Nawaz Yasin Islam on a professional adaptation of Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre
FOR CRITICS of Caribbean literature, Ellen Gwendolyn Rees Williams (1870-1979) evokes the provocative question of how one defines a Carribean writer. But for many readers, she is best remembered as Jean Rhys, the West Indian-born British author of the novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s classic English novel Jane Eyre (1847).
Students of the English department of St. Edmund’s College recently staged an adaptation of Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. An impeccable display of profundity was in store with a professionally acceptable script written by Nirupam Keshav Sinha and a play unfolding at a smooth pace under the direction of Paul Fernandes, both students of the college.
The incident of the “Madwoman in the attic” is probably the most famous in Jane Eyre, and it has given rise to innumerable interpretations and symbolic readings.
Drawing on her West Indian background, Rhys reconstructs in Wide Sargasso Sea, the early life of Antoinette Cosway aka Bertha Mason (played by Karen Shailynti Lyndem), Edward Rochester’s (played by Wilber VR Shabong) first wife, who has been depicted as a psychopath in Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Like Rhys, Antoinette is a white Creole. Through Antoinette’s relationship with her black nursemaid Christophine (played by Reaia D Phira), and the other native Jamaicans around her, Rhys painted a searching portrait of the complicated and often incestuous racial tensions in West Indian society just after Emancipation.
The play staged, provided a platform, with themes ranging from madness to fire, for an in-depth analysis of situations that hover around us. Perhaps the most socially sensitive issue in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea is their implicit argument for women’s rights.
Written within the context of a colonial era, Jane Eyre treats the predicament of the 19th century woman, bound by law, conventions, and social status to lives not of their own choosing. Wide Sargasso Sea treats many of the same feminist themes as Jane Eyre, albeit from a post-colonial stance. The main protagonist could represent the horror of Victorian marriage.
Fernandes was able to do justice to the play in retaining the madwoman in the attic as a powerful motif in literature, particularly in women’s fiction. The adaptation succeeded in expressing the frustration women have felt at the limitations imposed on them by their societies. Fenced in by society, raging against such constriction yet helpless to do much about it, women writers have expressed their anger through the image of the madwoman in the attic.
The husband (Rochester) claims to have imprisoned her because she is mad, but it is easy to imagine an opposite relation of cause and effect, in which years of enforced imprisonment and isolation have made her violently insane or, at least, increased her insanity.
Thus, the madwoman in the attic could represent the confining and repressive aspects of Victorian wifehood, suggesting that the lack of autonomy and freedom in marriage suffocates women, threatening their mental and emotional health.
Another interpretation is that Rochester’s marriage to Bertha represents the British Empire’s cultural and economic exploitation of its colonial subjects. Briggs’s letter states that Bertha’s mother is a “Creole,” which could mean either that she is a person of European descent born in the colonies or that she is of black or mixed descent. In either case, Bertha might have evoked British anxieties about having to deal with the other cultures under Britain’s dominion, and Bertha’s imprisonment might signify Britain’s attempt to control and contain the influence of these subject cultures by metaphorically “locking them in the attic.”
Jane Eyre is very much the story of a quest to be loved. Jane searches, not just for romantic love, but also for a sense of being valued, of belonging. Fire and ice appear throughout Jane Eyre. The former represents Jane’s passions, anger, and spirit, while the latter symbolizes the oppressive forces trying to extinguish Jane’s vitality. Fire is also a metaphor for Jane, as the narrative repeatedly associates her with images of fire, brightness, and warmth.
The play unfolded in a cinematic way with time being characterized (played by Poulomi Das) and who helped introduce the play, with apt narratives injected at the right junctures. A quick depiction of the present and the audience was taken back through time for the beginning of the play. Vibrant transition between scenes only breathed more life into the play.
Director Paul Fernandes was happy with the message embodied in the play receiving justice with fair criticism being evoked in all corners. “The response was overwhelming and it surely pays off after the hard work we put in over a month. The success of the play was due to the hard work and effort put by each and every crew member,” Fernandes said.
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GREEN CARDAMOMS/Gaurangi Maitra