Summary:
This essay on Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys seeks to prove that Antoinette's (Bertha Mason) lunacy was not merely a product of her environment (i.e. inbreeding/heredity), but more importantly a result of the vast and irreconcilable cultural differences between Rochester and her.
"'...She must at least be plausible with a past, the reason why Rochester treats her so abominably and feels justified, the reason why he thinks she is mad and why of course she goes mad, even the reason why she tries to set everything on fire, and eventually succeeds, ...." (Gregg, 82)
Throughout literature female characters have struggled for power, be it power over logic, emotion, or knowledge. Time and again women in literature have failed miserably, creating a concept that women in repressive societies who struggle for the power over logic, emotion, knowledge, and therefore their own freedom invariably end up committing suicide or suffer some mental illness; these characters, just as Bronte's Bertha Mason, are often lacking development, perhaps because it is too taxing for a writer of a dominate culture to truthfully represent the.....
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