolism, does it make any sense? A country might be
dealing with a conflicting sense of identity, but where does madness come into
it?
Thirdly, I hated its attitude towards men. The main male
character, Mr. Rochester, acts emotionless, cold and almost pathologically
towards Antoinette. Even in the beginning of their relationship, for example,
he is described as being overcome with desire for her and fulfilling it
‘without even a caress’. As their relationship progresses, he calls her by the
wrong name, stops speaking to her, and eventually sleeps with another girl
within Antoinette’s earshot. Since Mr.
Rochester narrates large swathes of the book, there is a great opportunity to
understand the motivations behind that kind of vindictive behavior and to get
inside the male psyche. Except its squandered. Mr. Rochester simply describes
himself acting like a bastard without any explanation. To me that expresses an
astonishing lack of curiosity as to the motivations of the main character in
the book.
Fourthly, I hated its attitude towards women. The plot in
summary: a women with a troubled background grows up and marries a man who falls
out of love with her because he thinks she’s mad. This causes her to turn mad. Is
this great feminism? That could almost be saying ‘women are what men make
them’. I don’t think that’s the message the author intended. But Antoinette
Crosby is portrayed as a strong, independent women, who has managed to survive
an exceptionally tough upbringing. And yet she goes mad because her husband falls out of love with her.
In Fewer Words
The following metaphor might seem below the belt – but I’ll let it stand. Wide Sargasso Sea is written in hazy language. Lots of the action happens in the gaps between sentences. The characters are driven into bizarre actions and illogical feelings for unclear reasons. When you sing in the shower, it sounds great partly because the water obscures your voice and lets your brain imagine it is hearing something operatic. Perhaps Wide Sargasso Sea is great in exactly the same way.
