Circumstantial Choice: The Debate On Alterity And Feminism

The debate on whether alterity is circumstantial or self imposed, is prevalent and at the forefront of the discourse on feminism since its genesis. Detailing the motivation and pathos behind why the female may choose to be Othered, is Simone de Beauvoir in her philosophical feminist work entitled, The Second Sex. There, de Beauvoir seems to imply that although a patriarchal society Others the female being at the start, some of the onus falls on the individual to reject such oppression instead of perpetuating such a practice. She proposes that women let themselves be subjugated as they did not want to “renounce all the advantages conferred upon them by their alliance with the superior caste”. These advantages include economic responsibility and what de Beauvoir claims to be “metaphysical risk” — that by allowing herself to be Othered, the female is affixed a particular identity by society and therefore, has already a purpose in life from the moment she is born.

With de Beauvoir’s manifesto, coupled together with Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, this essay will attempt to discuss how the female character of Antoinette reflect de Beauvoir’s philosophy and the debate between choice and circumstance when it comes to Otherness. The first sort of oppression Antoinette faces – the removal of power through the taking away of a name. This is imminent in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel written in parallel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. In Jane Eyre, this notion of power and agency is further Butt 1 highlighted in comparison to note that Rochester remains impetuously charming till the end of the novel culminating with the famous spiel by the narrator, “Reader, I married him”. This line indicates a sort of empowerment for Jane herself, as the singular subject of “I” denotes a sense of choice and agency in marrying Rochester, the object. However, in her text, Rhys reimagines this line in the perspective of his first wife, with “Reader he married me”, suggesting and denoting that Antoinette in this particular circumstance, had no say in the matter, as “he” is the subject of the sentence, with Antoinette being the object acted upon. This is because Rochester actively seeks to deny Antoinette the basic rights to her name because she and her mother have the same name. Rhys refuses to name Rochester in her novel, which I would venture to argue that it is her way of appropriating this patriarchal behaviour to subvert this type of nomenclature. “Names matter, like when he wouldn't call me Antoinette, and I saw Antoinette drifting out of the window with her scents, her pretty clothes and her looking-glass”.

Indicative of the importance of names, it may implied that her madness was heavily exaggerated through the quiet removal of her own name with “Bertha”. Thus, it may be argued that in Antoinette’s case, her subjugation and isolation from society is due to her circumstance and oppressive removal of her name by Rochester. De Beauvoir attempts to draw a clear binary between what is Normal and what is Other in her work, parallelising women with other oppressed classes of society: “Just as in America there is no Negro problem, but rather a white problem; just as anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem, it is our problem; so the woman problem has always been a man problem. ”

However, this proves to be problematic, her argument seems to assume that this issue of class, race and gender are mutually exclusive of each other, and do not affect one Butt 1 another at all in terms of privilege. If we are to accept and understand feminism as a multi layered, complex web of overlapping experiences, and not as just a “Us vs The Man” approach, then looking back at Wide Sargasso Sea, we thence, cannot say that the oppression faced by Antoinette is simply that of alterity with regards to gender. We must be aware that Othering is also prevalent in terms of racial and class profiling. Through a post-colonial lens, it may be argued that Antoinette faces Othering not just because of her gender, but also because of her race and class. The native people hate her family as they used to be slaveholders, whilst the colonialists hate her as she is poor and Creole. Therefore, the alienation she is suppressed by stems not only from her gender, as we see. Rhys seems to be aware of this intersectionality, for she titles Antoinette’s narrative Wide Sargasso Sea, an ironic gesture to her situation. In the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, the Sargasso Sea is the only sea on Earth which has no coastline. This sea is what Antoinette grew up with — it is part of the home she loves so much. When Antoinette looks at the Sargasso sea, she feels safe and secure. This should prove to be ironic, as the name “Sargasso” hails from the seaweed sargassum. Based on the legends, the thick weeds trapped many ships and led to their wreckage, and thus the Sargasso Sea was thought to contain lost treasure. A sea that is thought to be vast and bound by no shore is in fact, one that entangles and mires hopelessly. Not only is Antoinette imprisoned in an claustrophobic social and familial environment, she also has to deal with the discrimination against women with regards to economic affairs, and the struggles of up keeping and maintaining a mercenary marriage.

In conclusion, we have explored how an individual’s circumstances and choice are factored into the alterity of the female being. Though the exposition of character like Antoinette, Butt 1 it is imperative that we realise that privilege, or the lack of it, can be blamed solely on merely one of a myriad of factors. We must see that although Othering can be set in place once you are born, it does not mean that one cannot attempt to transcend and break out of such stereotypes.