Who are you? Who am I? What make me me, and you you? How are we at all different from each
other? What makes everyone different
from each other is their identity,
how they view themselves and how they show themselves to the world. A HUGE part of our identity comes from our
early years of life that we have no control over. Our identity is formed by our community, our
culture, our family, etc, and even if we
change our views we still carry a bit of them within ourselves. As children if you don’t have this identity
to latch onto, you often feel lost and completely helpless and could have major
psychological problems down the road.
In Wide
Sargasso Sea, Antoinette has very little to latch onto as a child. First of all, she has no support from her
family. Her mother “rejects” her to deal with her own problems, her father is
dead, her new step-dad completely does not understand or want to understand
anything that is going on, and her brother Pierre is killed at an early
age. Second of all, the community that
she grew up in and most “identifies” with hates her and her family and
literally forces them out of their house and Coulibri. As a child, this all is extremely
psychologically damaging. One of the
most powerful scenes of the book is where Tia throws the rock at her face after
the burning of the Coulibri estate.
“Then, not so far off,
I saw Tia and her mother and I ran to her, for she was all that was left of my
life as it had been. We had eaten the same food, slept side by side, bathed in
the same river. As I ran, I thought, I will live with Tia and I will be like
her. Not to leave Coulibri. Not to go. Not. When I was close I saw the jagged
stone in her hand but I did not see her throw it. I did not feel it either,
only something wet, running down my face. I looked at her and I saw her face
crumple up as she began to cry. We stared at each other, blood on my face,
tears on hers. It was as if I saw myself. Like in a looking-glass.” (pg 45/41)
This
passage shows how much attachment Antoinette has for Coulibri and for her
childhood life that is now completely gone. Antoinette most identifies with Tia
and desperately wants to live like Tia and be a part of Tia’s community. But
yet she can’t, as the thrown rock indicates, and is rejected by Tia and her
community because of her family and race.
Having all of this taken away at such an impressionable age really tears
apart Antoinette’s identity. Who is
she? She is most certainly NOT English,
but is not accepted by the people in Coulibri or really anywhere in Jamaica. The wide Sargasso Sea literally represents
this:
for it is in between the West Indies and
England, but doesn’t have any real definite boundaries or identity, just like
Antoinette.
The Sargasso Sea, with its blurred boundaries and lack of definite "identity," serves as a nice metaphor for the gulf between cultures. It's also notoriously difficult to navigate (from what I've read), due to a large amount of seaweed and other growth--ships used to get entangled and snared--which suggests that crossing this gulf is treacherous and difficult.
ReplyDeleteAntoinette's attachment to Coulibri is especially sad to me because it's not even like she's so happy there--she is perpetually lonely, isolated, afraid, haunted. But, as you say, it's what she has--familiarity, certainty, what passes for a "culture," even if she finds solace more in the natural world ("better than people") rather than the social or familial world.
At the beginning of part 2 I thought that Antoinette might have finally found her place in the culture that she lived in. Through someone else's eyes, she seemed much more open and confident than she did during her own narration. But Rochester's background also contributes to that; he's a stranger coming from another country and doesn't understand the people and social dynamics in the West Indies. And as we've read further, of course, Antoinette seems to be getting more and more lost, with no foundational identity to latch onto.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading I've often thought about how the circumstances and events of Antoinette's childhood seem like really damaging things for a young child to experience. This comes across as cliche but I think the trauma she's experienced in those formative years has affected a lot of her emotional abilities as an adult. Indeed, much of identity is formed by the people and environment during the early years of life, and for Antoinette her mother has ignored her during this time and the environment is full of strangers that hate her family. I would point out that Christophine seems like the only person who has really cared for Antoinette, although as an adult their relationship isn't completely healthy considering the love potion and rum.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that some of our earliest experiences shape us as a person, however, you would expect that Antoinette would hate all of the local people in Jamaica because they burned her house to the ground. But she doesn't really seem to despise them, she treats them with an indifferent courtesy no matter how abrupt they are with her working in her house. She shows a strange variation from typical fictional characters who despise the people who caused them pain in their early lives.
ReplyDeleteMost people certainly do hate those who hurt them early in life, but it seems that now Antoinette gets along with them slightly better. On page 67 Antoinette talks about Granbois, saying "This is my place and everything is on our side." Perhaps she's just so happy that people now accept her more/are nice to her, that she doesn't want to mess things up by being aggressive/bitter. Again, no matter what happens, these are the only people she knows, and in the end she'll have to be courteous to them or alone forever.
DeleteAntoinette has a tragic life. Like you said, she has no sense of stability or security in her life, and it plays a big factor in her subsequent troubled future. It's so interesting to read her perspective of feeling like an outlier, not really fitting in to one real group. I find her pretty resilient though because considering all of the trauma living in the Caribbean has given her, she sees it as a home, and wants to make the best of her life there.
ReplyDelete