So, we finished The Wide Sargasso Sea (WSS) today. I was initially going to write all about sympathy and where we place our's//why, but after today's reading i just don't really want to talk about that. A topic I do find interesting, though, is the idea of fate. Although it isn't talked about in a broader sense in WSS, it is talked about, and we also saw it in our last book, The Stranger. The two books take very different looks at fate, however, and I think it's cool to compare them.
In WSS, Antoinette is repeatedly confronted with the idea of fate in relationship to her mother, and the impending doom of her "inherited madness." Along with Rochester's near enslavement of Antoinette at the end of the novel, it's arguable that the idea that nothing could change the ever-approaching insanity in some ways made her go mad. Like, "I know this is going to happen to me, it must be happening now because I feel crazy" -- like a placebo effect. The other instance of fate in this book is the fact that it's a prequel, we know what's going to happen after it. Similar to the first three (but later released) episodes of the Star Wars series, we know the ultimate fate of all the characters, and in a lot of ways it makes the story eerier, because we wait to see how such a bitter end is going to come; we know that's it's going to end in one specific, heartbreaking way, and the only question is how.
This really contrasts the idea of fate in The Stranger, where Camus seems to suggest the only inevitability is death, the only thing we know is for sure about life is that at some point, it will stop. Looking at the novel from a reader's view, it's easy to see Meursault is going to die, and it's sad, but he has a real turn-around at the end, and brings up some incredibly beautiful, life affirming ideas, which completely contradicts the way Antoinette feels at the end of WSS.
Obviously, there are just some thematic differences that really change the outlooks each character has at the end of their novel, but one thing i think is a crucial piece to understanding the final moments of the novels is free will. We were talking today about how, by the end of WSS and especially on the voyage to England, Antoinette essentially becomes a slave, a prisoner of Rochester. Meursault is literally a prisoner at the end of The Stranger, condemned to the torturous task of waking every day to find out if that will be his last. In Antoinette's case, she ebbs between lucidity and insanity, waiting for her husband to visit her, heartbreakingly aware of what's been done to her. For Meursault, the last days are similar; he has fits, lashes out at the priest, but also has shockingly tender moments of clarity; it's even during one of these clearer moments that he delivers the line about opening himself to the universe, an incredibly insightful resolution to come to.
Meursault spends a lot of time thinking about his execution, and at one point imagines running away from the guillotine, a final "fuck you" to the system that so quickly ordered him worthy of erasure. He'll still be shot down, but in a moment of ever-important resistance, a way of knowing he went out with a bang. Similarly, Antoinette, or rather, Bertha, burns down Rochester's manor and in doing so kills herself, and this, as Mr. Mitchell hinted at today in class, seems to be a final "fuck you" to Rochester, to his utter destruction of her life, to his total lack of acknowledgement of her as she sits wasting in his attic.
Of course, we have to think about condition and context in each story; Meursault was a white man living in colonial Algeria who killed an unnamed Arab man, the embodiment of an anonymous antagonist -- we never knew the Arab man, his family had no chance to speak at the trial, he never even said a word. Antoinette is in many ways the opposite of Meursault, characteristically speaking. She's a racially confused creole woman, tricked into a marriage she soon regrets. Her sense of free will, of knowing decision-making, isn't really there; we see her mostly pushed into situations, talked into things she soon realizes she should have denied. Where Meursault has free will and privilege, Antoinette has no sure voice and an eerily unreliable idea of safety. Yet, they both seem to come to their demises with the same futile sense of rebellion in their last moments. This hints at the whole Myth of Sisyphus argument, the shouts into the silence, shaking your fist at the heavens thing. I'm not really sure how to tie it into WSS quite yet, but I think it's a cool concept to think about when you consider Antoinette's family history, her marriage to Rochester, her dabblings in Obeah, etc. I'd get into it more but I'd get super off topic lol
To conclude, I guess, fate is a definite to both of theses authors as their writing seems to suggest, and the way they handle it is cool -- where Camus treats it as only a distant definite, a sort of "yeah, death will happen, find beauty in the moment," sort of thing, Rhys treats fate as a more haunting idea, a looming threat. Either way, both of their characters end in fiery, messy ways, but with a final wink to the camera-- one last kick to the shins of their captors before they're out.
