Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea revolves around Bertha Mason's (or Antoinette Cosway's, as she prefers to be called) upbringing in the West Indies--it's almost a sort of postcolonial Bildungsroman--and her eventual "descent into madness." This narrative is far more complicated than it appears, as much of what constitutes Antoinette's "madness" is a socially imposed pathologization of her identification with non-whites and non-Western culture, and Rhys's interesting narrative style and framing develops a complex system of social relations that makes it difficult to judge the relative sanity of Antoinette, her husband, her servants, etc. An exhaustive interpretation of this social system would not fit in this limited space, so I would like to focus on one small theme in the novel: the interrelatedness of femininity, madness, and poetry.
The association between women and madness might be obvious; being a political (postcolonial, feminist) text, the pathologization of femininity is foregrounded. The only characters presumed to be mad are Antoinette and her mother; despite her husband's alcoholism, his alterity in West Indian culture, and even a few bodily indicators (he is sick with fever for an extended period before he marries Antoinette, which can suggest madness [see Heart of Darkness]), he is considered perfectly sane within the patriarchal logic of postcolonial white rule. This fits the long history of feminine hysterics in psychological discourse and the narrative terrain of Jane Eyre, the novel to which Wide Sargasso Sea responds. Women and madness are clearly linked.
The connection between women and madness and poetry might be slightly less obvious. While the novel is technically what it claims to be--prose--Antoinette's voice takes on a certain poetic quality the madder she becomes. While her husband's narrative voice is restrained and (chrono)logical, Antoinette's takes on the incoherence and the hyperspecificity of poetry once she is brought to England. When she loses a letter to her brother, she rants to Grace Poole about it: "Where did I hide it? The sole of my shoes? Underneath the mattress? On top of the press? In the pocket of my red dress? Where, where is this letter?" (108). This catalogue of specific possible hiding places is a technique of poetry, which revolves around precision and specificity, rather than prose, which relies more heavily on logical progression.
This engagement with poetry represents a type of structural resistance to patriarchy. While her husband's narrative is prosaic and phallogocentric, Antoinette's is feminine, mad, and poetic. The frame of her story complements its content and gestures toward a feminine language that is fundamentally different from masculine language. Thus the very writing of poetry becomes a resistant act, a medium for the expression of all things non-Western, non-masculine, non-logical.
I think this connection you bring up is really, really interesting. It's true that poetry is very much considered a 'feminine' realm in a lot of ways--which is almost surprising, considering the dominance of men in the field for centuries and centuries. And it's not like poetry doesn't have rules, or structures--but I think the important thing about it, like you say, is that it can so easily become an act of resistance. It's much easier to break the rules and regulations of traditional poetry than it is the rules of prose, and still be understood and able to create a narrative. It wasn't something that I was necessarily immediately aware of when reading the book, but looking back I love the comparison of Rochester's language to Antoinette's. The way they speak more than anything else reveals so much about their characters--and most extremely throws into question the idea of insanity that Rochester tries to throw over Antoinette.
ReplyDeleteI've always been interested in the connection so often drawn between women and madness or mental illness. When I took Intro to Women Authors, we discussed how the very term lunacy stems from "luna" for the moon. This referenced the connection between the cycles of the moon and women's monthly cycles, which many thought encompassed madness as well. Thus, in that time period, madness was almost always associated with women, or at least a feminine weakness.
ReplyDeleteAlthough such ties could probably be explained away from the more modern understanding that any alteration of a woman's mood during her monthly cycle could be attributed to something like PMS rather than full-fledged madness, there still seems to be less of a stigma for women admitting to mental illness than men, as if women are just programmed to be more susceptible such sufferings. It seems like, since men are still purported to be the stronger sex, it is frowned upon for them to admit such a "weakness" as mental illness. It is apparently expected, however, that women might display such weakness, so it seems more ok for them to speak up about mental illness, although even then they can receive flack for it. It's a frustrating double standard even today.
I really enjoyed reading this post and I think that you make a very good observation/connection from the reading in "Wide Sargasso Sea." I think that the reason that madness is so inextricably connected to women within this novel as well as many stories within this time period, is because men wanted to keep women in their place. If the woman was diagnosed as mad, her ideas, intelligence, beauty, etc. were thrown out the window and the focus was back on the attention of the male figure in the plot. This seems like an "excuse" of some sorts to posit and maintain the man as the stronger sex. However, I would argue that Rochester also shows signs of madness, if it is defined as this novel defines it.
ReplyDeletePoetry is also often positioned as the woman's language because it is "pretty" and lyrical, therefore it does not surprise me that you made the delightful connection between women expressing their madness through poetic language and dialogue.
I find the points that you bring up in this post about the link between women and madness to be very interesting. My final project is focused on precisely this link, and I found it irritating that Antoinette's madness is stated by a certainly bitter half-brother who doesn't seem to have associated with her for an extended period of time. And from Daniel's assertion, Antoinette's madness is believed to not only be true, but expected (!) by Rochester.
ReplyDeleteI also think it is interesting that you bring up the idea that Rochester himself shows sign of madness. This isn't an area I had thought of before and I think that further exploring of that idea could be very interesting.
I enjoy your reading of women and madness, and then to poetry. However, I really want to talk about Rochester and his madness. Throughout WSS he seems to fall farther and farther into madness. He is easily influenced by Daniel, and becomes increasingly more paranoid towards Antoinette. Little things about her begin to really bother him, things that are completely inconsequential to her as a person. Yet he fixates upon them. He also drinks frequently, in order to dull pain or try and order himself. Then he begins to push his own madness onto her. In many of the adaptations we saw of Jane Eyre, Rochester seems slightly unhinged. I know the one we did for our adaptation portrayed him as being very close to insanity at times. And while these two Rochesters are not the same person (written by two different people) I do see the commonality in varying degrees of insanity.
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