Wide Sargasso Sea and The Yellow Wallpaper

Wide Sargasso by Jean Rhys Sea is similar to another short story we read in previous English classes. In subbie year we read The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (or at least the current juniors did). Wide Sargasso Sea has a lot of similarities, especially Antionette’s confinement in England, with the Yellow Wallpaper. Just to refresh anyone who doesn’t remember the Yellow Wallpaper. It’s told from the point of view of a woman whose recently given birth. However, she feels a detachment from her baby (postpartum depression based on a modern diagnosis). Her husband, John, puts her a room in their colonial mansion with torn yellow wallpaper and scratched floors as a “rest cure”. Her only stimulus is the wallpaper. She starts to envision a figure creeping behind the wall. At the end of the story, she tears off the wallpaper as she tries to free the figure. When her husband comes in, she is crawling on the floor and has “become” the figure in the wallpaper. Overall, it’s a very great short story about a woman’s mental decline due to isolation.

A similar thing seems to occur to Antionette in The Wide Sargasso Sea. Antionette is renamed to “Bertha” and is locked away in the attic with little to no simulation. In the Yellow wallpaper the narrator is unnamed until the very end. There is a clear lack of identity with Antionette and the narrator. They have been stripped of who they are and remain as objects locked away. Antionette even says that “names matter”.

The narrator notices patterns and becomes consumed in observing the yellow wallpaper. Antionette also notices a tapestry where, “looking at the tapestry one day I recognized my mother dressed in an evening gown but with bare feet”. Not only that but behind the tapestry is a door that leads to the passage out of the attic. The tapestry leads to her freedom but is also the form that stops her from freedom. The narrator feels similar to her room’s yellow wallpaper. It causes her both hatred and pleasure. At first, she notices its hideous color and pattern but then she becomes absorbed in scanning it for the “figure”. She is both trapped and freed by the wallpaper.

Antionette and the narrator are both trapped by their husbands however there is a key difference between them. The narrator’s husband locks her because he believes he is helping her. John, the husband, is told by doctors that the way to treat the Narrator’s illness (which we know is postpartum depression) is to let her “rest”. However, he is also dismissive of the narrator even when she tries to explain her feeling and illness. Antionette is lock away for a much different reason. Rochester does not want to help her but rather to make her disappear. He no longer needs her, so he wants to forget her. Even though John has different motives both works essentially the same. In both cases Antionette and the narrator start to lose their self of identity. They take on completely different personas. Antionette becomes “Bertha Mason” while the narrator becomes the wild figure in the wallpaper. Their isolation and obsession with their environment make them implode. However, both of them break free of the imprisonment. The narrator becomes the figure and attacks her husband. She is freed and becomes a savage, violent figure. Antionette burns town the mansion that has confined her. Their last act of “wildness” is also their last act of self-identity.