The Crazies

I have to start of stating how much I enjoyed reading Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. It was full of imagery, culture, superstition, and structure. There were a few things that stood out to me as particularly interesting, you know, those things you underline for no real purpose other than to come back to later and ponder, or just because they are amusing. However, I must say that I read the first 20 pages before I remembered I was reading a novella for class and needed to pay attention to the details, it was just that easy to get wrapped up in! The first of these things that caught my interest was the way Christophine was referred to as “a Martinique obeah woman,” (WSS 17). I had never heard this reference before, so luckily there was a footnote describing it. Obeah being a woman who basically practices her “magic” to bring wealth and good fortune to her clients, it is clear why she is assigned this role. It adds to the perspective that the natives commonly engage in the practice of such superstitious activities. The second thing that really stood out to me as peculiar was something Antoinette portrays during her stay at the convent. Up to this point we have a pretty clear perspective of her characters thoughts and feelings towards her life and surroundings, then in one scene she shows something very opposite, “and my mother, whom I must forget and pray for as though she were dead, though she is living, liked to dress in white,” (WSS 33). As she is giving us a description of something completely unrelated, she throws in this line about her mother and her need to consider her mother as dead, when she knows she is still alive came off in a very different tone than the rest of her thoughts. I wonder if this new perspective was influenced by her new lifestyle and teaching there at the convent. This seems to be a point where her character goes though a big change.
Those are some of the interesting things I came across in the first half of this novella. I can’t wait to finish it!