Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea: comparative analysis

Rochester Through Different Eyes

An orphaned girl. A mad woman locked and hidden away. A small village school that is both a refuge and another form of adversity. These things and many more appear both in Charlotte Bront's classic novel Jane Eyre and the companion piece written to it almost one hundred and twenty years later by Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea. The huge similarities in plot -- and in the two protagonists -- are not accidental; Wide Sargasso Sea is in many ways an exciting and somehow updated re-imagining of Bront's masterpiece. The overlap does not just occur with similarities, however, but by the direct connection of several characters. Rhys takes Bertha Mason, Edward Rochester's mad and attic-imprisoned wife in Jane Eyre, and traces her life as a child in the Caribbean isles, through her marriage and subsequent imprisonment in England, and up to that fateful moment when he departs the attic with a lighted candle in hand. Instrumental in the both the stories of Antoinette -- Bertha's real name, as we learn in Sargasso -- and Jane is Edward Rochester, an enigmatic man who can be viewed in many ways by both books. His characterization seems to be left purposefully ambiguous by both novelists; he is neither wholly condemnable nor at all redeemable. Rochester is selfish, well-meaning, cowardly, and independent -- the quintessential Byronic hero. Yet in many ways, though Jane Eyre spends much time documenting Rochester's Byronic flaws and charting the protagonist's reactions to them, it seems to focus more on the "hero" aspect of this label, whereas the view with which he is seen in Wide Sargasso Sea is far more direct in exposing the weakness and vulnerability of his character.

The differences in how Edward Rochester is characterized in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea are ultimately a result of the way in which he is perceived and hence portrayed by the narrator. In both books, the first-person narration means that any characterizations of anyone and anything that is introduced or occurs in the novel will be colored by the narrator's own beliefs and judgments. The identities of these narrators and their intimate connection to the action of the stories makes them all the more susceptible to this problem. Jane Eyre is narrated entirely by the heroine of the title, who falls in love with and ends up marrying Rochester. This state of affairs both colors and rather obviously indicates her appraisal of Rochester as generally positive, despite the gloom that surrounds their relationship and her explicit acknowledgement of his shortcomings. In recounting how he told her of one of his previous passions, which the reader might interpret as evidence of his capriciousness and fleeting affections, Jane is instead impressed and enamored by the seeming depth of his passion, noting how "he ground his teeth, and was silent: he arrested his step, and struck his boot against the hard ground" (Bront, Chapter 15). Though Jane's upbringing has not exactly been easy, she has been surrounded by examples of what adult relationships are like, and though she has a somewhat naive and mistaken notion of these relationships early on, she manages to carve one out for herself by her understanding of Rochester.

Wide Sargasso Sea is primarily narrated by Rochester's other wife, Antionette, who has not had the opportunity to develop the same ideas about marriage and love that Jane has. She does not mention Rochester -- indeed, is not aware of him, for the very simple reason that he has not entered her life -- until the third part of the novel, at which point she is already being held in the attic, seeing almost no one except for Grace Poole. Her sanity is also in some doubt for this section of the book, and Rochester is possibly at least partially to blame for the degradation of her mental state. All of this adds up to a confused and distant view of Rochester; Antoinette longs for him to rant her release, but he is not the focus of her anguish. The middle section of the novel is much more revelatory as it is actually narrated by the unnamed Rochester himself. Interestingly, this section does not soften the book's view of this multi-faceted man. Rochester says of his wedding, "It was all very brightly coloured, very strange, but it meant nothing to me. Nor did she, the girl I was to marry" (Rhys, 44). He freely admits to being opportunistic and almost emotionless; he is baffled that no one else notices how he is just going through the motions of this marriage. The fact that he has been paid 30,000 pounds to marry Antoinette ought to have been some clue that there was something to make this match less than desirable, but he is blinded by the money and how it will change his stature. This also reveals his ambition and foolish selfishness -- he is not even wise enough to be successfully selfish, ultimately damning himself to the years of tormented marriage that we see most directly in Jane Eyre, but which are also brewing downstairs during the third part of Wide Sargasso Sea. Though this later novel's characterization of Edward Rochester is in many ways as ambiguous as that of Jane Eyre's, the use of Rochester himself to narrate a section of the novel invites a more discerning view of the inner workings of this man, offering a much bleaker view both of the character and is future with Jane.