Women’s Spatial Mobility under Patriarchy In Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” and Jean Rhys’s “Wide Sargasso Sea”

 

Women’s Spatial Mobility under Patriarchy

In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

        Virginia Woolf, in “A Room of One’s Own,” speculates that “if a woman in Shakespeare’s day had…Shakespeare’s genius” (39), but not given an artistic arena to channel out her creative energy, then, she would have died on some winter’s night, and found “buried at some crossroads where the omnibuses…stop” (39). In other words, Woolf is claiming that women’s “room of their own,” and more abstractly, “a space of their own,” is directly reflective of how they fare psychologically, intellectually, and even physically.  Succinctly, she is implying, figuratively and literally, that if a woman is not allowed a space to intellectually grow and physically move about, she will wither and die.  In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, “a space of women’s own” – which, from here-on-after, for the purpose of this essay, will be called “spatial mobility” – reflects the level of freedom and independence the female protagonists are allowed under patriarchy.  In Jane Eyre, the fact that the protagonist, Jane, is an orphan works to her advantage because she has no patriarchal allegiances that restrict her from maneuvering her various spaces, different dwellings, to enhance her self-preservation and independence.  On the other hand, in Wide Sargasso Sea, the fact that the protagonist, Antoinette, has numerous patriarchal authorities (Mr. Cosway, Mr. Mason, Richard Mason, Daniel Cosway, Sandi Cosway, and Rochester) who, in one way or another, restrict, malign, and stifle her spatial mobility, forestalls her self-preservation and independence.  Thus, while absence or escape from patriarchal authority allows spatial mobility that preserves Jane, too much of its presence – too many controlling men – confines Antoinette into a fixed space that kills her.

        For Jane, albeit, moving from one home to another causes tremendous amount of anxiety and insecurity, each spatial movement, nevertheless, leads her to a higher level of independence.  Her first spatial movement to Mr./Mrs. Reed’s home provides her the basic shelter, food, and protection from the harsh world.  Her second movement to Lowood Institution not only satiates her yearnings to be literate, but more importantly, equips her with employable skills that enable her to be self-sufficient.  Her third relocation to Thornfield as a governess had required a permission from a guardian, which she gains effortlessly due to the absence of paternal authority in her life; in place of her deceased uncle, her aunt, Mrs. Reed, permits “that ‘[Jane] might do as [she] pleased, [for] she had long relinquished all interference in [Jane’s] affairs’” (76).  Her fourth movement, a flight to St. John’s abode proves to be quintessential in her life; it not only frees her from Rochester – a potentially threatening, patriarchal authority – but more significantly, links her to a loving and admirable extended family, which one of whom (her uncle) makes her a wealthy woman, a turning point in her life that cements her self-preservation and independence.  In fact, her final movement, a return to Rochester in Ferdean, is, in effect, a cardinal moment in her life where she makes an important pronouncement of her independence.  This final movement is profound, not only because it frees her from St. John – another potentially abusive, patriarchal authority – but because it is a choice that she deliberately makes, as Jane informs Rochester as “an independent woman” (370).  Bewildered by her new aura and claims to independence, Rochester asks for explanation: “‘Independent! What do you mean, Jane?’” (370)  Jane gives him a stunning answer that not only informs him that she now has money of her own, but her subtle word play also implicates that she intends to keep and manage her own money: “‘Quite rich, sir…If you won’t let me live with you, I can build a house of my own close up to your door, and you may come and sit in my parlour when you want company of an evening’” (370, emphasis added).  Indeed, for Jane, each “spatial movement” dramatically enhances and fortifies her self-preservation and independence. 

Although, Jane, an orphan, out of necessity moves from one shelter to another, “moving” or “going away” is imperceptible for Antoinette, whose family is deeply-rooted in her home town with a lineage of patriarchs, from her birth father to step-father, her half-brothers to a step-brother.  In terms of spatial mobility, Antoinette exhibits timid and stagnant mentality when she comments about her mother’s importunate pleadings to Mr. Mason to move away from their town: “I [also] knew that we were hated – but to go away … for once I agreed with my stepfather.  That was not possible” (19).  Antoinette seems to have been inculcated by patriarchal dogmas of the day about how woman should be – helplessness and immobile, always needing to stay within her boundaries.  The fact that her family estate is so deeply-rooted in her home town doesn’t help either; it seems to make it inconceivable and imprudent for her to even think about relocating herself to a different home or a town – the privilege of “not being an orphan,” a daughter of a prominent man in town. Her birth father, Mr. Cosway, therefore, is Antoinette’s first patriarch that indirectly restricts her spatial mobility.  Mr. Cosway, furthermore, by leaving a legacy as a slave owner, exacerbates Antoinette’s spatial stasis in her home town because his such legacy makes her become the target of malignant assaults from townspeople.  Worse yet, Antoinette’s step-father, Mr. Mason, and his son, Richard Mason, continue the role of a patriarch by engineering Antoinette into a marriage.  This commodification of Antoinette into a marriage with Rochester completely forestalls her independence, let alone any spatial mobility.  Moreover, Antoinette’s half-brothers, as an extended representatives of patriarchy, compounds this situation; both Daniel’s slander and Sandi’s tenderness toward Antoinette fuel up the tension between her and her husband, Rochester.  In fact, these issues become the very reasons that Rochester use to justify his imprisonment of Antoinette in England.  Thus, for Antoinette, each line of patriarchs and its successors in her family, collectively and individually, restrict, malign, and imprison her into a life of hell with no spatial freedom nor mobility.

Among all the patriarchs in Antoinette’s life, the one who holds the ultimate keys to her status, happiness, and freedom, her husband Rochester, cruelly eracinates all human dignity out of her; he treats her with the utmost disrespect, uproots her from her social and cultural familiarities, and imprisons her in his domain – Thornfied, a cell that slowly kills her.  Alarmed by such a plan to uproot Antoinette from her hometown, Antoinette’s surrogate mother, Christophine, exhorts Antoinette to leave him: “Ask him pretty for some of your own money…When you get away, stay away…Better not stay in that old house.  Go from that house, I tell you” (66).  Antoinette, however, is overwhelmed by the patriarchal forces that are seemingly omnipotent and omnipresent in her life, self-rendering her escape to freedom unfathomable; she gives in all too easily and feebly:

He would never give me any money to go away and he would be furious if I asked him…Even if I got away (and how?) he would force me back.  So would Richard.  So would everybody else.  Running away from him, from this island, is the lie.  What reason could I give for going and who would believe [or support] me? (68)

When Christophine pleads Rochester for money, so that she and Antoinette can go away to Martinique and “[t]hen to other places” (95), Rochester, not only denies Antoinette any spatial mobility by not returning a portion of her money, he also psychologically eliminates “the only space of her own” – her home – by having an affair with her servant: “Do you know what you’ve done to me?  It’s not the girl, not the girl.  But I loved this place and you have made it into a place I hate.  I used to think that if everything else went out of my life I would still have this, and now you have spoilt it” (88).  In fact, Rochester is so obsessed with the idea of controlling Antoinette that he exclaims in silence: “She said she loved this place.  This is the last she’ll see of it…I’ll take her in my arms, my lunatic.  She’s mad but mine, mine. What will I care for gods or devils or for Fate itself.  If she smiles or weeps or both.  For me” (99).  Thus, Rochester, Antoinette’s husband, who bears the highest moral obligation to love and protect her, betrays her most utterly, and becomes the ultimate culprit to her gradual death, psychologically and physically. Engineered, thwarted, and crumpled by various patriarchal figures in her life, most repulsively yet decisively, by her husband Rochester, Antoinette, unlike Jane, each “spatial movement” she undertakes pulls her downhill, undermining her self-preservation and independence.  

Both in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea, the protagonists’ free movements from space to space, or even having such a constant space that she can call “a space of her own,” is directly linked to whether or not a patriarch is present or absent in her life.  For Jane, in Jane Eyre, absence or escape from patriarchal authority enables her to use spatial mobility as one of her means to enhance and fortify her self-preservation and independence.  For Antoinette, in Wide Sargasso Sea, however, too much patriarchal presence – too many controlling men – ultimately kills her. 

Works Cited

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Norton & company, Inc: New York, 2001.

Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. Norton & Company, Inc: New York, 1999.

Woolf, Virginia. “A Room of One’s Own.” The Longman Anthology of Women’s Literature. (2001): 16-72.