Spoiler alert: Mr. Rochester definitely comes off as the selfish, arrogant, self-pitying villain in this Jane Eyre prequel that imagines the events leading up to his wife Bertha's madness and attic confinement. But he's not the only villain in the piece: colonialism, sexism, racism, greed, and misogyny also play roles in this heartbreaking tale of a woman traumatized and betrayed to her ruin.First things first, she's Antoinette in this tale - Bertha being a cruel nickname that Rochester assigns her after he, Othello-like, allows himself to be convinced by an Iago stand-in that he's been tricked into marrying a madwoman. Humiliated, he lashes out at Antoinette as the source of his disgrace, seeking revenge: first by humiliating her, then betraying her, then labelling her as mad before finally ripping her away from her beloved tropical island and whisking her off to England to live the rest of her life as his prisoner.
But who gets to define madness? At what point do the combined impacts of grief, disenfranchisement, betrayal, and profound social isolation cross over into madness? Rhys paints an aching portrait of a woman whose only crime is loving too deeply. Perversely, even her passionate nature, the result of having grown up in the lush and sensual tropics, is construed as evidence of madness - lust in a woman being, in those Victorian times, a sure indicator of mental dissipation.
Rhys's storytelling is elegant, inventive, and evocative. Her character sketches are as artfully brutal as her descriptions of Jamaica are exquisitely sensuous. Sweeping in its themes (pride, greed, love, grief) but explicit in its tragic examination of female agency, I get why this continues to show up on "Greatest Works of English Literature" lists.
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