Wide Sargosso Sea has not been one of my favorite books. I find almost all of the characters hard to like and hard to sympathize with. Anette, Christophine, Amelia, and Mr Mason all rubbed me the wrong way, but I especially dislike the two protagonists. I found Antoinette much easier to sympathize with in Part I, but I had a hard time liking either character in part II. I can see where they are both coming from and how difficult it must be for both of them, but I don't like or respect them for how they act.
Mostly, I don't like how they approach their relationship. It seems like a mistake that they got married om the first place. Antoinette seems excited about their marriage, but Rochester doesn't really care at all. That is the first mistake. Rochester should have at least tried to make himself love her instead of checking out of the relationship before it even started. Antoinette never seems to make much of an effort either, she stays in bed all day instead of trying to go out and do things and build a relationship with him.
Often in class we blame their failed relationship on the gulf between their two cultures--the wide sargasso sea--but it seems to me that we are just making excuses for them when the real fault is just that they refuse to try. For example, the one time they look like a fully functional couple is right before the incident with the poisoned wine when they are talking about Antoinettes past. She is coming clean with him (although Christophine says later that she was lying about it), and he seems to be making an effort to understand who she is. If they would have started acting like this earlier in their marriage they would have had a chance. At that point, though, the plan with the obeah had already gone into effect.
I don't want to overlook the culture gap, because that certainly plays into why the aren't happy together, but I think that if they really put forth the effort they would be able to get past that. Literature is full of examples of relationships working out when they weren't supposed to. Look at Gunnar Kaufman and his Japanese mail order bride.
I do see Rochester "trying," at least early on--or, maybe it's not so much of a conscious effort, but he does find himself becoming "bewitch with" Antoinette, and maybe this could lead to something like love. But he does seem severely held back by the very idea of her foreignness or "alienness," the sense that he will never fully understand her at a fundamental level.
ReplyDeleteBut the fact is, this marriage was never about romantic love, it was about financial concerns (at least on his end; Antoinette seems talked into it, and her motives have to do with the appeal of "becoming English"). And his disenchantment can be seen in this light, too--he is upset about having become linked to "defective merchandise," and his pride makes him want to punish *her* for this.