Antoinette Used Obeah To Be White? Whaat?!

Okay, during my panel presentation I asked a question regarding a statement made in our article. And it's just been constantly bothering me so I wrote a little thing about it. Here is the statement, just for incite:  

"In a critical essay titled “Race and Caribbean Culture,” author Sandra Drake mentions that “Antoinette wants to use the spell to complete her assimilation to England and to whiteness” (198), thereby at last earning a definite identity for herself." 

Alrighty, lets discuss this. This is basically saying that Antoinette used obeah to complete her naturalization to the English culture. I mean using a culture's custom in order to distance yourself from said culture, if that's not a mess I don't know what is. And overall, I don't really agree with this statement for several reasons.  The first is that it is super contradicting. It doesn't really make sense for her to attempt to distance herself from the Jamaican culture and into the white culture by using a Jamaican custom. 

Another thing is that the whole reason Antoinette even used obeah was to make Rochester fall in love with her. She was using obeah in attempt to make Rochester fall in love with the Jamaican traits/behaviors that influenced her during her life. And this completely opposes and smacks down the argument that is stated in the article. 

Overall, I just don't think that the statement itself is a reliable way to analyze that scene, Antoinette's subconscious reason for using or if this relates to her racial identity at all. But then there is this:

"When the potion ultimately fails to produce the desired effects, Antoinette is forced to recognize her non-whiteness as well as her non-blackness because as Christophine states to Rochester, “She is not béké like you, but she is béké, and not like us either” (93)."

I'm not sure how to interpret this section of the article. I agree that when the potion fails it kind of destroys her but I'm not completely sure if it actually does have anything to do with race. I mean, it backfires and Rochester still doesn't love her, which breaks her spirit because that was the whole point of using obeah. I'm taking reach here and saying that in terms of race, she doesn't know where she belongs because she can't make Rochester fall in love with her and her Jamaican upbringing. But she also can't make him fall in love with her even if she (attempts to) develop the English culture. 

Then again, does Antoinette want to develop an English culture? Mr. Mitchell brought up the scene where Antoinette was having wine with Rochester, who called her Bertha. And in the scene she initially rejects the name. This kind of shows that she doesn't really want to have an English identity, because she rejected the very European name of Bertha. But who knows. I'm a bit iffy on this. If you guys have any interpretations regarding both or one of the statements, leave a comment below. 

(wow, I sound like a youtuber, oy).

Rochester's Dominance

Starting the Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys was a bit of a tough task. I wasn’t exactly the biggest fan just because there was so much going on that made it hard to understand. But, I am not here to discuss my struggles. So let’s talk about Rochester.

When he was first introduced, I kind of felt for the guy. He wakes up in a foreign land married to the “alien eyed” Antoinette. He  walked into the marriage without knowing anything about her or her family history. Everyone in the town knew about Antoinette’s family history but they kept all the information secret from him. It was kind of like an ongoing joke that the townspeople had about Rochester’s and Antoinette's relationship. And while this is happening, Rochester still trying to fit into being the master of the estate. But he kind of loses the dominance in this role because he is in the dark about so much along with the fact people don’t really take him all that seriously.

Somewhere in the book where this was fairly evident was his conversation with Amelie. In this seen, Rochester has finally figured out that something is amiss.This is somewhere he seeks to find answers, but she is kind of toying with him. She gives him indirect, or incomplete answers. I feel like this is more of an amusement for her, to taunt and mess with his head, knowing he won’t act on what she’s saying. Although, not much he can do about because he’s not aware about the secret. And he can’t really punish her if he doesn’t know whether she spoke the truth or not. In this scene, it can be observed that Amelie is in control of the situation. Even with a servant, we can see that Rochester’s supposed dominate role is lacking.