Antoinette’s fall into insanity is a result of her environment imposing insanity upon her before she loses her grip on reality. By being told a lie that can’t be officially disproven by people for so long, the person being lied to will accept it as reality. Though Antoinette wasn’t destined to become insane like her mother, the Jamaican society and her husband pushed her over the edge and caused her to act irrationally.
Antoinette’s childhood was essentially defined by the abuse she faced by the community and her mothers distanced demeanor. Even those who were supposed to be her friends were cruel to her (thanks, Tia). Mental development is affected heavily by how a person is treated, with childhood and teenage years being the most sensitive to these interactions with other humans. The cold and cruel environment Antoinette was raised in may have predisposed her to the aggressive behavior (or insanity, i guess) she displays later in the novel.
After Rochester begins to realize there are rumors about Antoinette’s family history and past, he begins to despise her for something that isn’t exactly her fault. Though I suppose she could have told him from the start all about her crushing backstory, that doesn’t seem realistic since they probably didn’t trust each other the first time they met each other, and her story was not relevant until it was too late for her to influence his opinion significantly. He takes his anger out on her passively for reasons she clearly does not understand (because she repeatedly asks him why he is ignoring her) and it becomes frustrating and abusive. Imagine having the person you love slowly start to lose interest and ignore you :c
These actions may have triggered/ supplemented Antoinette’s insecurities from her childhood and caused her to act irrationally, especially under the assumption that the one person who ever made her want to live now despises her.
The point I’m trying to make here is that although Antoinette may be acting a little crazy, up until she becomes aggressive after her husband transgresses on the purity of their marriage, she hadn’t done anything wrong. It was her reputation that tore her life apart, not her actions. It’s like the very bad version of image over substance. It’s even more disturbing to think that the only person who’s truly been by Antoinette’s side has been Christophine (thanks Christophine we love you), not her mother, or her husband. It’s better than nothing, but really Rochester?
AND NOW special opinions from Lark (BONUS CONTENT)
The scene where Antoinette tries desperately to tell Rochester about her past was honestly hard to read. He didn’t care at all and you could tell from every response he gave it was emotionless and sassy and disrespectful and I wanted to cry. Here look at this:
“'…Yes, it was my fault, it was my fault that she started to plan and work in a frenzy, in a fever to change our lives. Then people came to see us again and though I still hated them and was afraid of their cool, teasing eyes, I learned to hide it.'
‘No.’ I [Rochester] said.
‘Why no?’
‘You have never learned to hide it,’ I said.
‘I learned to try,’ said Antoinette. Not very well, I thought.”
Not very well, huh? Well, Rochester, YOU don’t try very WELL at not acting like a tool. Antoinette is telling him about a really emotional and hard time in her life and all he can think to do is contradict her and not consider that she had it rough in comparison to him.
I understand that it’s hard to overcome the influence of the community (we know Antoinette and Anette couldn’t) but he could have at least tried to get a primary source for his lil insanity & betrayal thesis he had in his head.
I’m grossed out like & comment please.
I like what you're saying at the start about how Antoinette was forced by her circumstances, not her genes, to go insane. However, I would argue that the societal pressure she suffered through in her youth meant that she was destined to go mad just as surely as if it were pure genetics. It's not her fault, but Antoinette grew up hated by just about everybody and had no way whatsoever to escape. It's not at all surprising to me that her childhood put her on the road to insanity (although her relationship with Rochester was certainly instrumental as well).
ReplyDeleteI can definitely relate to your reaction to Rochester at the end, where he has that line about her being bad at hiding her feelings. He doesn't seem to show any sympathy for what is obviously an emotionally charged topic for her, and it's really off-putting to me as a reader that he has no ability to connect to other humans. And your points about mental illness and Antoinette's environment are spot on. If everyone treats you like you're crazy, you're going to start living up to their expectations. With the exception of drugging Rochester perhaps, I see Antoinette as a much more sympathetic character.
ReplyDeleteYeah I agree with when you say that Antoinette has been abused her entire life and I really think that of all the characters, Christophine was the only one that really had the best for Antoinette at heart. I know that they kinda rushed into this marriage but its ridiculous that they actually said "I do" at the alter with how little they know about each other. The hesitation that Antoinette was feeling before the marriage could've saved her in the future, but now she's stuck with a man that is going to lock her in a room like an animal. Its unfortunate and just thinking about her situation really makes me upset as well.
ReplyDeleteAbout the whole 'being pushed down the path to insanity,' I'm not quite sure it is insanity (at least before Antoinette ends up in Rochester's mansion). While they were talking before Christophine came she was upset, but she had every right to be. Rochester comes home and asks her these really personal questions, having already jumped to conclusions. It's not 'can you tell me something about your past' it's 'is your mother insane and are you going insane because your maybe-half-brother told me that.' The decisions Antoinette makes are definitely irrational, but anyone would be that irrational at an emotionally charged (and inebriated) moment like that, especially when the person you're talking to is a grade A jerk. I think that Antoinette is just trying to communicate with Rochester, and then gets upset when things go wrong and starts making irrational decisions, not necessarily insane decisions.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that Rochester reacts strongly at first to what is merely damaging information about Antoinette--he gets the facts without the story, as it were. What difference would it make to hear about these experiences from her perspective? I'd say a HUGE difference; consider how well the reader thinks s/he understands something about Antoinette that Rochester misses simply on the strength of reading part 1. To "get" Antoinette means to get where she's coming from, this history of profound alienation and identity confusion.
ReplyDeleteFor me, and I've mentioned this in class (maybe it outs me as an idealist on these matters), but I see real potential in the scene where, as Christophine advises, Antoinette tries to actually tell her story to Rochester--not to "defend" herself against his implicit accusations, but to simply describe her conditions, to tell it as a story that she personally experienced. We can see him growing "gentler" as that scene goes on (as she tells him the story we already know from Part 1), and Rochester, at least, insists that "she need not have done what she did." He already apparently has started to fall in love with her again, or to view her as wounded and deserving of compassion rather than rejection. But the "poisoning" ruins all that, and there is no going back once she's tried something so "crazy."