Authors have been called social
observers for their keen ability to see injustice and translate them into
stories that make readers stop and ask questions. Their stories have a way of punching through
our mental walls and help us see things afresh.
Some authors have been able to uncover health issues that are a result
of social conditions often ahead of research.
Jean Rhys 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea is one. Her story relates a current leading topic for
research in preventing chronic mental and physical health outcomes by looking
at traumatic experiences during childhood.
Rhys
offers a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre and finally gives
Antoinette (Bertha) Mason Rochester her voice her story. In Bronte’s novel, Antoinette was described
as Rochester’s first wife who was insane and kept locked in the attic. We learn from the story that Antoinette is a
white Creole woman living in British-owned Jamaica after the emancipation of
slaves. It is through Rhys’ narrative
Antoinette shares her experiences during childhood and the first years of
marriage to Rochester. Rhys identifies
the consequences of childhood trauma, racism and gender oppression on Antoinette’s
mental health and that ultimately leads to her suicide.
Thirty
years after Rhys’ novel, American researchers began documenting the outcome of
repeated traumatic events during childhood.
Neurobiologists took the research a step farther showing how trauma
changes the neuropath ways developing brain (i.e., birth -25 years of
age). Untreated, the trauma increases a
person’s risk for depression, drug and alcohol abuse and suicide (Felitti,
5). In Antoinette’s case, she describes
the dysfunction of her childhood household.
Her mother was raising her brother and her alone following the death of
their father to alcoholism (Rhys, 473).
The cumulated stress of managing a plantation without any skills, having
a lack of money, and having a son with Cretinism (i.e., congenital hyperthyroidism)
her mother “grew thin and silent, and refused to leave the house” (466) and begins to “talk to herself” (467). When Antoinette tries to approach her
mother, she is pushed away coldly and told to leave her alone (467, 485). Her mother remarries and the step-father
brings stability into the home until it is burnt by a mob. Her brother dies as a result of the fire and
her mother develops a severe psychosis (480).
Her step-father sends Antoinette to live at a convent. Antoinette describes how she copes with
being neglected: spending time in the kitchen, eating alone and being alone in
the woods (471, 477). She also relates
that she didn’t feel safe as a child and had nightmares (478, 488, 493). It is clear that Antoinette herself is
beginning to some mental reaction responding to this trauma and dysfunction by
disassociating.
It
is important to understand how Antoinette racism impacted her life on
Jamaica. Both she and her mother were
considered white Creole and a minority community living on the island. She is born into a family that owned slaves
and now despised by the emancipated black Jamaicans. At the same time, the arriving English to the
island considered white Creoles as not European born. Antoinette is repeatedly called “white
cockroach” (469) by the blacks and “white niggers” (470) by the English. She and her mother had supportive place in
society. Antoinette’s first violent
experience of racism occurred when her mother’s horse was poisoned by “black
people” (465). She befriends Tia, a
black girl and they play together.
However, Tia steals her money and dress (470). It is Tia who throws a rock at her from the
black mob who burned down their house (483).
Rochester her husband, describes Antoinette as “beautiful, but” and that
she has “long, sad, dark alien eyes.
Creole of pure English descent she may be, but not English” (496). Antoinette continues to experience acts of
racism after marrying him. After being
called a “white cockroach” by a black paid servant, Antoinette secludes herself
and stating “I wonder who I am and where my country is and where do I belong
and why was I ever born at all” (519).
Rochester responds that she is over-reacting. Antoinette reaction is to disconnect from what
is happening around her by falling back on childhood coping mechanisms.
Within
less than two pages, Rochester already describes his wife as “not English or
European either” (496) and before reaching their honeymoon cabin readers
realize he was paid 30,000 pounds to marry her (498). However, Rochester admits he doesn’t love
her, but he loves her money and property that she came with. His behavior isn’t uncommon for a man of his
day. Under English rule at the time, a
man assumed all money and property and rights of his wife. He begins to oppress Antoinette further by
withholding sex and calling her another name, Bertha (523). Rochester believes the stories of her half
black brother and refuses to listen to Antoinette’s version of the story about
her mother and brother. Antoinette
finally realizes Rochester doesn’t love her and wants only her money; she is
stuck because of the law. In England,
Rochester sedates her and locks her up after she asked someone to help her
leave him on their voyage (568).
Believing her brother’s story, he labels and treats her as insane. Antoinette describes looking into the mirror
and watching Antoinette “drift out of the window with her scents, her pretty
clothes and her looking glass” in her locked room (568). She explains how she is able to cope by
dissociating from reality. She tries to
save herself by setting fire to the house and committing suicide done in a
fashion that reenacted the fire was set to her childhood home.
Wide Sargasso Sea is able to describe what it
was like for woman living as a postcolonial white Creole minority living under
strict gender rule. What makes the book
remarkable is Rhys’ observations of how this can affect one’s mental health. Many of her descriptions of how Antoinette
and her mother react and coped with trauma had not been studied in the field of
psychology. In the 1960’s mental
illness, child abuse and neglect and domestic violence were taboo and
uncomfortable topics in both the home and in the medical community. Still, Rhys chose to give us an alternative
view to why Bronte’s Bertha ended up in the attic room and ultimately committed
suicide by showing us the cumulative effects of trauma. Her work was one of many authors who helped the public
question treatment of those with mental illness.
References
Bicknell-Hentges, L, and Lynch, J.J. “Everything
Counselors and Supervisors Need to Know About Treating Trauma.” American
Counseling Association Annual Conference and Exposition. Charlotte, 19 March,
2009. Presentation. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Felitti, Vincent J. “The Relationship of Adverse
Childhood Experience to Adult Health: Turning gold into lead.” Z psychsom Med
Psychother. 2002. 359-369. Print.
Mardorossian, Carine M. “Shutting Up the Subaltern:
Silence, Stereotypes, and Double – Entendre
in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.” Callaloo. 1999. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.
Rhys, Jean. “Wide Sargasso Sea.” Jean Rhys The Complete
Novels W.W. Norton & Company: New York. 1985. 465-574. Print
Wolfe, David A., Crooks Claire C., Debbie Chiodo, and
Jaffe, Peter. “Child Maltreatment,Bullying,
Gender-Based Harassment, and Adolescent Dating Violence: Making the
Connections.” Psychology of Women
Quarterly. 2009. 21-23. Print.
