Page 15

As we've been reading Wide Sargasso Sea, I've slowly been trying to put the pieces of Antoinette together, to figure her out. She seems like one of the most ambiguous characters that I've read this semester, but I think this uncertainty about her personality is something that Jean Rhys is purposely trying to achieve. I feel as confused as Rochester as I struggle to figure out how Part One Antoinette becomes Part Two Antoinette.

At the between-parts break, I felt a huge disconnect between the child Antoinette as I thought I knew her, and the young woman Antoinette who seems even more confusing and distant once we start seeing her through Mr. Rochester's perspective. In part one, Antoinette is confused and conflicted over her place in the complex social world that she is born into. She craves attention from her mother and when her mother pushes her away, she finds a maternal figure in Christophene. There isn't an important male figure in her life (Mr. Mason certainly doesn't fit the bill). She identifies more with black Caribbean culture than white Creole, and not to mention, English culture (exemplified best by the looking-glass analogy we looked so closely at in class).

Then in part two, we learn that she's been married off thanks to Mr. Mason's son and with a laaarge dowry that drew the interest of Rochester. Antoinette loves the feeling of security that Rochester provides ("She'd liked that -- to be told 'you are safe.'") and the happiness she feels at finally being accepted and seemingly loved by someone who can make her feel safe. In this way, she still seems kind of childish or really reminiscent of herself in part one. A lot of her doubts and insecurities from her childhood are still there as a young married woman, and Rochester is able to allay those old uncomfortable feelings, if only for a while.

Antoinette's cultural identity, meanwhile, does seem to have changed from part one. While Rochester sees that Antoinette is obviously comfortable with the black people of the island, Antoinette also seems much more comfortable ordering them around and establishing a definite distance between her and them, as servant and mistress (it's kind of like a role-reversal of her childhood, where she is now wealthier than they are and holds more power over them -- and she seems to be enjoying that turn of the tables, almost in a childish way?). When Antoinette describes Christophene, of all people, to herself as an "ignorant, obstinate old negro woman, who is not certain if there is such a place as England,"  it's apparent that while Antoinette still loves Christophene dearly, the racial tensions that had been confusing her as she grew up have finally forced Antoinette to make a kind of decision about which culture she most identifies with. She seems to be leaning toward not Creole, but English culture, especially with Rochester playing such a big role in her life in part two. She asks Rochester about England a lot in the beginning of part two, and when Christophene advises her to leave Rochester and go to Martinique later on in part two, Antoinette says she would much rather go to England.

As I continue to read part two of the novel, I'm still piecing together Antoinette's dynamic personality because it only seems to change further (but also remain the same) as the book goes on.



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In case anyone is wondering about the title of this post, page 15 in my version of the novel is the page that marks the part-one-to-part-two transition.

Trying to define the "Normal"

The Stranger has proven to be the toughest book of the semester for me to think about (and certainly to write/talk about). The complicated issue of murder aside, I really just don't know how to feel about Meursault. I've been trying to figure him out since I read the first three sentences, and I feel like I still haven't come to a consensus now that I've finished the novel. I almost feel bad, because I'm scrutinizing Meursault in the same way that the Algerian court is, by largely ignoring his crime and focusing on his character instead. But really I feel like I have to understand his character to some degree before I can understand his crime. So what follows is an attempt to understand why I feel so uncomfortable and confused about Meursault (and I don't think I'm the only conflicted one, right?).

I sort of have a theory, let's say theory-in-progress, that's based on the Platonic understanding of the individual (and Freud eventually develops a similar theory of the psyche, that I think is more well-known). Basically, there are three parts to a soul (Plato uses "soul" in The Republic, but the idea applies to human life on earth and is less spiritually related) which are the appetitive, the spirited, and the logical. The appetitive part consists of your elemental desire (food, water, sleep, sex, etc.); the spirited part contains your passion, emotions, the things that compel you to act; the logical part is your sense of reasoning, your rationale.

According to Plato, ideally the logical part of you should be in charge, and should also be allied with your spirited part to control the appetites. Internal conflict occurs in human beings when these parts are at odds with each other.

Okay, so the ideal person should be acting primarily using reasoning and partly using emotion, while paying moderate attention to their appetite. Can we say that this internal balance is representative of what a "normal" person acts like?

A large part of the prosecution's argument against Meursault is aiming to show how Meursault is not normal by showing how he is internally out of balance in this way. The prosecutors emphasize  Meursault's lack of emotion over his mother's death (which shows that Meursault's spirited part is missing in action) and explain that his murdering the Arab occurred without any reasoning on his part (which shows that the logical part of himself is not in command like it should be). This leaves his appetitive part to be in control, and Meursault even tells the reader that, "I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings."

I think that because Meursault's personality doesn't fit the model by which a "normal" person is supposed to act, I feel (and the Algerian court feels) thrown off by his behavior in the novel and almost feel like there's something wrong with him. The prosecution argues that since his appetitive part is in control, he behaves outside the boundaries of reason without feeling any remorse and thus poses a threat to society (if he killed once and felt no guilt, then what stops him from killing again and again?)

As a reader of the novel, however, I get to see Meursault's story from his point of view, and for the most part Meursault's appetitive part rules his desire for simple pleasures (a swim on the beach, a night with Marie, a lazy afternoon of people-watching) and not violent inclinations. Meursault is made out to be "a monster," as the prosecutor says, by being accused of being so abnormal that he is a threat to society's well-being.