Girl Detective

The idea of this read was to read Wide Sargasso Sea before Jane Eyre to put it in the proper perspective, and to strip away the layers of romance that Bronte drapes over Rochester, revealing him as a bitter, controlling, vengeful man.

Why, why does he take Antoinette back to England? Why not just abandon her, and pretend as if she hadn’t existed? Some of that is out of guilt, to punish himself for making bad decisions, but it also punishes her, who is not nearly as culpable as he would like to make her out to be.

In this third section, what I love is that Rhys not only continues her construction of poor, mad, imprisoned Antoinette, but also Grace Poole, one of the more maligned characters in Jane Eyre. No longer is Grace simply a mean, crude drunk, but instead is a woman who has endured hardship in the world and at the hands of men. She recognizes that same damage in Antoinette, the anger that has resulted, and respects it.

The third section is the most intertextual, weaving in and out of Bronte’s Jane Eyre and drawing attention to the absurdity of Rochester inviting a slew of people to his house when he has a prisoner in the attic.

The color red, of Antoinette’s dress, of the fire, in her memories of home, is throughout this section. It is the dress she wore with Sandi when she said goodbye to him: Sandi often came to see me when that man was away.

Does this mean that she was having an affair with Sandi before her marriage fell apart, or did that happen between sections two and three.

The section ends with a dream, Antoinette’s third of the book. Intriguingly and skillfully, Rhys has her dream of escape:

And the sky so red. Someone screamed and I thought, Why did I scream? I called Tia! and jumped and woke.

Out of the dream, then, she proceeds out of her prison with the candle to guide her.

It is a mercy, I think, that Rhys allowed her this freedom, at the end. She is not jumping to her death, but into wakefulness.

Part One of Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea ended with Antoinette having a dream she was in hell, and being comforted with hot chocolate, which reminded her of the tragic life and death of her mother.

Part Two is the famous “narrated by Mr. Rochester” section, yet Mr. R is never mentioned by name.

The section begins with him under a tree in the rain, already questioning his marriage to Antoinette, and expressing doubt and fear of his surroundings. He describes the girl Amelie, the one he will later in the section bed as revenge against Antoinette:

A lovely little creature but sly, spiteful, malignant perhaps, like much else in this place.

Over the course of the section Rochester notes how he was disliked and disregarded by his father and older brother, and had been shipped off to get married to an heiress as a way to get off their hands. He notes how he learned how to cut off his emotions when he was a child, and dislikes Antoinette for not being able to do so, though in comparison, her childhood was at least as brutal and damaging as his. As he attempts to exert his control he begins to call her Bertha, his mother’s name, a name she rejects.

There is a part in the middle of section 2 in which Antoinette’s narration resumes, or disrupts, his. She seeks out Christophine’s help, asking for obeah cures to make her husband love her again. Christophine warns her again and again, and gives her good advice to run away, which she ignores.

While Antoinette is getting this “medicine” Mr. R finally sees Daniel Cosway, who has been trying to tell him the “truth” about Antoinette and her family. With this in his mind, Mr. R is drugged by Antoinette, sleeps with her, wakes disoriented, wanders the island, then comes back to sleep with Amelie, as revenge for being taken advantage of, and deliberately cruelly, knowing that Antoinette can hear. She deteriorates mentally, while he seems to rush the process along with his hate and cruelty, rushing to get off the island, and for some reasons taking her with him, punishment for believing that she duped him, perhaps.

There is plenty here to despise, but also, plenty here to show how things lead inevitably to the action of section three. Rhys showed how Rochester’s own upbringing was cold and distant, and gives insight into why he acts the way he does.

There is also plenty to show how Antoinette makes her own bad decisions, and is treated as an object by the men in her life, but disregards the sage advice of Christophine, the only woman in the book who seems to have figured out how to buck the patriarchy. But even she flinches from the threat of English law when Mr. R threatens her with it.

What do you think?

For the past several years, I’ve kept a list of every book I read and every movie I saw. I take the little address-book thingie in the pocket sized Moleskine calendar, and use that, starting at one end for books, and upside down from the other end for movies. I watch WAY fewer movies than I used to. For whatever reason, perhaps that I started a new job at the end of the year, I read fully a third fewer books this year than in the previous two years. So, I only read 89 books. I’ll take it, and be glad for the good life that comes with it.

A straight-out list of books would be boring, wouldn’t it? So I’ll start with the funnest stuff: the books I absolutely loved. These are the books I didn’t want to put down, that stayed with me, that I recommended not only to friends but to strangers.

These books that made me resent whatever or whoever made me put them down:

Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber, a moody, wintry mystery with great writing.

Ancillary Justice, a mind- and gender-bending space opera with a terrific main character.

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins, about a world of literary demi-gods who rebel against their adoptive father.

Company Town by Madeline Ashby, set in a world where physical abnormalities have been effaced, one woman chooses to wear hers like a badge. Or a defense.

The Girl with All the Gifts by MR Carey. Just loved this take on a tired trope of monsters.

Vacationland by Sarah Stonich. These interconnected stories set in northern Minnesota drew me in and made me love this set of characters.

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. I didn’t care for State of Wonder, and never liked Bel Canto as much as others did (I prefer The Magician’s Assistant) but I was enthralled by this history of two twined families. I didn’t have time to read it, and I read it anyway.

The Trespasser by Tana French. I skipped her past couple books after being disappointed in Faithful Place, but I flat out flew through this, and was THRILLED at the how it played out. Plotted like a mothercusser. So impressive.

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork, about a teen with Asperger-y tendencies, whose father urges him to get out into “the real world” with unexpected results. I really loved getting inside the head of this unique character.

These books made me laugh, a lot:

Locally Laid by Lucie Amundsen, about a clueless family who decide to start a chicken farm. In Duluth.

Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe. So good I’m not consigning it to a comic-book category.

This not only made me laugh, but made me think and was in general way better than it needed to be, taking on gun control, body issues, consent, and more:

Amy Schumer’s Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo.

There were also a lot of solid, entertaining reads:

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle.
A Man Called Ove by Frederick Bachman, should have irritated me but didn’t.
Station Eleven (again) by Emily St. John Mandel.
The Golem and the Jinni (again) by Helene Wecker.
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.
The Nest by Cynthia d’Aprix Sweeney.
Tenth of December by George Saunders.
Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson.
Boys of My Youth by JoAnn Beard.

These books were good, with maybe some great bits, but didn’t take me to the next level:

You’ll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein.
The Turner House by Angela Fluornoy. Driftless by David Rhodes.
Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple (no, not as good as Where’d You Go Bernadette)
You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott.
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J Ryan Stradel.
It’s OK to Cry by Nora McInerny Purmort.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

These made me think about how I am, and want to be, in the world:

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, ed. by Sun Yung Shin

There were fun read-alouds with my boys, who are now 10 and 13 years old:

The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt by Patricia MacLachlan.
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh.
The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams.
Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, and Conrad’s Fate by Diana Wynne Jones.

Helped me with my writing:

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.
The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr.

They’re classics for a reason:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston.
Dubliners by James Joyce.
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich.
Villette by Charlotte Bronte.
The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde.
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

These books just didn’t work for me:

Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.
Blindness by Jose Saramago.
So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell.
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante.
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi.

Finally, the booby prizes. The Girls by Emma Cline. Started it, gave up about 30 pages in. Wasn’t hooked, and the style of writing clashed with the subject for me.

Worst of the year: Jane Steele by Lyndsey Faye, a cheeky murder-y retelling of Jane Eyre that seemed to be on track to modernize the tale and remove some of its ugly racism, but then stabs itself in the foot by making a non-white woman the villain and other ghastly racist bits. Wish I hadn’t read it.

Hello, hello, is anyone out there? I’ve let this blog lie fallow for some time, and I miss it terribly. If you read this, let me know you’re out there.

What with Facebook and Goodreads, it feels as if some of the purpose of the blog has become obsolete or at least redundant, since I do brief, timely posts elsewhere. But some things cry out for a longer form, and right now that’s my reading of Jean Rhys’ postcolonial classic revisioning of Jane Eyre’s madwoman in the attic, Wide Sargasso Sea.

I last read Wide Sargasso Sea for the first time in 2008, and again in November 2013. The first time I read itin 2008, I was baffled. I didn’t understand the Jamaican dialect, such as the opening, or the many details, which Rhys drops like tantalizing breadcrumbs through the short novel, often explaining things later, like family relations.

They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks. The Jamaican ladies had never approved of my mother, ‘because she pretty like pretty self’ Christophine said.

She was my father’s second wife, far too young for him they thought, and worse still, a Martinique girl. When I asked her why so few people came to see us, she told me that the road from Spanish Town to Coulibri Estate where we lived was very bad, and that road repairing was now a thing of the past. (My father, visitors, horses, feeling safe in bed–all belonged to the past.)

WSS has grown on me with each reading. I found the Norton edition with its footnotes and critical material helpful to understand the details so I could focus on the beauty of the prose and the power of the story, however short. I’m not sure I’d feel right about re-reading Jane without also re-reading Antoinette’s story.

Antoinette is one of the many authorial choices Rhys made as she crafted the book over a period of 20 years. In Bronte’s book, she is called Bertha Antoinetta Mason. Rhys changes this to Antoinette (more properly French), after her mother Annette. Bertha, we learn, is what the Mr. Rochester character (though he is never named) calls her, after his own mother, who is not mentioned in WSS otherwise. Rhys also changed the time period of her novel, placing it just after the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, which took place in 1834 so that slavery, race, and class more firmly underlie the story. Jane Eyre was published in 1847, and the story was set earlier in the century.

Additionally, Rhys adds a layer of family beyond what Bronte invented. Antoinette is the daughter of Mr. Cosway. Mason is the man who marries Annette after Cosway has died. He is the father of Richard, the man who claims to be “Bertha’s” brother in Jane Eyre. I don’t know if their is significance in the names: a causeway is a raised road over low or wet ground where a mason is a worker. I wonder if this is mean to signify a fall in status.

In Part One, narrated by Antoinette, we see the unrest in the aftermath of emancipation, and the family’s precarious situation, tolerated only out of pity because they were poor. When Mason marries Annette and begins to repair Coulibri, there is a revolt, and a group sets fire to the house. The family is driven out, Antoinette’s younger brother dies, her mother goes mad and refuses to see Mr. Mason, and Antoinette languishes in a coma after being struck with a rock thrown by a former playmate. When she finally wakes, she finds her mother refuses to see her, and is sent to a convent by Mr. Mason, who visits periodically, and tells her about some English friends he wants her to meet. The section ends with a dream:

Again I have left the house at Coulibri. It is still night and I am walking towards the forest. I am wearing a long dress and thin slippers, so I walk with difficulty, following the man who is with me and holding up the skirt of my dress. It is white and beautiful and I don’t wish to get it soiled. I follow him, sick with fear but I make no effort to save myself; if anyone were to try to save me, I would refuse. This must happen. Now we have reached the forest. We are under the tall dark trees and there is no wind. “Here?” He turns and looks at me, his face black with hatred, and when I see this I begin to cry. He smiles slyly. “Not here, not yet,” he says, and I follow him, weeping. Now I do not try to hold up my dress, it trails in the dirt, my beautiful dress. We are no longer in the forest but in an enclosed garden surrounded by a stone wall and the trees are different trees. I do not know them. There are steps leading upwards. It is too dark to see the wall or the steps, but I know they are there and I think, “It will be when I go up these steps. At the top.” I stumble over my dress and cannot get up. I touch a tree and my arms hold on to it. ‘Here, here.’ But I think I will not go any further. The tree sways and jerks as if it is trying to throw me off. Still I cling and the seconds pass and each one is a thousand years. “Here, in here,” a strange voice said, and the tree stopped swaying and jerking.

For Antoinette, fire is associated with rebellion, anger, and the loss of her mother. She, like Jane Eyre, is effectively orphaned at a young age, narrates her story from girlhood, is sent to a boarding school, put at the mercy of distant relatives, and has a a family servant who is kind to her. Like Jane, she is a poor outsider.

The next section jumps ahead in time and is narrated, but for one short part, by the man Antoinette marries.

What did you think of Part One?

I requested So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell from the library after seeing it mentioned in an online discussion between two authors I admired, Kate DiCamillo and Rebecca Stead at Number Five Bus.

At 135 pages, it was deceptively slim. I thought to read it in a few hours. Instead, I labored over it for days. I struggled to connect and “get” this book. I had to read, then re-read passages. I couldn’t keep the three families in it straight. More than once I’d see a character named, and in frustration, I’d say aloud “Who?” or, “Who the hell is ____?”

This is the longest 135 page novel I have ever read.

So why did writers I admire themselves admire it?