Senior Portfolio: Critical Essay
By: Carolyn (Garber) Kroeker
(Photo by Luke Marshall on Unsplash)
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea are beautiful feminist texts that show the lives of French Creole women. Both novels show similarities in the way in which they present the openness and equality present in Creole society and the harsh reactions outsiders have towards these traits. Despite these similarities, an intersectional feminist analysis of the two French Creole women in these novels will show how the intersection between gender, culture, and class/socioeconomic standing affects Adele Ratignolle in The Awakening and Antoinette Mason in Wide Sargasso Sea differently, making their experiences as women distinct with Adele experiencing freedom and Antoinette experiencing oppression.
Both Adele Ratignolle and Antoinette Mason experience similarities in certain cultural elements tied to being a Creole woman. The main areas that are mentioned are the elements of emotional openness and expressive female sexuality within the confines of marriage. For Adele, these serve as positive characteristics that result in a greater form of freedom. For Antoinette, they serve as differences from the ways of the English and are a reason for her oppression.
In The Awakening, the openness in Adele Ratignolle is contrasted with Edna Pontellier’s Anglo-Saxon reserve, which serves to show the unique characteristics of Creole culture. The narrator begins by sharing that “There was nothing subtle or hidden about her charms” (Chopin 11), speaking of Adele, and then describes Adele’s character in contrast to Edna, stating that there is a “candor of the woman’s whole existence, which every one might read, and which formed so striking a contrast to [Edna’s] own habitual reserve” (Chopin 18). Adele’s openness of emotions, speech, and personality makes her a magnetic character—a character to whom all other characters are drawn. This is an example of a unique facet of Creole culture—the openness of speech. The narrator explains this point in saying, “Their freedom of expression was at first incomprehensible to her, though she had no difficulty in reconciling it with a lofty chastity which in the Creole woman seems to be inborn and unmistakable” (Chopin12). This form of openness is one that is not common among English or Anglo-Saxon cultures, and, therefore, it seems very odd to outsiders. While there is this sense of open conversation within Creole culture, there is also a very strict moral code, which explains why the conversations were more free.
Edna is described as not being able to “forget the shock with which she heard Madame Ratignolle relating to old Monsieur Farival the harrowing story of one of her accouchements, withholding no intimate detail” (Chopin 12). Adele describing childbirth to a man in detail is an example of the unique frankness of the Creole culture. There were few topics that were taboo, and it was commonplace to discuss more “private” topics. Another example of the outspoken and open nature of Creole culture is the scene where a racy book is being passed around. While Edna, a non-Creole, felt uncomfortable reading the book anywhere near people, “[i]t was openly criticised and freely discussed at table” (13) among the Creole women, including Adele. These types of discussion were not strange but were a normal part of Creole culture’s unusual candor.
This form of openness also was a part of Creole marriages, and it resulted in a form of equality, unlike that of most other cultures of the time. When looking at Adele’s marriage, it is described as: “The Ratignolles understood each other perfectly. If ever the fusion of two human beings into one has been accomplished on this sphere it was surely in their union” (Chopin 75). The open communication between the pair leads to a deep equality. This equality is further shown in the idea that “Adele's ability to finish her husband's sentences suggests domestic compatibility and familiarity, but this exchange also signifies that in the home sphere, Adele is an equal, perhaps even dominant, partner in the marriage” (Streater 410). Adele’s ability to speak candidly to her husband and his understanding and reciprocation of this openness allows for a partnership in their marriage, instead of having a marriage marked by patriarchal rule.
This theme of contrasting cultures and openness is seen frequently in Wide Sargasso Sea as well. Antoinette is the Creole woman in this novel, and her English husband, Rochester, serves as the outsider to her culture. While Antoinette did not grow up surrounded by French Creoles, like her mother or Adele did, she had the influence of her mother to teach her elements of Creole culture, such as candor. Rochester speaks of the unreserved nature that he views in Antoinette and some of the servants, and he says, “I thought these people are very vulnerable. How old was I when I learned to hide what I felt? A very small boy. Six, five, even earlier. It was necessary, I was told, and that view I have always accepted” (Rhys 93). The English view of emotions is to hide them at all costs, so this Creole view of expressing emotions freely creates a dissonance in the relationship between Rochester and Antoinette.
Rochester states again his observations of Antoinette, stating, “Very soon she was as eager for what’s called loving as I was” (Rhys 92). Antoinette’s freedom in expressing her emotions and her sexuality is surprising to the reserved Rochester, just as Adele’s expression is surprising to Edna in The Awakening. This freedom of sexual expression is seen in Adele, even through her pregnancy. Kathleen M. Streater describes this situation in the following way: “Adele's character projects the ideal mother-woman image, magnifies its stereotypical qualities, and then, by allowing Adele — a pregnant woman — to hint at a sexual identity, Chopin contests the boundaries of Adele's assigned gender roles: is she a mother? a femme fatale? a saint? a wild woman?” (408-409). Adele is viewed as a sexual being, with Edna even admiring that “Never had that lady seemed a more tempting subject than at that moment, seated there like some
sensuous Madonna” (Chopin 15). Adele’s sexual nature is admired because her culture embraces such openness, but when Antoinette shows similar sexual expression in her marriage to Rochester, he is appalled. He remarks, “She’ll moan and cry and give herself as no sane woman would — or could” (Rhys 149). Antoinette’s sexuality frightens Rochester, so he reduces her cultural candor to madness.
Professor Rose Kamel describes this situation, saying, “Rhys . . . understood Bertha's marginality within the context of a patriarchal system that validated Rochester's right to marry yet divest a West Indian heiress of her legacy, desire yet despise her sexuality, relocate yet imprison her” (Kamel 1). Antoinette (Bertha) is subjected to a patriarchal system despite her cultural background of equality. She tries to assert her equality through her sexuality again after Rochester cheats on her by withholding sex. He states, “Yes, she held out. A pity” (Rhys 153). Despite his horror at her sexuality, Rochester still desires to dominate his wife sexually and is upset at his wife’s denial of his patriarchal rule over her sexuality.
He also despises her open emotions as she tries to grieve the amount of death and destruction she has viewed in her young life. Antoinette tries to process through her trauma by discussing death with her husband, saying, “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” (Rhys 84). She expresses her trauma with death in the only way she knows how, and she tries to show that she is finally happy after experiencing so much destruction, and yet Rochester seems to think that this makes her even more deranged. Christophine, understanding Antoinette’s Creole background, advocates for Antoinette’s emotional expression, commanding, “Let them cry — it eases the heart” (Rhys 137). Despite this moment, Rochester still does not understand his wife and seeks to oppress her openness.
Antoinette’s oppression is best viewed in light of the fact that “[i]t is undeniable from Jean Rhys’s perspective that when someone is compelled to forget his/her past, to be displaced geographically and spiritually, to accept the identity someone else created for him/ her, then all this is emblematic of destruction, confusion, oppression, and loss of self-identity” (Capello 50). Adele’s placement in a large group of Creoles is what allows her to live a life of freedom and full expression. Antoinette, on the other hand, experiences oppression due to her placement in a context that has no one of the same culture as herself. Added to this Adele and Antoinette have incredibly different experiences due to their socioeconomic differences and due to the race relations that Antoinette has to deal with.
The position of a French Creole woman in the West Indies in the nineteenth century is vastly different than that of the French Creoles in New Orleans, although many of the characteristics of the Creole women are still true. While Adele is seemingly quite wealthy, as evidenced by her family going to Grand Isle every summer to experience “summer luxury” (Chopin 5), Antoinette’s family was a part of the former plantation owners who lost everything when the English emancipated the slaves in Jamaica, and her family was “still waiting for this compensation the English promised when the Emancipation Act was passed” (Rhys 14). They were immediately sunk into poverty and became “poor like beggar” (Rhys 22). This poverty left Antoinette and her mother Annette destitute and without any resources to have visitors or maintain any sort of social standing. Antoinette describes the tense socioeconomic and racial situation in the following way: “The black people did not hate us quite so much when we were poor. We were white but we had not escaped and soon we would be dead for we had no money left. What was there to hate?” (Rhys 31). Their poverty was so extreme that even the former slaves that had been oppressed because of their family pitied them.
Antoinette’s family became wealthy after her mother marries Mr. Mason, a wealthy Englishman, but trouble was not far behind the money. Because the former slaves did not see Antoinette and her mother as a threat in their poverty, they were allowed to live in peace. About the situation, Antoinette says, “We were so poor then . . . we were something to laugh at. But we are not poor now” (Rhys 29). Once they become rich again and Mr. Mason begins to plot out a way to make the plantation functional again, the former slaves burn down their house, killing Antoinette’s brother. Antoinette experiences tension due to her poverty and her wealth, making her socioeconomic standing a frequent cause of distress.
Upon marrying Rochester with her great dowry, Antoinette realizes that her wealth that she brought into the marriage is no longer her own. Her servant and friend Christophine berates Rochester for this unfair system, saying, “Everybody know that you marry her for her money and you take it all” (Rhsy 138). Rochester truly does marry Antoinette for her money, and, thus, her money is now his. Antoinette explains the injustice of this situation to Christophine, explaining, “I am not rich now. I have no money of my own at all, everything I had belongs to him . . . That is English law” (Rhys 100). Under the idea of coverture, the woman had no right to own property or wealth of any kind as she was the property of her husband. This oppressive patriarchal structure that was in place in England can be seen again in a scene near the end of the novel when Rochester scolds Antoinette for promising that a servant could come with them. He chastised her by saying, “What right have you to make promises in my name? Or to speak for me at all?” (Rhys 155). Antoinette loses all ability to have a place of equality in an English marriage, despite the fact that she is a Creole woman. This stands in great contrast to Adele’s marriage to a Creole man which left her with equal standing with her husband.
This also raises another contributing element to Antoinette’s oppression: her racial and cultural standing in society. Scholar Vivian N. Halloran says, “social demarcations between English and Creole cultural identities are artificial because they ultimately depend on chance—on the geographical accident of a given person’s or character’s place of birth” (87). The English viewed themselves as superior to Creoles, despite the fact that Creoles were people of European heritage that were simply born in the Caribbean. Antoinette’s mother was born on the French island of Martinque, and Antoinette grew up in Jamaica as a French Creole girl amidst an array of black Creoles and sparse English people. Antoinette clearly is not in the majority as Adele was in The Awakening. Antoinette must live in a society where she is considered as an outcast. Christophine tells Rochester that “[s]he is not béké like you, but she is béké, and not like us either” (Rhys 155). “Béké” refers to a white Creole, and Christophines speech reveals how much Antoinette does not fit into the racial, social, and cultural structures around her.
When sharing about her past with Rochester, Antoinette reveals the depth of rejection that she received as a child. When Antoinette’s mother Annette saw that Antoinette was growing up in poverty, she was ashamed of her child and began to reject her. Antoinette says, “Then there was that day when she saw I was growing up like a white nigger and she was ashamed of me, it was after that day that everything changed” (Rhys 120). This moment changed Annette’s perception of Antoinette, shaping her identity as a rejected woman. The specific phrase using derogatory language is an intentional insult, and “[a]s insults, the terms “white nigger” and “black Englishman” rely on their apparent status as oxymorons, or juxtaposition of opposites, for their particular sting” (Halloran 88). These derogatory terms are used frequently in the novel to degrade those to whom they are spoken, and this reveals the feelings about the situations of white and black characters in the novel.
While Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea has seemingly similar characteristics to Adele in The Awakening, such as their openness and sexual expression, the women have vastly different experiences due to the different elements in their life. When analyzing the novel with an intersectional feminist lens, one can see that it is the combination of all of the social structures affecting these women that create such different environments. Adele lives in a wealthy Creole society where her characteristics are embraced. Antoinette, conversely, lives in a heavily English and black Creole society where her wealth (or lack thereof) and her race make her a social outcast, along with her oppressive marriage. Adele and Antoinette exhibit similarities in their cultural elements, but their experiences must be examined in light of the other social factors that affect them.
Works Cited
Cappello, Silvia. “Postcolonial Discourse in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’: Creole Discourse vs.
European Discourse, Periphery vs. Center, and Marginalized People vs. White Supremacy.” Journal of Caribbean Literatures, vol. 6, no. 1, 2009, pp. 47–54.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. St. Louis: Herbert S. Stone and Co., 1899.
Dawson, Hugh J. “Kate Chopin’s ‘The Awakening:’ A Dissenting Opinion.” American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, vol. 26, no. 2, 1994, pp. 1-18.
Halloran, Vivian N. "Race, Creole, and National Identities in Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and Phillips's Cambridge." Small Axe, vol. 10 no. 3, 2006, p. 87-104.
Kamel, Rose. “‘Before I Was Set Free’: The Creole Wife in ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Wide Sargasso Sea.’” The Journal of Narrative Technique, vol. 25, no. 1, 1995, p. 1.
Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. London: Penguin Books, 2000.
Streater, Kathleen M. “Adele Ratignolle: Kate Chopin’s Feminist at Home in The Awakening.” Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought, vol. 48, no. 3, 2007, pp. 406–16.