WSS: Identity

Question 1

Racial Identity -> FOLLOWED BY VIOLENT OTHERING!
“They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks”

Answer 1

• Demonstrates a complete lack of Antoinette’s own voice in the very first lines.
• In addition, in combination with the use of sparse language, as well as the very image of “clos[ing] ranks”, Rhys creates a feeling of claustrophobia.
• Antoinette is confined inside these numerous voices, trapped in a liminal space in society, not able to join one group or the other.
• Rhys emphasises her lack of (racial) identity through making Antoinette invisible not only to society, but to the reader themselves.

Question 2

Part Three:
1) “the flame flickered…it burned up again to light me along the dark passage” + STRUCTURE
2) Fragmentation of time
3) “Grace Poole said”

Answer 2

1) Begins and ends with Antoinette and MOTIF OF FIRE:
- It’s the start of her doomed narrative:
-> So, does she reclaim herself at the end? by actually
taking on and destroying Rochester’s given identity in
a tragic anti-bildungsroman:
* “Bertha” is Antoinette’s soulless, zombie form - is
Rochester’s fear just a racist colonial fear of native
culture?
-> The middle is ROCH - mimics the cycle of
colonisation?
* JE: “To England, then, I conveyed her; a fearful
voyage”.
2) Atemporality of her trapped life, unaware of the passing of time.
-> Forced into the characterisation of madness.
3) Return to lack of Antoinette’s voice amidst multi-vocality - final proof she is never able to self-actualise.

Question 3

Clothes:
“I took the red dress down”

Answer 3

• Rochester uses clothing to manipulate/change these women’s identity:
  WSS -
  White… -> Sweet, innocent purity.
  …then Red -> Seductress/femme fatele.
  JE -
  White… -> “Angel in the House”-type figure, but continues to use “eastern allusions”:
• Confused by his attraction to plainness, and so simultaneously attempts to exoticise her.
• Shows he is troubled himself, and goes on a similar spiritual journey OF CHANGE, WITH JANE, by the end.