Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2018

Incipient Female madness

circumstances, such as solitude, that Antoinette is in caused her instability. Her marriage and upbringing were revealed when she was confined in the attic which represents an image of dark, isolated, lonely, and miserable life caused by her husband when he trapped her there; this further contributes to her deterioration. This links back to the Victorian Era where women would be trapped inside the house as if they were treated like property. Other examples of Antoinette’s ‘madness’ is demonstrated when she requested a love potion from Christophine, a woman who is also considered as an outsider due to her racial background. Back then, this was seen to vilify women as partitioners of witchcraft and sorcery whenever they try to exercise their personal opinions and independence. Perhaps Jean Rhys wanted readers to sympathize with the protagonist’s mental and emotional struggles. Antoinette cannot seem to come to terms with her lonely life and cannot find a peaceful place for herself. By going above and beyond to rewrite this novel to provide a clearer background to Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Rhys has successfully humanized “Bertha’s” tragic condition which invites the reader to further explore Antoinette’s terror and anger towards the society she lives in. Other authors have explored the idea of men inflicting psychological pressure on women. While Charlotte Gilman and Jean Rhys have expressed their concerns towards ‘women’s madness’ from their point of views, William Shakespeare wrote about the “love-mad woman” in Hamlet as he spoke about the famous Ophelia who had gone crazy as she was forbidden to love Hamlet and was controlled by her father Claudius. Ophelia was depicted as a beautiful, god-like woman who progressed to madness, which was reinforced through William Shakespeare’s association of her with flowers, especially at her tragic death. Another example would be The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, a story about a college woman whom was cheated on by her boyfriend who did not understand her passions for writing poetry. She then tried to commit suicide but out of love from her mother she was send to a mental asylum. Therefore, as the notion of the ‘mad woman’ is developed so strongly in past texts, the two novels Wide Sargasso Sea by Jane Rhys and The Yellow Wallpaper by

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