Antoinette Cultural and Racial Hybridity

Hey Guys,

I think my earlier posts have quite a bit on Antoinette's racial hybridity. (Please include the ants/flowers... I really like that quote :) )

Here's a few things on her cultural (or maybe racial... kind of a grey area) hybridity:

As a daughter to former slave owners, it might have seemed natural for her family

to belong to the white community, rather than the black, but as the very opening words of the novel

suggest, they were not in their ranks due to the Cosway's Creole background. The white community

did not accept them, but neither were they welcome among their former slaves: “They hated us.

They called us white cockroaches” (Rhys 8). Antoinette finds herself in a gray zone between the

dominant blocks of power, not belonging to any of them, but instead forced to become a hybrid.

http://hig.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:218975

Instead of crossing a physical border, and having to deal with the questions of belonging

from a traditional immigrant perspective, the Cosways are immigrants within a society, forming

their identity through the crossing from one system of power to another. Indeed they are second and

third generation immigrants, now sharing a Creole background, which is even intensifying the

questions of identity and belonging because of the difficulty they have in identifying themselves as

either white nor black. These questions were perhaps not as pressing in colonial times when the

Cosways could grow wealthy and powerful through the abuse and slavery they occupied themselves

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with and even were dependent on. But as the social structure changed and they no longer were by

default on the top, new questions of identity arise. They were suddenly not in the white people's

ranks due to their loss of economic status, their racially mixed, and allegedly mentally unstable

background, but neither were they in the favor of their former slaves. It is this crossing from one

system to another that changes the way they perceive their identity, and also changes the way they

are seen by others. (10)

^^ This except also comes from the essay in the above link.

Antoinette's relationships are severly affected by her unclear identity. She can't seem to connect fully with anyone because she is an 'other' to everyone. If anyone let's Antoinette get too close to them, they risk confusion of their own identity. Perhaps this is why Rochester refuses to emotionally connect with Antoinette. If he let's her in, he might risk the integrity of his 'Englishness'. From a cultural perspective, a lack of relationships leaves Antoinette completely alone. We shape our cultural identity by observing and learning from those around us. Since Antoinette doesn't have this option, she ends up in-between cultures, but more importantly, she ends up alone.

At one point, Tia says to Antoinette,

'That's not what she hear, she said. She hear all we poor like beggar. We ate salt fish – no

money for fresh fish. That old house so leaky, you run with calabash to catch water when it

rain. Plenty white people in Jamaica. Real white people, they got gold money. They didn't look at

us, nobody see them come near us. Old time white people nothing but white nigger now, and

black nigger better than white nigger'. (Rhys 9)
When reading this passage, one must remember that Antoinette is the narrator. She is recreating this scene for the reader. She doesn't argue or oppose Tia's comment. Instead, she recounts it in third person for the reader. This suggests that Antoinette has internalized her identity as a 'white cockroach'.

The next quotation I'm going to post is pretty long but it's got really good content about Antoinette's attempt to dress like an English lady:

Antoinette tries to please Edward by acting as English and as appealing to him as she

possibly can, her view of the woman he would desire, but in many cases her efforts are interpreted

as the opposite: when she tries to behave like an English lady, Edward only sees the untidy

blackness in her, reassuring him of his suspicions that she is nothing like him. Mardorossian

discusses a scene in the novel where Antoinette tries to simulate a girl from a painting she was very

fond of when she was young, “The Miller's Daughter”. The painting represents a “lovely English

girl with brown curls and blue eyes and a dress slipping off her shoulders” (Rhys 19). This image

Antoinette seems to remember when she later tries to win her husband's heart, Mardorossian argues.

To Antoinette, “The Miller's Daughter” is a representation of how an English woman should look

and be, one of the few clues she has on how to appeal to Edward, but instead of appealing to

Edward he now finds her even stranger and pushes her further away: “She was wearing the white

dress I had admired, but it had slipped untidily over one shoulder and seemed too large for her. I

watched her holding her left wrist with her right hand, an annoying habit” (Rhys 97). Mardorossian

summarizes: “Antoinette herself is incapable of realizing that in Rochester's eyes, her attire actually

associates her with (black) female wantonness and prostitution” (Mardorossian 1076). When

Edward is faced with the problem of his wife not living up to the standard of his view of an English

woman, he chooses to push her aside as an other and also remarks on her annoying habit of holding

her wrist with her hand. (17-18) _The essay above

I know this post has just been a lot of quotes... but I don't have time to keep working on this :( I think I'm going to leave my part (of the research) at this and pass over the ball.

Literary Hybridity is just a matter of looking at that essay I posted earlier on the blog.

Cheers Guys! I'm looking forward to writing our skits on Saturday! Let's also decide on a time for our meeting on Sunday. I work at 4 p.m.

Martyna G