Rochester Locking Antoinette In Attic

Even in death bertha is seeking only emancipation that has been snatched away from her by locking her up in the attic.

Rochester locking antoinette in attic.

As readers we are immediately made nervous by this new name not only do we sense rochester s impending erasure of antoinette but we associate the name bertha with the madwoman he will lock up in the attic of thornfield hall. Without a face she becomes a ghost. Antoinette is taken by rochester to his manor in england where she is locked up in a high room and guarded by grace poole. Bertha through her suicide rejects the confinement that she had been subjected to.

Rochester s father and brother have since died leaving him to inherit the family s fortune. Without a name she does not know what to call herself. In a move that symbolizes the influence of white english men over the caribbean people rochester takes ultimate control of antoinette by locking her in attic for the rest of her life. She dimly remembers the voyage across the sea to england and she vaguely recalls trying to seduce a man to help her escape.

Eff another servant pay grace poole double her wages if she promises not to speak about antoinette to the others in the household. Bertha mason full name bertha antoinetta mason is a fictional character in charlotte brontë s 1847 novel jane eyre. She is described as the violently insane first wife of edward rochester who moved her to thornfield hall and locked her in a room on the third floor. Part of the novel that mr.

Rochester first entices antoinette to fall in love with him begins to attack her identity by calling her by other names takes a lover basically in front of her and finally labeling her insane by rationalizing it is in her genetic make up. The third part is once again told mostly by antoinette in england where she is locked away in mr. Rochester subsequently in jane eyre locks bertha up to silence her. By putting antoinette in a mirrorless prison alone save for a taciturn guard rochester exacerbates her feeling of disconnection.

Wide sargasso sea is a postcolonial novel by jean rhys published in 1966. She jumps off the house openly affirming her identity one last time. He sees antoinette as a source of madness and hopes that by locking her away in england he will be able to put her aside and forget about her. While confined antoinette has a tenuous hold on her memory and her sense of self.

He has already deprived her of her name calling her bertha and effectively erasing her existence as antoinette.