I Feel ___, and ____, and ___, and ____, and ___.....

Women are stereotyped for our emotional attachments, reactions, explanations, interactions, relations, (need I go on - you know what I mean). So, I personally find it delightful when literature not only highlights it, but leaves the door wide open, so that we can [emotionally] charge in, and make it like home. Make it like home? How? Well, let's follow stereotypical suit - by overanalyzing, judging, exploring, and conversing of course! Bertha...dear, sweet, Bertha. Are you crazy?
The Madwoman in the Attic. Hmm, Bertha..how does that make you feel? Pissed. She's angry! And who, honestly, in her position, wouldn't be? She's controlled by a man who waltzed in, claimed her money, her body, and home for his own, then ripped from the place she knows and is confined to a room - come on ladies, what woman wouldn't be angry? Personally, I get mad when someone takes something and doesn't put it back, I can't imagine the rage I'd have if I were Rys's Antoinette. She's held captive by vow, by law, and by physical force, by an emotionally stunted man. - yes, sad as I am to admit it, the gallant Rochester from Bronte's novel is no more, he's replaced by this obnoxiously privileged man, who is severly lacking interior depth. He refuses to claim emotional or ethical resposibility for the happiness of his wife, refusing to be anything but self-centric, as if they're all in The World According to Rochester. While Antoinette is ready and willing to abandon her self for the well being of the other, Rochester remains all-inclusive of everything Rockester, and anything else is simply rejected. But back to the woman (isn't that how it always goes?) - Dear Antoinette. Oh, the woman who's name means "beyond praise," how neglected you've become! They call her crazy, insane, mentally ill, but with what reasoning? Because she's angry? Because women aren't supposed to be angry? Rochester can't handle it when she shares the fears and pains of her heart, what makes us think he'd be any less forgiving in his description of her than his willingness to be a spouse? These dreams, the ghosts, the reflections she sees, are they not all simply the emotional ends of emotional means? Because while Rochester has the ability to un-act himself, to drop character, to claim his privilege to simply not deal with women, women cannot escape themselves! Or can they?
What Antoinette does to deal with all these emotions is create two realities, because one is no longer enough. The lines blur between her reality and her dreams, but in both she is tormented and controlled by the emotions for which she has no outlet...

On Your Mark, Get Set, Don't Go!

Race. It marks you. It sets you in a mold, in a place, separated by nothing more than a microscopic genetic marker, impossible to be seen in its origin, but realized on the surface - scrutinized, judged, stereotyped, for something that isn't done or made, but simply is. Jean Rhys colors it ugly in Wide Sargasso Sea, subtly and tastefully, introducing us to Charlotte Bronte's characters, unmarked. Race in Antoinette's world is about as clear and identifiable as the fruit in a smoothie. The smoothie-mentality fails to catch on, as we see in Rochester's emotional abandonment of Antoinette. I am extremely intruiged by his shock when he learns of Antoinette's self-proclaimed half brother, Daniel. Tainted by her relation to her father's illegitimate half-white half-black child, Antoinette ceases to be the same in Rochester's eyes. But why? What is so off-putting about the family of his culturally torn bride? Antoinette is enslaved, not only by marriage, but by blood. That unseen marker, that sets her in Rochester's mind - different.
But what, then, about Jane? Bronte's dear, main character...she's often seen as a foil for Bertha, sure. But what about the Antoinette-Jane, sans Bertha? Before Bertha. Culturally torn, divided by family, bound by money, seeking equality or in the least, solidarity, in emotions. We've posited before in class that race and class were nearly synonomous in their day, so then why not draw lines between the bold connections that tie Antoinette and Jane? Why ignore their need for emotional depth and commitment from Rochester? Why write-off the monetary control and struggle that underlies their relationships, not only with Rochester but with Family, Friends, or anyone with whom they share an experience? Jane struggles to define who she is because of her lack of family, where as Antoinette is bound and judged by her own, but this schism should divide them - it should unite them, as Rhys and Bronte do in their subtle exposees of these women.