While reading WSS, I noticed Antoinette's looking glass popping up repeatedly. Actually, it's talked about in both Rochester's and Antoinette's narrations (so you know it's Rhys trying to tell you something rather than just a character dwelling on it). First, there's of course the much-talked-about scene with Tia and Antoinette staring at each other "like in a looking glass".
Then Rochester illustrates that she's like any other girl by describing her admiring her reflection in a looking glass.
He describes this tendency again later, but his tone is much more hateful; "She’ll not dress up and smile at herself
in that damnable looking-glass. So
pleased, so satisfied." And here the mirror seems to represent the happiness that he's intent on taking from her.
Then the metaphor is really fleshed out in Antoinette's section. She says that after Rochester renamed her Bertha, she "saw Antoinette drifting out the window with her scents, her pretty clothes and her looking glass." I think that this suggests that the looking glass stands in for Antoinette's identity. Losing it means that she can no longer see herself (literally and metaphorically). She says, "There is no looking glass here and I don't know what I am like now"..."who am I"? So, Rochester's taken not only her money and her home, but, in part through her looking glass, her Antoinetteness (which I think would be enough to drive anyone a little insane).
Sub-topic 2: It's interesting to see Rochester's sexism evolve as his hatred for Antoinette grows. It starts as a vague, subconscious assumption that he should be in charge, which he's presumably been taught for his whole life. It seems kind of innocent and forgivable. But by tonight's reading he's saying things (of Antoinette) like "Vain silly creature. Made for loving? Yes. But she'll have no lover, for I don't want her and she'll see no other." Eesh. (also, it rhymes; what's with the poetry all through this part?) Rhys transforms him into a full blown villain by the end of Part 2. The majority of his last two flower-bound sections are just rambling hatred for Antoinette and the people in Jamaica. "I hated the mountains and the
hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated
the sunsets of whatever colour, I
hated its beauty and its magic and
the secret I would never know", Really rambling. In fact, he comes across much less sane than Antoinette does in her final sections. She sounds like she's experiencing things that maybe aren't actually happening, but at least the train of thought is more clear than "White faces, dazed eyes, aimless
gestures, high-pitched laughter.
The way they walk and talk and
scream or try to kill (themselves
or you) if you laugh back at them.
Yes, they’ve got to be watched.
For the time comes when they try
to kill, then disappear. But others
are waiting to take their places,
it’s a long, long line. She’s one
of them. I too can wait - for the
day when she is only a memory
to be avoided, locked away, and
like all memories a legend. Or a
lie...".
Later he claims that "All the mad and conflicting emotions had gone and left me empty. Sane."-- and I can see the reasoning behind this-- but he criticizes a similar emptiness in Antoinette, saying that her blank eyes seem mad. Aside from being mean and hypocritical, this judgement makes it seem like he might also comes off as a little insane to others (since he seems to feel a similar way to Antoinette).
I am so glad you brought up the looking glass, I also was struck by how often it was mentioned, especially after that intense moment with Tia. I like what you say about the looking glass being Antoinette's literal and metaphorical self and Rochester's calling her Bertha and not giving her a looking glass in the attic really does kill her "Antoinetteness" and her connection to reality. Her personality and sense of self is destroyed and only because of his controlling and prideful tendencies that allow him to only think of himself and consider others inferior. His uncalled for cruelty does make him seem insane. If only other people had seen it too.
ReplyDeleteIn fourth period, Clara brought up the idea that Rochester is the one who sounds truly insane by the end of his narrative. Antoinette's derangement has a more lyrical, metaphorical quality, as her sense of reality blurs with "dreams" that are also complex memories about her long-lost home (a time and place that is lost to her). You're right that she suffers from a kind of loss of identity--actually more of a *theft* of identity, as it's Rochester who takes away her looking-glass, metaphorically and literally. And the very ending of her dream, where see "sees" Tia in the bathing pool calling to her, could be seen (via the earlier image) as a return of the "looking glass"--a lost, tenuous sense of self that she's desperate to return to. There's a kind of poetic coherence here despite her mental derangement, while Rochester is more monomaniacal and obsessive. A big difference here is that he is using his social leverage (gender, whiteness) to crush Antoinette, whereas her "madness" is a reaction against this abuse, even a symptom of it.
ReplyDeleteI never noticed that trend between the looking glass, but now that you mention it, I definitely think it is tied into identity. The looking glass is a great metaphor for Antoinette's entire being, and in the context of the scenes you mentioned, it makes perfect sense.
ReplyDelete