Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea is a deceptively beautiful and saddening novel. For now, I want to focus on the beauty that is described throughout.
Beauty in this novel takes on various forms, and has different effects when narrated by Antoinette or Rochester. It is used as a description for people on the island as well as the natural surroundings. Antoinette's infrequent comments on beauty are usually focused around her mother when she was younger, while Rochester's images of beauty come primarily from the unfamiliar surroundings as well as Antoinette when she's older. However, Rochester perceives both these beauties as intimidating and deceptive.
"We pulled up and looked at the hills, the mountains and the blue-green sea. There was a soft warm wind blowing but I understood why the porter had called it a wild place. Not only wild but menacing. Those hills would close in on you...Everything is too much, I felt as I rode wearily after her. Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. the flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near. And the woman is a stranger" (63).
Just as Rochester is describing the unfamiliarity of his surroundings, he switches to thinking about Antoinette, in the passage above and below, showing how closely intertwined he has the beautiful yet intimidating nature with Antoinette.
"It was all very brightly coloured, very strange, but it meant nothing to me. Nor did she, the girl I was to marry" (69), shortly followed by: "She [Antoinette] was sitting on the sofa and I wondered why I had never realized how beautiful she was" (72). After he describes nature's beauty and Antoinette's beauty, a few pages later he describes how intrigued and almost disturbed he is by her crying at night and her close relations with some blacks such as Christophine.
As I have not read Jane Eyre (just gotten a brief summary from a friend), I am curious to see what this relationship will amount to. Will Antoinette go crazy herself?
Beauty in this novel takes on various forms, and has different effects when narrated by Antoinette or Rochester. It is used as a description for people on the island as well as the natural surroundings. Antoinette's infrequent comments on beauty are usually focused around her mother when she was younger, while Rochester's images of beauty come primarily from the unfamiliar surroundings as well as Antoinette when she's older. However, Rochester perceives both these beauties as intimidating and deceptive.
"We pulled up and looked at the hills, the mountains and the blue-green sea. There was a soft warm wind blowing but I understood why the porter had called it a wild place. Not only wild but menacing. Those hills would close in on you...Everything is too much, I felt as I rode wearily after her. Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. the flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near. And the woman is a stranger" (63).
Just as Rochester is describing the unfamiliarity of his surroundings, he switches to thinking about Antoinette, in the passage above and below, showing how closely intertwined he has the beautiful yet intimidating nature with Antoinette.
"It was all very brightly coloured, very strange, but it meant nothing to me. Nor did she, the girl I was to marry" (69), shortly followed by: "She [Antoinette] was sitting on the sofa and I wondered why I had never realized how beautiful she was" (72). After he describes nature's beauty and Antoinette's beauty, a few pages later he describes how intrigued and almost disturbed he is by her crying at night and her close relations with some blacks such as Christophine.
As I have not read Jane Eyre (just gotten a brief summary from a friend), I am curious to see what this relationship will amount to. Will Antoinette go crazy herself?
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