Antoinette Mason in Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys can be considered as an outcome of the depiction of the character of Bertha Mason in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Even though Wide Sargasso Sea is published as a sequel of Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys presents Antoinette as the past of Bertha. In short, through this novel Rhys portrays how Antoinette transfered to Bertha Mason, the mad woman in the attic. While Bronte's character evokes hatred in the readers, Rhys's Antoinette captures our sympathy.
When the novel opens, we sees the small Antoinette, a child who is being mocked at by friends for being a white creol. Later as an isolated being in a convent and as a distressed wife of Edward Rochester, an English man. Even though Antoinette knows her husband views her as inferior because of being belonging to White Creole, she still has brutal honesty towards him. Rochester considers Antoinette as a mad woman and thereby she is being locked up at the attic. Rhys's Antoinette is not only a victim of patriarchy but also of the ugly racism.
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