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Irony
Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Metaphors
Explanation and Analysis—Blindness and Deafness:
In Wide Sargasso Sea, characters invoke deafness and blindness as metaphors for an unwillingness to confront the truth. While these conditions sometimes carry a negative connotation, characters at other times identify them as desirable qualities. In one instance, the motif coincides with dramatic irony and foreshadowing.
When her horse dies, Annette lashes out at Godfrey, the butler at Coulibri. She tells him "You're blind when you want to be blind, [...] and you're deaf when you want to be deaf." With this accusation, Annette claims that Godfrey allowed the Black neighbors to poison her horse. Caught between the Black community and the White Cosway family, Godfrey is not entirely loyal to either side. Annette is tuned into this impartiality. Later complaining to Antoinette about their various servants, she once again invokes deafness when she brings up Godfrey: "He isn't deaf—he doesn't want to hear. What a devil he is!"
In the second part, blindness and deafness come up as metaphors for unawareness and bad judgment. When the husband finally goes to visit Daniel Cosway, Daniel says "Must be you deaf you don’t hear people laughing when you marry her." As the husband grows upset to hear his stories about Antoinette and her family, Daniel tells him not to direct his anger at him: "it's I wish to open your eyes." Whereas Annette uses blindness and deafness to figuratively charge Godfrey with being implicated in her horse's death, Daniel uses them to charge the husband with naïveté.
Perception and the sense of sight figure prominently in the entire novel, and Rhys pays significant attention to people's facial expressions, gazes, and eyes. The narrators repeatedly describe the uncomfortable sensation of being stared at by unwanted audiences. In the exposition, for example, Antoinette recalls that Black people would stare and jeer at her mother when she went riding. She mentions that she avoided looking at Black strangers, and repeatedly mentions withholding her gaze or looking away throughout the first part. Staring faces figure prominently in Antoinette's memory from the night Coulibri burned down: "They all looked the same, it was the same face repeated over and over, eyes gleaming, mouth half open to shout." Perception thus takes on an ambiguous undertone; in order to feel safe, Antoinette deliberately diverts or interrupts her own gaze. Both seeing and being seen can be troubling and dangerous.
Within this context, the motif of blindness becomes especially notable. Although perception is in certain instances associated with uncovering the truth, the act of looking is also associated with exposure and vulnerability. Spending her childhood cut off from other children and the rest of the world, Antoinette takes comfort in a sort of sheltered blindness. In the second part, perception gives the husband a similar dread. When he serves as narrator, he makes frequent mention of people's gazes: inquisitive faces, sidelong looks, sly knowing glances, and cool testing eyes. In certain moments, he describes being watched as a physical sensation.
In his final conversation with Christophine, at the end of the second part, the husband says "I would give my eyes never to have seen this abominable place." This gives rise to a sort of intertextual foreshadowing and dramatic irony. In Jane Eyre, Rochester goes blind in a fire. For readers who are familiar with this outcome, the husband's statement is ironic, because he will indeed go blind one day. Although the husband has yet to go blind in Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys foreshadows what will happen to him beyond the scope of the plot.
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Part 1
Explanation and Analysis—White Cockroach:
Characters use the designation "white cockroach" multiple times in Wide Sargasso Sea. Seizing both on race and class, this metaphorical term of abuse is used to emphasize the non-belonging of Antoinette and her family in post-Emancipation Jamaica. Through this motif, Rhys shows the reader how the Cosways are seen by the Black community.
Cockroaches are household pests with hard shells, spindly legs, and long antennae. Associated with dirt and trash, they are typically reddish to dark brown in color. The "white cockroach" metaphor suggests that the Cosways are just as low-status as other poor people, and that they unsuccessfully hide their metaphorical grime through their White exteriors. As former slave-owners, they have lost the elevated social position they once held.
Early in the novel's first part, Antoinette mentions her distrust of strangers, recalling an incident in which a little girl followed her around with a singsong taunt.
I never looked at any strange negro. They hated us. They called us white cockroaches. [...] One day a little girl followed me singing, "Go away white cockroach, go away, go away." I walked fast, but she walked faster. "White cockroach, go away, go away. Nobody want you. Go away."
This scene encapsulates the Black community's derision for the Cosways. It is clear that the girl's behavior towards Antoinette is informed by what she has heard adults say about the family. As the novel's first line makes clear, the Cosways are seen as neither White nor Black. This is in part because of their relative poverty. Although Coulibri was once a prosperous estate, it falls into disrepair after the Emancipation Act outlaws slavery in Jamaica. Without the labor of enslaved people, the Cosway family loses the means to maintain their estate or former lifestyle.
Although she doesn't use the cockroach metaphor, Antoinette's playmate Tia underscores the Cosways' in-between position in Jamaican society in a comparable way. When the two girls quarrel, she tells Antoinette that "she hear [they] all poor like beggar."
Real white people, they got gold money. [...] Old time white people nothing [...]
Tia distinguishes between "real white people" and the Cosways, who are merely seen as white cockroaches. Their former social authority hinged on their possession of a thriving plantation, which itself hinged on their possession of enslaved people. Without affluence or authority, White people fall to the bottom of the hierarchy in Jamaican society.
In the second part, a character again uses the "white cockroach" insult against Antoinette in a song. This time it is Amélie, the maid at Granbois. During an altercation between the two women, Antoinette slaps Amélie. In response, Amélie threatens "I hit you back white cockroach, I hit you back." After the husband gets Amélie to leave the room, they hear her singing a song:
The white cockroach she marry
The white cockroach she marry
The white cockroach she buy young man
The white cockroach she marry.
The two cockroach songs mirror one another. Whereas the song Antoinette hears in her childhood is about her being unwanted, Amélie uses her song to claim that Antoinette purchased her husband. In either case, the white cockroach designation is closely connected with Antoinette's economic status and underlines her family's in-between position in Jamaica. Explaining the song to her husband, Antoinette says that it makes her wonder "who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all."
Related Themes:
Part 2
Explanation and Analysis—White Cockroach:
Characters use the designation "white cockroach" multiple times in Wide Sargasso Sea. Seizing both on race and class, this metaphorical term of abuse is used to emphasize the non-belonging of Antoinette and her family in post-Emancipation Jamaica. Through this motif, Rhys shows the reader how the Cosways are seen by the Black community.
Cockroaches are household pests with hard shells, spindly legs, and long antennae. Associated with dirt and trash, they are typically reddish to dark brown in color. The "white cockroach" metaphor suggests that the Cosways are just as low-status as other poor people, and that they unsuccessfully hide their metaphorical grime through their White exteriors. As former slave-owners, they have lost the elevated social position they once held.
Early in the novel's first part, Antoinette mentions her distrust of strangers, recalling an incident in which a little girl followed her around with a singsong taunt.
I never looked at any strange negro. They hated us. They called us white cockroaches. [...] One day a little girl followed me singing, "Go away white cockroach, go away, go away." I walked fast, but she walked faster. "White cockroach, go away, go away. Nobody want you. Go away."
This scene encapsulates the Black community's derision for the Cosways. It is clear that the girl's behavior towards Antoinette is informed by what she has heard adults say about the family. As the novel's first line makes clear, the Cosways are seen as neither White nor Black. This is in part because of their relative poverty. Although Coulibri was once a prosperous estate, it falls into disrepair after the Emancipation Act outlaws slavery in Jamaica. Without the labor of enslaved people, the Cosway family loses the means to maintain their estate or former lifestyle.
Although she doesn't use the cockroach metaphor, Antoinette's playmate Tia underscores the Cosways' in-between position in Jamaican society in a comparable way. When the two girls quarrel, she tells Antoinette that "she hear [they] all poor like beggar."
Real white people, they got gold money. [...] Old time white people nothing [...]
Tia distinguishes between "real white people" and the Cosways, who are merely seen as white cockroaches. Their former social authority hinged on their possession of a thriving plantation, which itself hinged on their possession of enslaved people. Without affluence or authority, White people fall to the bottom of the hierarchy in Jamaican society.
In the second part, a character again uses the "white cockroach" insult against Antoinette in a song. This time it is Amélie, the maid at Granbois. During an altercation between the two women, Antoinette slaps Amélie. In response, Amélie threatens "I hit you back white cockroach, I hit you back." After the husband gets Amélie to leave the room, they hear her singing a song:
The white cockroach she marry
The white cockroach she marry
The white cockroach she buy young man
The white cockroach she marry.
The two cockroach songs mirror one another. Whereas the song Antoinette hears in her childhood is about her being unwanted, Amélie uses her song to claim that Antoinette purchased her husband. In either case, the white cockroach designation is closely connected with Antoinette's economic status and underlines her family's in-between position in Jamaica. Explaining the song to her husband, Antoinette says that it makes her wonder "who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all."
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Little Deaths:
When the husband describes the passionate aspects of their relationship, he uses death as a metaphor for orgasm. This corresponds with a French idiom from the 17th century, la petite mort. In this section, Rhys also makes an allusion to Shakespeare, as Antoinette articulates herself in a way that is reminiscent of a line spoken by the titular character of Othello.
In the early part of the honeymoon, before Daniel's letters have damaged the husband's view of Antoinette, they spend their evenings in intimacy. The husband recalls a night when Antoinette asks whether he would take her life, now when she feels complete bliss.
"If I could die. Now, when I am happy. Would you do that? You wouldn't have to kill me. Say die and I will die. You don't believe me? Then try, try, say die and watch me die."
"Die then! Die!" I watched her die many times. In my way, not hers.
The first two sentences in Antoinette's portion of dialogue are reminiscent of a pair of Othello's lines from the second act of Othello: "If it were now to die / 'Twere now to be most happy." When he speaks these lines, Othello has just been reunited with his wife Desdemona. Overjoyed to see her again, he claims that he would be fine with dying in this moment. Similarly, Antoinette feels so happy and safe in her marriage that she claims this would be a good time to die. This sheds light on her fragile emotional state. Accustomed to feeling vulnerable, she responds to contentment with a suicidal urge.
Naturally, the husband does not agree to take Antoinette's life, but he does agree to make her die in a metaphorical sense. Death is a common euphemism for orgasm. Through his idiomatic language, he conveys that they have a lot of sex during this period. They make each other "die" "in sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight."
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Explanation and Analysis—Like A Doll:
At the end of the second part, the husband repeatedly uses similes and metaphors to liken Antoinette to a doll. These comparisons show the reader how he views his wife and her wellbeing. Already tormented by Antoinette's soundness of mind, the husband is increasingly certain that she's mentally unstable. This conviction inspires revulsion rather than compassion in him.
The first time the husband uses a doll comparison, he watches Christophine comfort Antoinette after she's had an emotional outburst.
I could see Antoinette stretched on the bed quite still. Like a doll. Even when she threatened me with the bottle she had a marionette quality.
By likening Antoinette to a doll, the husband reveals his emotional distance. Earlier, when she expresses strong emotions, he has seen Antoinette as an animal or a monster. Now, he sees her as a lifeless toy. A marionette is a specific kind of puppet, which one uses strings to move around. The mention of the marionette adds a layer to the doll comparison; he doesn't simply see her as a still and silent doll, but like a doll whose movements can be controlled. The word choice is notable for multiple reasons. Not only does it rhyme with Antoinette's name, it comes from French—a language Antoinette and Annette speak.
Christophine eventually leaves the sleeping Antoinette to find the husband. She confronts him for likening his wife to a doll:
"She tell me in the middle of all this you start calling her names. Marionette. Some word so."
"Yes, I remember, I did."
(Marionette, Antoinette, Marionetta, Antoinetta)
The parenthetical that follows the husband's line seems to echo earlier conversations between him and Antoinette. Rhythmic and haunting, the line evokes the hypnotic process by which the husband attempts to give his wife a new name.
Over the course of the novel, the husband tries to change Antoinette's name in a number of ways. To begin with, their marriage gives her a change in surname. He also tries to change her given name to Bertha, which she dislikes. Here, Christophine reveals that the husband not only thinks Antoinette has a "marionette quality," he has literally begun to use the word as a name for her. Like when he compares her to a doll, his imposition of new names on Antoinette dehumanizes her and strips her of her sense of self.
Christophine asks him whether "that word mean doll," stating that he wants "to force her to cry and to speak." The husband has conflicting expectations for his wife. On the one hand, he's frightened by the possibility of her madness and wants her to restrain her emotions. On the other hand, he doesn't want her to be vacant and blank. After nurturing passivity, dependence, and numbness in his doll-wife, he now seems prepared to do anything to spark an emotional reaction in her—such as sleeping with Amélie.
Again, Christophine asks the husband, "You call her a doll?" She then delivers a warning: "If you forsake her they will tear her in pieces—like they did her mother." Emphasizing Antoinette's emotional, social, and economic vulnerability, Christophine tells the husband that she can be destroyed as easily as a doll can be torn apart.
In their final moments at Granbois before leaving for good, the husband thinks to himself that "The doll had a doll's voice, a breathless but curiously indifferent voice." He hopes to see a trace of emotion on her face, expecting to see her cry. He finds that he's mistaken: "No, the doll's smile came back—nailed to her face."
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Part 3
Explanation and Analysis—New Home:
In the third part, Grace Poole and Antoinette describe Thornfield Hall for the reader. Whereas Grace describes the house in positive terms, Antoinette describes her new home using bleak imagery and a stark metaphor. The women's contrasting descriptions of the house shed light on their varying levels of information. Grace is employed and knows what her role is at Thornfield; Antoinette has no idea where she is and even has a tenuous grasp on who she is.
In the italicized portion that opens the third part, Grace gives the reader some context about her role in the narrative. She metaphorically describes Thornfield as a "shelter," and uses imagery to describe the orderly grounds and inviting rooms.
After all the house is big and safe, a shelter from the world outside which, say what you like, can be a black and cruel world to a woman. [...] The thick walls, she thought. Past the lodge gate a long avenue of trees and inside the house the blazing fires and the crimson and white rooms. But above all the thick walls, keeping away all the things that you have fought till you can fight no more.
For Grace, the most appealing part of the house are the "thick walls" that protect one from the outside world. Whereas the world beyond it is "black and cruel," she finds the house "big and safe," full of warm fireplaces and bright rooms. Grace's description of Thornfield is reminiscent of Antoinette's description of the convent in the first part, where walls offer safety and stability. Thornfield, on the other hand, feels small and claustrophobic to Antoinette. Confined to a small room, she doesn't know where she is. The world beyond is not more black and cruel than her new home.
The reader gets this impression when Antoinette takes over the narration. She describes the room in dreary terms.
There is one window high up—you cannot see out of it. My bed had doors but they have been taken away. There is not much else in the room. Her bed, a black press, the table in the middle and two black chairs carved with fruit and flowers. They have high backs and no arms. The dressing-room is very small, the room next to this one is hung with tapestry.
This imagery gives the impression of stiff textures and cold surfaces. In addition, the room seems rather empty. Every item has a practical function, and the only decoration seems to be the engravings on the black chairs. These surroundings differ considerably from what Antoinette is used to. In Jamaica and Dominica, the rooms were large and airy, and the separation between inside and outside was quite permeable. There were often flowers inside, and the light was brilliant.
When Grace falls asleep, Antoinette explores the rest of the house. She metaphorically compares it to a world "made of cardboard." Refusing to believe that she's made it to England, she wishes she could see "what is behind the cardboard." Because she has no information about her whereabouts and no agency over her life, Antoinette loses her grip on reality. It is worth arguing that this is a more extreme version of the husband's alienation in Jamaica and Dominica. While he felt figuratively trapped and culturally lost, Antoinette is now literally trapped and lost. One of the few things she can assert with certainty is that "this cardboard house where I walk at night is not England."
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