Edward Rochester and the margins of masculinity in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea.

Papers on Language and Literature, Summer 1994 by Kendrick, Robert

The marriage between Edward and Antoinette is destined to fail as a result of the disjuncture between their respective imaginings of the marital bond. Antoinette developed an awareness of the "lack" that was forced upon her at an early age. The castigation of her family as ex-slave holders by both the new colonials and the newly freed Blacks, the burning of Colibri by vengeful ex-slaves, the rock thrown at her by the ex-slave girl Tia, her "rejection" by her mother, and her upbringing in a Catholic Convent (in an English colony) all mark her as caught within the "blank" spaces of the ideological imaginings of race, class, and family in Colonial Jamaica. Her position is such that even the nature of her particular marginalization cannot be recognized fully by her "peers." "They are safe," she says of the girls at the Convent, "How can they know what it can be like outside?" (59). It is not possible for Antoinette to escape outside the bounds of these narratives as long as she lives in Jamaica. It is possible, however, for her to attempt to renegotiate her relation to the discourses through which she lives her relation to material culture. Though it is not of her design, the arranged marriage to Rochester allows for this possibility. Initially, she rejects the match because she perceives, quite rightly, that Rochester will not accept her unconditionally, and will not attempt to see her as a woman who does not "lack" anything. She does not wish to marry Rochester because she is "afraid of what may happen"--that he will force her back into the state of dereliction which has been pre-scribed for her. His response, that "I'll trust you if you trust me" would seem to imply that he is willing to provide the unconditional acceptance she desires. However, he follows this promise with "Is that a bargain," an utterance which introduces the discourses of exchange and thereby hints at his real reasons for entering into the relationship. Though Edward promises her "peace, happiness, and safety," he will not accept her as an unconditionally loved equal. To the contrary, Rochester accepts her only because of the symbolic value she carries within the dominant order--her fortune and her beauty make her a prized possession for him, an easy way to acquire his status as an "independent" gentleman.

The irony is, of course, that the very means by which Rochester would establish himself as a mature subject results in his inability to do so. By attempting to imagine Antoinette into the role of a proper English wife, he is forced to recognize her ultimate inability to conform to the discourses which constitute the normal within the frame of English upper class subjectivity. She is neither English nor a properly Anglicized Creole, and the possibility of madness and alcoholism in her family further distances her from Edward's imagined normal. In addition, Antoinette and the others in the house continue to act as his "unreflective" mirrors. Antoinette is "uncertain about facts"--but they are his facts, not hers. She is "careless" with the family's money, distributing it to her cousins, brothers, and sisters, whom he does not recognize as "legitimate." Finally, Antoinette herself is not "reflective" in the same manner as Edward. When she shares with him the narrative of her encounter in the mirror with the rats, she presents an image of an unresolved, unreturned gaze into the mirror that ultimately "tells" nothing. All that she recounts is that "I could see myself in the looking-glass the other side of the room, in my white chemise with a frill round the neck, staring at those rats and the rats quite still, staring at me" (82).The act of reflection says nothing about either her or the rats--they are simply there, in suspension. When Rochester looks to her for his own legitimizing reflection, he is left in the same aporia. Lacking a proper English wife, he cannot in turn imagine himself as a proper English husband, and as the novel progresses the blank spaces threaten to eclipse the "definite" self-image of Edward Rochester.