Comparison Of Jane Eyre And Wide Sargasso Sea

Introduction

Undoubtedly, two female authors Charlotte Brontë and Jean Rhys went down in history with their novels Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea which gained the hearts of people, especially women who might see themselves in the destinies of the two women depicted in the novels, and might be inspired, amazed, indignant or resentful by Jane’s unyieldingness, adherence to principles, braveness, desire for love and Antoinette’s energy, exotic nature, and madness.
Doubtless, the novel of Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre belongs to the most published and most read novels within the English literature. Among the very talented Brontë sisters, Charlotte excels the most, but it does not mean she would overshadow her sisters. Her novel Jane Eyre was published

Rochester always honest? Was he always the Rochester we know from Jane Eyre whose past we know so little about? Obviously, this question bothered the second author Jean Rhys who decided to inform the people about the young Mr. Rochester and portrayed his life before Jane Eyre. Wide Sargasso Sea is an original and peculiar novel inspired not only by Edward Rochester, but also fascinated by the mysterious character of Rochester’s Creole wife Bertha. The novel is a balladic, love story from ancient colonial times where Antoinette Cosway is portrayed as a parallel of a madwoman in the attic in Thornfield depicted in Jane Eyre. Jean Rhys complete the character of Antoinette by her own fantasy and personal experiences gained during her stay in Antillean islands where she heard about the madness of the Creole women, wealthy daughters of white slaveholders and black females, from the beginning of the nineteen century. In addition, these daughters of the decadent society hated by the ex-slaves were slowly languishing in the breathtaking beauty of the tropical nature. (Olexa, 1973) Moreover, Trevor Hope (2012) claims the Rhys’s novel is the reconstruction and revisitation of Brontë’s Jane Eyre. We can claim that Rhys’s main aim was to remove Bertha from the character of the non-identified wife locked away in Thornfield, give her the proper soul and identity, inform about her childhood and youth, thus the reader will understand her state of mind in Jane Eyre and will not consider her only the insane Rochester’s wife, but as Antoinette Cosway. Obviously, Jean Rhys removed the cover of the mystery from the eerie, unhuman laugh and screams of the unknown character in Jane Eyre and showed their new, more rational and surprising origin. Moreover, Rhys enabled the reader to understand the reasons of Bertha’s madness and her hopeless condition and hoped her character will no more arouse the aversion, but sympathy and mercy. Evidently, the novel is narrated from