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BECOMING BERTHA
BECOMING ROCHESTER



In this term paper I would like to focus on Jeane Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, to be more precise on the main female character, that is Antoinette Mason, who is believed to be Mr. Rochester' mad wife in the attic of Thornfield. Apart from her, I will devote a sub-chapter to Edward Fairfax Rochester, who is the only person claiming that his wife is insane. The third part of this paper is going to be about the marriage of the two.

Like mother like daughter

The mysterious 'mad' woman in the attic is Antoinette Mason, who is the daughter of a Martinique girl, brought up in the Caribbean, in Coulibri Estate by a nurse Chistophine. In the novel Antoinette, the child knows about herself very well that she is not a real English girl, and apart from not being the rightful member of the Kingdom, she is neither the rightful member of Jamaica, just a daughter of a colonizer, in a way she is an outcast of both societies. And she is very much aware of these facts, “Go away white cockroach, go away, go away. White cockroach, go away. Nobody want you. Go away.” (p.9) when a little girl follows her singing the above mentioned lines. Her mother Anette also supports this feeling in her daughter by knowing and saying that the Afro Jamaican people do not like them. She is worried and wants to leave Coulibri “The people here hate us. They certainly hate me.” “ They invent stories about you, and lies about me.” (p.15) she tells her husband. The little Antoinette is just as insecure as her mother. She has no real friends, practically nobody to rely on except Christophine and her stepfather. The death of her brother, Pierre, finalizes the distance between her and her mother, who never really shows her motherly affections towards her daughter

“ My mother usually walked up and down the glacis, ...A frown came between her eyebrows , deep – it might have been cut with a...