Rochester and Antoinette/Bertha in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

I have been putting off this post for a long time because I've wanted to get as far as I can through Jane Eyre before writing about the depictions of Rochester and Bertha=Antoinette in that book as opposed to in Jane Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.  Unfortunately, I am just now ready to start Part 3 of the novel, so we haven't gotten to the burning-and-jumping-out-the-window part yet.

I began reading this book because there were so many references to it during our Wide Sargasso Sea discussions that I was becoming really interested in the book itself and in what Rhys was basing her characters and character relationship on.  I will explore this in the following.

When we are first learning about Rochester in Bronte's novel, he begins to discuss how he has "plenty of faults of [his] own" but that he likes to "lay the half the blame on ill-fortune and adverse circumstances" because "nature meant [him], on the whole, a good man" (173...Chapter 13, Volume 1).  This is an interesting statement from the perspective of Wide Sargasso Sea.  He lays the blame for his own faults on circumstance.  Is sex with Amele purely circumstance?  Possibly...but what is circumstance?  I would argue that the cause for this action is actually a string of decisions that are based on circumstance.  Antoinette is born into resentment and craziness.  This circumstance is what makes Sandi write the letter, which is what makes Rochester pull away from Antoinette, which is what makes Antoinette decide to get Christophine to help her using obeah, which is what in turn makes Rochester angry and causes him to have sex with Amele only separated from Antoinette by a thin wall, which is really the last straw for Antoinette.  I would not call this ill-fortune.  I would call it negative reactions to adverse circumstances that have dire consequences.  Both Rochester and Antoinette may have had good intentions, but they most definitely made unintelligent decisions.

The idea that Rochester takes adverse circumstances and makes the wrong decisions with it is entirely consistent with his character in Jane Eyre.  He is attracted to Jane because of her constancy and pureness, so much so that he decides he wants to marry her even though she has no class and even though he is already married.  Thus, Jane's own father objects.

The portrayal of Antoinette/Bertha in Jane Eyre is interesting when compared to that at the end of Wide Sargasso Sea.  When Bertha cuts and bites at Mr. Mason, he said "she said she'd drain my heart" (269).  In Jane Eyre, she seems to be associated with blood and killing.  Jane tells Rochester that she reminds him of a vampire, after their failed marriage ceremony.  Yet in Wide Sargasso Sea, she is always focusing on fire.  She derives her heat from the fire, because England is cold, and she dreams of fire and reds seem to be associated with fire for her.  Her red dress symbolizes her old life where she used to live in freedom, and she thinks all the way back to when she might have really found love, with Sandi.

At the end of Wide Satgasso Sea, Bertha thinks of herself as mentally strong and physically weak.  She is physically trapped and physically unable to get her way with Mr. Mason.  Yet mentally, she is relatively held together, but simply cannot communicate her true thoughts because there is no one who could possibly come close to understanding her perspective.  She can think straight, though, because she managed to have an interaction with a lady to get the knife.  She plays the mental game to get out of her cell: wait until Poole is drunk and asleep, and then steal the keys.
However, in Jane Eyre, we see that Bertha is an extreme physical menace, who has absolutely unknown mental capacities.  Jane notices when seeing her for the first time that she is "in stature almost equalling [Rochester] and corpulent besides" (368).  Mentally, while the characters treat her like she cannot think or speak for herself, they acknowlege her "cunning" (368), and her action of ripping Jane's bridal clothing seems very reasonable.  She is portrayed like an animal, described as a hyena and as having a mane, and as moving on all fours.  She may be strong mentally, but is assumed to have less mental capacity, yet how are we to know for certain?  Why, if she can get out of the room, would she not simply leave the house completely?  Why would she go to Jane instead of to Rochester?  She does burn Rochester's room, though.

Another interesting concept is Antoinette's relationship with Grace Poole.  Why, in Jane Eyre, would such a violent, senseless, bloodthirsty animal never attack Poole?  Obviously, she has some sort of positive relationship with Poole...and yet Poole talks to Rochester and the rest of the wedding party as if Bertha is a wildebeest.  In Wide Sargasso Sea, however, Grace's italicized thoughts at the end show a certain amount of sympathy for Antoinette.  She feels that she is probably protecting Antoinette from a world: "which, say what you like, can be a wicked and cruel world to a woman.  Maybe that's why I stayed on" (178).  In Antoinette's case, the world is definitely wicked and cruel, but yet Antoinette would rather live on in it.

Having read Wide Sargasso Sea, I found Jane Eyre's portrayal of Antoinette to be a little maddening.  She has neither a voice nor a say, and never has had one in her life despite her privilege.  I would really call her situation circumstance, or maybe bad luck, much more than Rochester's.