The Female Condition in Women's Literature - Research Paper Example

 The Female Condition in Women's Literature Throughout history, women have been constrained within the male definition of her capabilities. Always guarded and protected by a man, at least in the eyes of the law, the woman's behaviors, activities and what happened to her body were his to decide. If he was brutal to her in same way, it was generally considered necessary treatment to bring her into line with social expectations. Any display of passion or resistance on her part to the expected submissive role was a form of madness in the consensus opinion. According to Katie Frick, “Mental illnesses during the Victorian era revolved around the empowerment of men … Women were denied tasks such as reading or social interaction due to a fear of becoming a hysteric. Women were further forced into the stereotypical passive housewife role.” Women who found it difficult to subsume their natural personalities were often harshly treated by their households as well as their neighbors. In most cases, various different forms of controlling methods were employed to bring these women back into their socially accepted, and therefore ‘natural,’ roles. Whether trapped in a room as Antoinette becomes by the end of Wide Sargasso Sea or denied a room as described by Virginia Woolf in "A Room of One's Own," women have long been talking about the need for women to have space in which they are free to be themselves without the constraints of a constantly oppressive society. Told from the reflective perspective of a 1960s feminist writer with a minority background, Wide Sargasso Sea tells the story of Antoinette and begins to reshape thinking regarding the madness of Rochester’s first wife as she is seen in the Victorian era novel Jane Eyre. Although there are hints within Wide Sargasso Sea that her madness might be a genetic trait passed down from mother to daughter, Rhys’ portrayal of Antoinette opens the possibility that her madness could equally be the result of severe social oppression on a sensitive and vibrant harshly constrained individual. The angry tone with which the tale is told, as well as the accusatory finger pointed at the patriarchal society that provided Antoinette with no safe harbor in which to seek shelter is characteristic of the resentful expressions of the women’s liberation movements that were occurring at the time Wide Sargasso Sea was written. The confusion and isolation of the young woman caught between worlds, cultures and already doomed by social and perhaps biological genetics is presented with sympathy and understanding, illustrating how Antoinette had little choice but to abandon herself to madness in the end because it was the only avenue through which she could somehow express herself. This same situation seems to have happened to her mother. Although Antoinette's mother is considered certifiably insane and has been housed in a mental institution, a brief glimpse provided through Antoinette’s childhood memories suggests her mother was also the victim of harsh oppression of her individuality. Her one freedom had been expressed in the form of a beloved parrot that burns to death in front of her eyes just before insanity strikes. The importance of expressing oneself is a common theme within women's literature. Many novels written during the Victorian era indicate a small area of wiggle room existed for the feminine persona to express itself to a small extent in non-conformist behavior, usually in the form of indulgences permitted as reward for good behavior. This importance of this kind of indulgence is discussed in Virginia Woolf's essay "A Room of One's Own," written in the early 1920s and thus representing the generation following Jane Eyre and Charlotte Bronte which was the inspiration for Wide Sargasso Sea. In her essay, Woolf argues that women need a space and time all their own in which their own voices can be heard and expressed in order to preserve their own sanity if for no other reason. Woolf's personal experience of this condition of life is brought about by her need to support herself prior to inheriting a comfortable living from an aunt: What still remains with me as a worse infliction than either was the poison of fear and bitterness which those days bred in me. To begin with, always to be doing work that one did not wish to do, and to do it like a slave, flattering and fawning, not always necessary perhaps, but it seemed necessary and stakes were too great to run risks; and then the thought of that one gift which it was death to hide - a small one but dear to the possessor - perishing and with it myself, my soul - all this became like a rust eating away the bloom of the spring, destroying the tree at its heart. Although she is talking primarily about the need for female writers to have some space to call their own in which to write their thoughts, the underlying idea is the same - that women require a chance to express their own thoughts and ideas within their own defined space if society is to benefit as it should. Using an imaginary sister of William Shakespeare as illustration, Woolf questions what important voices might have been suppressed in the general course of human history under the shadow of the oppressive system that prevents Antoinette from having any rights or say in what eventually happens to her. Insanity becomes one of the only forms of escape, short of death, available for any woman living within the system demonstrated in Wide Sargasso Sea and explored by Virginia Woolf. It is made clear that Antoinette's husband Mr. Rochester only marries her as a means of ensuring his wealth back in England. In typical custom, the marriage arrangements were made by Antoinette’s closest living male relative, a step-brother with little or no concern about Antoinette’s personal welfare. This is in keeping with what Woolf discovered about women's positions in life at about the same time period: "It was still the exception for women of the upper and middle class to choose their own husbands, and when the husband had been assigned, he was lord and master, so far at least as law and custom could make him." Although Antoinette makes herself available to her husband in every way she can conceive of in an effort to please him, Mr. Rochester remains coldly indifferent to her attempts and offers her little or nothing of himself in return. His lack of concern is illustrated in his comments about her: “You are safe’, I’d say. She’d like that – to be told ‘you are safe.’ Or I’d touch her face gently and touch tears. Tears – nothing! Words – less than nothing. I did not love her. I was thirsty for her, but that is not love. I felt very little tenderness for her, she was a stranger to me, a stranger who did not think or feel as I did” (93). In this presentation, Antoinette represents nothing more to Mr. Rochester than free and permissible sex, in any form of savagery he’d like to take it. Her anonymity in this action is made more manifest when he begins to call her Bertha because it is a name he likes, without any concern for her preference. Forced to remain always locked within a specific behavior pattern, used and abused for her husband’s pleasure and never for her own makes many readers wonder if they themselves wouldn’t have slipped into insanity just to get away. As is discovered both by Woolf and by Rhys in their research for their independent works, women until very recently were largely considered nothing more than property, social assets and sexual objects existing for men’s pleasure. Not rewarded for either submissive or independent behavior, Antoinette reached a point at which she could no longer make sense of her world, a point Woolf indicates she might have also achieved had she not gained the ability to experience freedom of thought through her inheritance. Since Antoinette’s attempts at femininity are rejected as vehemently as her more assertive behaviors had been, indicating that any attempts to conform to someone else’s definition can only lead to ruin, she has nowhere else to turn for solace but the inner avenues of her own mind. By calling into question the true nature of Antoinette’s mother’s illness, Rhys is also able to call into question the final analysis that Antoinette is insane as a result of biological genetics. Unable to make decisions for herself regarding where she will live, who she will marry or even what she will do during the course of a day, Antoinette attempts to ward off the frustration by throwing herself whole-heartedly into becoming the perfect woman. However, her own individuality continues to get in the way as her natural inclinations don’t always lie within the soft, submissive and demure expectations of her era. Woolf highlights some of the reasons why Antoinette might have gone insane without the need for a biological connection as she explores the lack of women's voices and the need for them to have time to write out their thoughts as much as the men. While the foundational concepts of femininity might not have changed much from the setting to the writing of the novel, the changing perspectives and cultures bring out sharply different viewpoints regarding the true effects these constraints have had. Works Cited Frick, Katie L. “Women’s Mental Illness: A Response to Oppression.” Women’s Issues Then & Now: A Feminist Overview of the Past Two Centuries. (2002). Web. May 27, 2011. Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: W.W. Norton, (1966, reprint 1982). Print. Woolf, Virginia. “A Room of One’s Own.” Harcourt Brace, 1929. Web. May 27, 2011. Read More