Post by Teresa Dinh on Nov 18, 2015 5:24:28 GMT
Rochester's marriage and imprisonment of Bertha could symbolize Great Britain's colonization of smaller, less powerful lands. As a white, dominant male, Rochester represents Great Britain. Bertha's ethnicity is ambiguous, but she is said to be Creole, so she could be white person born in Jamaica, or she could be mixed race. Also important to consider is that Bertha's parents wanted her to marry Rochester because he was "of a good race," thus implying that she may be an ethnic minority. Either way, Bertha represents Great Britain's oppressed colonial subjects.
Rochester's actions of imprisoning Bertha and taking away her voice parallels colonizer's attempts of controlling their subjects. Rochester claims that he imprisoned Bertha because she went mad. However, how are we sure that his claim is completely true? After all, there is the possibility that Rochester locked her in the room and she went mad afterwards as a result of the isolation. And from reading The Yellow Wallpaper in class, our knowledge of husbands isolating their wives and thereby causing the wives to lose sanity makes the aforementioned possibility even more plausible. In Jane Eyre, we only get Rochester's, the colonizer's, side of the story. Bertha's voice is silenced because she represents the oppressed colonies, and we only hear her voice in a side story that was written about a century later, Wide Sargasso Sea, rather than in the original book by Charlotte Bronte. Also, Bertha's "madwoman" character shows the uneasiness that people in Great Britain during the 19th century felt towards people of a different culture.
Also, the packet we received in class stated that, "Rochester is unable to love what he sees as an object, a possession. He is also unwilling to make the effort to get to know Antoinette, to understand her, to love her." Again, this ties in with colonialism because the British colonizers, like Rochester, did not make any effort to empathize with the people of their colonies. And the fact that Rochester chose to call her Bertha rather than Antoinette, her given name, symbolizes white assimilation and the erasure of different cultures during colonialism.
Rochester's actions of imprisoning Bertha and taking away her voice parallels colonizer's attempts of controlling their subjects. Rochester claims that he imprisoned Bertha because she went mad. However, how are we sure that his claim is completely true? After all, there is the possibility that Rochester locked her in the room and she went mad afterwards as a result of the isolation. And from reading The Yellow Wallpaper in class, our knowledge of husbands isolating their wives and thereby causing the wives to lose sanity makes the aforementioned possibility even more plausible. In Jane Eyre, we only get Rochester's, the colonizer's, side of the story. Bertha's voice is silenced because she represents the oppressed colonies, and we only hear her voice in a side story that was written about a century later, Wide Sargasso Sea, rather than in the original book by Charlotte Bronte. Also, Bertha's "madwoman" character shows the uneasiness that people in Great Britain during the 19th century felt towards people of a different culture.
Also, the packet we received in class stated that, "Rochester is unable to love what he sees as an object, a possession. He is also unwilling to make the effort to get to know Antoinette, to understand her, to love her." Again, this ties in with colonialism because the British colonizers, like Rochester, did not make any effort to empathize with the people of their colonies. And the fact that Rochester chose to call her Bertha rather than Antoinette, her given name, symbolizes white assimilation and the erasure of different cultures during colonialism.
