Rivalry relation between Jane in Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” and Bertha in Jean Rhys’s “Wide Sargasso Sea”

Rivalry relation between

Jane in Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” and Bertha in Jean Rhys’s “Wide Sargasso Sea”

Adrienne Rich in “Jan Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman” articulates that “Jane Eyre, motherless and economically powerless” has successfully resisted “certain traditional female temptations” with dignity (470).  Rich quotes from Phyllis Chesler’s essay called the “Women and Madness” to explicate what she means by “motherless woman”: Rich explains that women for generations “have had neither power nor wealth to hand on to their daughters [because] they have been dependent on men as children are on women” (470).  Therefore, Rich says that for a woman to secure herself financially, she is left with one option: women must learn to “pleas[e] and attach themselves to, powerful or economically viable men” (470).  In Rich’s opinion, what makes Jane Eyre so different and admirable is the fact that she does not “please and attach” herself to a powerful or economically viable men in order to fare well.  Though she is an orphan, who is in need of financial support, Jane never compromises morality, self-respect, and dignity.

Adrienne Rich further lists four major temptations in Jane’s life which she courageously overcomes: (1) the temptation of victimization; (2) the thrill of masochism; (3) the temptation of romantic love and surrender; and (4) the deepest lure for a spiritual woman.  First, Jane’s “temptation of victimization” occurs when she lives with the Reeds (her Aunt), “a hostile household, where both psychic and physical violence are used against her” (471).  Though the insults and abuses she suffer from them are enough to diminish “her very spiritedness and individuality,” she manages to come out of this situation with her self-respect intact.  Secondly, “the temptation of masochism” springs from Jane’s deep affection and respect for Helen who is religious, forgiving, and ultimately masochistic.  However, Jane soon realizes that “the thrill of masochism is not for her, though it is one of her temptations” (474).  Thirdly, “the temptation of romantic love and surrender” comes to Jane at Thornfield, as she falls in love with Rochester and decides to marry him.  On the wedding day, however, it is reveled that Rochester has a living wife—a mad woman, Bertha.  Not only is it against Jane’s high moral to become Rochester’s mistress, but more implicitly, she flees from the risk of “becoming this [mad] woman” herself by marrying him (476).  Lastly, Jane’s final temptation which comes from St. John is the “most confusing temptation,” because it is “the deepest lure for a spiritual woman” (480).  As St. John offers her marriage without love which is instead filled with a spiritual sense of “duty and service to a cause” in India as a missionary couple, Jane, upon serious contemplation, rejects this offer (480).  Rich ultimately believes that it is Jane’s strong sense of morality, self-respect, and dignity that saves her from the usual trap and temptations of a motherless woman.

Although I agree with Adrienne Rich on most of her points about Jane Eyre, I take issue with her concluding comment of her essay, in which she states that “In Jane Eyre,…we find an alternative to the stereotypical rivalry of women” (482).  Rich believes that the women in the novel are supportive to one another, and they are “not…points on a triangle…as temporary substitutes for men” (482).  Though it is true that Jane and many of the women in the novel is supportive to one another, what Rich is neglecting with this comment is that she is completely overlooking the fact that the relationship between Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason is a relationship of “rivalry,” and these two women are the “points on a triangle” with one man— Rochester.  If Rich assumes that Jane’s relationship with Bertha is non-rivalry because that is how it is depicted by Bronte, then, she is complicit with Bronte for grossly misrepresenting and symbolically oppressing the women of color in Eurocentric literature written by feminist of the first world.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in “Imperialism and Sexual Difference” critiques that the feminists of the first world—such as Bronte and Rich—are complicit with the racist masculist of universalism, and asks that the female writers and critics to stop perpetuating the “racism within feminism” (347).  Spivak states that a novel like Jane Eyre commits “translation-as-violation,” because Bronte writes about woman of the third world (Bertha Mason) when she is “total[ly] ignoran[t] of history and subject constitution” of that world and its women (344).  Spivak says that such ignorance on the part of the first world feminist like Bronte is not only insensitive and arrogant—in that they assume their feminist paradigm is universal—but is also misleading because the distorted representation of the women of color, often as lunatics (like Bertha), becomes a generalized stereotype on the minds of their readers.

Spivaks fear of “translation-as-violation” committed by the first world feminists must have been comforted by Jean Rhys, who sympathetically reconstructs Bertha Mason in her novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, as a character who is victimized by Rochester.  While Adrienne Rich convincingly depicts the motherless Jane Eyre as an exceptional heroine who has resisted moral temptations in the world of patriarchy, Jean Rhys in her novel sympathetically reveals how Bertha not only became motherless, but why she became, fatherless, husbandless, childless, friendless, and penniless under the patriarch Rochester—the man Jane wins as a reward for her high morals.  Thus, though Adrienne Rich exalts Jane’s high morality and dignity, Jean Rhys novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, which is written from Bertha’s point of view, helps us see that these two women are the “points on a triangle” with one man, Rochester, and thus are rivals to one another.

Works Cited

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Imperialism and Sexual Differnce.” Falling into Theory. Richter,

David H. 2 ed. Boston:Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000.

Rich, Adrienne. “Jane Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman.” Jane Eyre. Charlotte

Bronte. New York: Norton & Co., 2001.

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