INTRODUCTIONS
TO THE EXTRACTS
I’ll try
here to give you a quick summary that you’ll be able to use at the beginning of
each extract. This has to be part of your introduction, along with and followed
by the main ideas you mean to develop in
your study (guidelines).
So, to make
myself clear, you should begin with: ‘Common to all extracts’ and go on
with: ‘Specific Addition to Extract …’
And then, you can announce the guidelines of your study and end your
introduction.
Common
to all extracts:
In this
novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys is giving a voice to the character
of Bertha Mason, the mad woman in the
attic of the novel ‘Jane Eyre’, written by Charlotte Brontë (in 1847).
As Jean Rhys was a West-Indian, like Bertha
Mason, she felt the need to ‘write back’ and add her West Indian viewpoint in
order to do that character justice.
So, here,
Bertha Mason becomes Antoinette and the narrator of both parts 1 and 3.
Specific
Addition to Extract 1
: Antoinette’s life at Coulibri
This
extract is right at the beginning of
Part 1, in which Antoinette tells her childhood in Jamaica with a young widowed mother, at a
period when Creoles had a very difficult time surviving the Emancipation Act
and the financial disaster it represented for them.
Specific
Addition to Extract 2 : Antoinette, the ‘white cockroach’, and her
black ‘friend’ Tia
This
extract belongs to the opening pages of Part 1, in which Antoinette tells her childhood in Jamaica with a young widowed mother, at a
period when Creoles had a very difficult time surviving the Emancipation Act
and the financial disaster it represented for them.
Specific
Addition to Extract 3 : Annette remarries
This
extract belongs to Part 1, in which Antoinette tells her childhood in Jamaica with a young widowed mother, at a period
when Creoles had a very difficult time surviving the Emancipation Act and the
financial disaster it represented for them. Antoinette’s mother Annette is marrying again to escape this
financial disaster and her loneliness.
Specific
Addition to Extract 4 : Coulibri on fire
This
extract belongs to Part 1, in which Antoinette tells her childhood in Jamaica with a young widowed mother, at a
period when Creoles had a very difficult time surviving the Emancipation Act
and the financial disaster it represented for them. Antoinette’s mother Annette has married again to escape this
financial disaster. But her husband is not Creole.
Specific
Addition to Extract 5 : Honeymoon at Granbois
Antoinette has now grown up. A marriage was arranged between her and an unnamed
Englishman (who is no other than the Rochester of Jane Eyre). He is the main
narrator in this part.
Specific
Addition to Extract 6 : Daniel ‘Cosway’s letter
Antoinette has now grown up. A marriage was arranged between her and an unnamed
Englishman (the Rochester of Jane Eyre). He is the main narrator in this part
and he has just related his lack of love for his wife when he receives a letter
by a so-called Daniel ‘Cosway’.
Specific
Addition to Extract 7 : Asking Christophine for the love potion
Antoinette has now grown up. A marriage was arranged between her and an unnamed
Englishman (the Rochester of Jane Eyre). He is the main narrator in this part,
in which he relates his lack of love for his wife and his growing suspicions
about the madness that runs in her family. Exceptionally for this extract, the
narrator changes back to Antoinette.
Specific
Addition to Extract 8 : Rochester’s reaction to the love potion
Antoinette has now grown up. A marriage was arranged between her and an unnamed
Englishman (the Rochester of Jane Eyre). He is the main narrator in this part.
He relates his suspicions about the madness that runs in his wife’s family and
his own doubts concerning his feelings for her.
Specific
Addition to Extract 9 : Confrontation with Christophine
Antoinette has now grown up. A marriage was arranged between her and an unnamed
Englishman (the Rochester of Jane Eyre). He is the main narrator in this part.
He relates his doubts and suspicions about his wife, sure that she tried to
poison him with the help of her black former servant Christophine.
Specific
Addition to Extract 10 : the end of Antoinette-Bertha
This
extract belongs to the very short part 3 of the book, in which Antoinette is eventually identified with
Bertha in Jane Eyre, after the failure of her marriage
in Jamaica.
Lun 2 Avr - 16:49
