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Wide Sargasso Sea (3)

Wide Sargasso Sea (3). Antoinette’s Displacement and Self-Assertion – with Mad Destructiveness?. Plot Summary. Part I: Post-emancipation loneliness  marriage to Mr. Mason  the riot  the convent

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Wide Sargasso Sea (3)

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  1. Wide Sargasso Sea (3) Antoinette’s Displacement and Self-Assertion – with Mad Destructiveness?

  2. Plot Summary • Part I: Post-emancipation loneliness  marriage to Mr. Mason  the riot  the convent • Part II: Rochester’s arrival at Grandbois (uncertainties and communication)  the letter (56 - ) Antoinette’s attempts to save the marriage  Rochester’s revenge  two monologues (which shows him going mad with possessiveness and exploitation of others)

  3. Plot Summary • Part II: Four major dialogues – • Antoinette with Christophine (65 – 71) • Rochester with Daniel (74- 76) • Antoinette with Rochester (76 – 82) • Rochester with Christophine (91- 97) Rochester’s interior monologues (98 - ; 100-)

  4. Plot Summary: Part III • Grace Poole’s narrative (description of Antoinette & social background). • Antoinette’s • cold, no looking glass, not know who she is & why she is here (107/180); • Cardboard house -- not England (one episode during the trip) (181); • Richard Mason’s visit (181-), attacks him upon hearing the word “legally”; • Going to “England” and get a knife (183-) • Memory of Sandi and the red dress (109/185) • The dream (111/187).

  5. The Ending: Questions • G2 How is the English house and “England” described by Grace first and then by Antoinette? • G3 What are the significances of the red dress and Sandi in Part III? (109) • G4 Part I – Part III: What traces of Part I and II do we see in Part III? For instance, Tia’s & “his” roles; the fire scene in Part I and that in Antoinette’s dream in part III. Dreams (Is there a parallel between the parrot in the first fire and Antoinette in the second? • G1 The ending: An open or close ending? Is Antoinette mad? Can she escape from the narrative containment? Has she burned down the house?

  6. Madness from Different Perspectives (1) about Annette • Daniel: • "she can't lift a hand for herself and soon the madness that is in her, and in all these white Creoles, come out." (96/57); • "crazy and worse besides" [suggesting wantonness] (59/98) • Antoinette (alcohol): “He said, "Drink it and you will forget." She drank it without stopping. ” • Christophine (constraint and molestation): They won't let Antoinette see her. In the end - mad I don't know - she give up, she care for nothing. ...' 94/157

  7. Madness from Different Perspectives (3) • Rochester: "she mad but mine" (99/165). • “She'll loosen her black hair, and laugh and coax and flatter (a mad girl. She'll not care who she's loving). She'll moan and cry and give herself as no sane woman would - or could. Or could. Then lie so still, still as this cloudy day. A lunatic who always knows the time. But never does.” –self-fulfilling prophecy

  8. Madness from Different Perspectives (2) Rational and Thinking Mad? look at the tapestry (sees her mother, sees Antoinette, 180) loss of memory -- does not remember fighting Richard.  (108/181) Time has no meaning, but the red dress does. different dreams (nightmares) (p.47, 72) • "she hasn't lost her spirit." (106) • Observing Grace, she also plans to convince Rochester to let her go home. • "Name matters." • "Now finally I know why I was brought here and what I have to do."

  9. Spaces: the Caribbean vs. England • different gardens: Coulibri and Granbois  “enclosed garden” in her dream (p.36) • The outsider world is more alienating: for Grace it’s a shelter against the black and cruel world (105-6) • Places without loo king glass: the convent (32), the house in England (107, 112) • England as world “made of cardboard” (107)

  10. The Ending The red dress —the color of fire and the flamboyant tree, the smell of the WI —a symbol of her Caribbean identity and of her memory of Sandi (109-10) -- vs the gray wrapper (110)—the color of England and sign of R’s neglect

  11. Red Dress the untold/undeveloped love story between Antoinette and Sandi • (30) Sandi’s help • hints at their sexual relationship (72-3, 75, 109-10)— • white dress (76/127) for Rochester and red dress for Sandi (109) • Red dress – source of identity (Richard would have recognized her) • “Time has no meaning. But something you can touch and hold like my red dress, that has a meaning.” (109/185)

  12. The Last Dream Elements in the last dream: • recurrent ones: followed by somebody, • the hall with only red and white colors, searching for the church altar, Aunt Cora's room, seeing the "ghost"; • escape from the fire, to see "all her life" written on the sky.

  13. The Ending The two fires: • Fire brings back her child hood memory (111-2) • the ambivalent power of fire—warm, purifying, protective but scorching (112) Holding the candle down the passage: -- a conformity to and a reversal of the Victorian angel in the house -- illuminating, destructive—breaking her state of zombification (202)

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