Wide Sargasso Sea Control Analysis

Throughout Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, it is evident that one of the central ideas is control. Control is shown both directly and indirectly, and as a mental or emotional idea. Although control is an important central idea, it is crucial to tie in the central idea of unsure love, to connect the two and trace their development. The idea with unsure love is when two “lovers” are together, but the two aren’t truly in love, and subtle signs can be picked up off their unsure love To start, control can be traced through multiple parts of the novel. For example, Daniel blackmails Rochester when he says “But if I keep my mouth shut, it seems to me you owe me something. What is five hundred pounds to you? To me it is my life.”This shows the control …show more content…
For instance, Antoinette tells Rochester that “Your mouth is cloder than my hands.” (Rhys 123) when he kissed her. When two people are in love, and they kiss, their bodies are aflame with passion, but with Rochester and Antoinette, there is none. Their relationship can’t even truly be called love, rather it's a relationship full of desire and lust. It is clear that Rochester is only in this marriage for the financial benefit, inheriting everything Antoinette has to offer. It goes as far as Rochester sleeping with Amelie within earshot of Antoinette while still on their honeymoon, and he pays her after they’re done like she is a prostitute, and Amelie takes the money “...with no thanks and no expression on her face.” (Rhys 127) This can be related to the idea of control, because Rochester has enough boldness to sleep with a girl so that his own wife can hear it, and he doesn’t really care about her, and by letting her hear him sleep with another girl, he asserts his dominance over her. By the end of the novel, we see that Rochester has literally locked Antoinette in an attic in England, driving her over the brink of insanity. Antoinette is so under the control of Rochester, that she has no sense of freedom, and the rest of her life is condemned in the attic, and it also confirms that Rochester never loved Antoinette, because he not once came by to see his wife. Instead, he …show more content…
Rhys simple language in her writing makes it easy to read, but a true reader sees how every word is weighted with enormous significance, and almost always has a hidden meaning. Rhys did an amazing job with this piece of writing, and overall, it demonstrated central ideas well, all depicted throughout the story with her crafty style of writing, and in this case, control and unsure