Patriarchal Oppression and Cultural Discrimination in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea

“In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different” (Coco Chanel) “We may have all come in different ships but we’re in the same boat now” (Martin Luther King, Jr.) “Share our similarities, celebrate our differences” (Morgan Scott Peck) These quotations, which were uttered in the 20th century, have in common that to be different is regarded not only as tolerable but also as something that should be pursued. Also, they reflect the process of increasing tolerance towards females and foreigners, which in many countries has taken place during the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century, with the result that, today, these two groups are widely, although by far not entirely, regarded as equal. However, only two centuries ago, people who were different or ‘other’ were considered subordinate or even frightening, and in the 19th century, this was true for both females and people from the orient or colonized people (Barry 134, 193). In Jane Eyre (JE), published in 1847, and in Wide Sargasso Sea (WSS), the prequel or paraquel of JE that was written about one hundred years later and published in 1966, the two female protagonists, Jane, a female orphan, and Antoinette, a female Creole, struggle against displacement and patriarchal oppression and, in Antoinette’s case, also against imperialistic domination. In JE, the reader learns that Jane can handle this pressure whereas Antoinette/Bertha1 has been driven insane. However, reading WSS makes us realize that not only Antoinette but also Jane may at some point be endangered to fall into madness because of her situation. However, due to sheer luck, a timely warning of what marriage to Rochester as his subordinate could mean and some unconscious help by Bertha, Jane is eventually able to marry the man she loves as his social