Write a 500-600 word personal reflection on how your own perspective (opinions, identities, experiences, ideas, interests, etc.) shaped your reading of Wide Sargasso Sea.
Wide Sargasso Sea is a novel by Jean Ryhs. it is a feminist and anti-colonial response to Charlotte Brontes “Jane Arye”. At the end, Antoinette, is left as a mad woman in an attic. I feel that most people can agree if any of these things happened to us, we would go mad as well. This story had a lot of turns and kept me wondering what was going to happen next. It truly was nothing like what I have read before, which is a good thing. It was a difficult read due to the writing style (which could just be the time period). Early on in the book, Antoinette plays with a girl named Tia and that was probably one of the few things that readers and I, can connect to and that was the normality in this book. She actually seemed to be a kid rather than the life she was living and family things she had going on. In the society that Antoinette lived, she was very discriminated against for her race, gender, social class and family history. This was very upsetting for me that people had to deal with this so intensely, and this discrimination is still going on in 2020 (maybe not as intensly.)
A quote that really made me think in this novel “there are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.” This made me think about how many slaves or unliked people probably faked their deaths just so they were off the grid and away from all the tragedy. Faking their death could be the only thing keeping them from getting killed. The fact that they thought the only way to solve the problems going on was: death is such a serious thing and proves how awful the things going on really were.
My identity and the morals I have accumulated from my family and myself, is that we should all be equal. No matter our gender, race, or social class, we really are able to do the same things and the fact that people still continue to think they are superior due to one of these truly disgusts me. Back then, African Americans were not very common so they were the lowest in the social class and became slaves whether it was cruelty or to pay off debt (they often could not get very good jobs). In this book, the mother married Mr.Mason who was pretty wealthy but still gained enemies as you can see when the fire occurs. Antoinette is constantly moving in this story and the relationship with her family does not seem to be too strong, but her and Aunt Cora seem to be closer than with her mother. Her first husband dies due to drinking and then the second marriage (Mr. Mason) was not very healthy as we see throughout the book.
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