Causes for the conflicts between them:
1. Race/Culture: different cultural backgrounds:
--her limited understanding of the world -- p.
55; "Is it true,' she said, `that England is like a dream?" p. 80
-- Rochester's fever; gazed at by the natives pp. 67-69;
his lack of understanding of Christophine pp. 85-86
(too
slow, not lifting her skirt); blanks in his mind76
2. Gender: Rochester's motivation for getting married
-
"not yet" p. 77; p. 89, 90; He dislikes the people around, but he does
not reveal it ('not yet').
-
not love her, 93
3. Race+ Gender: the letter from Daniel
Rochester's suspicion of Antoinette's
madness; implication of Antoinette's sexual affair with others.
4. Gender: Rochester's self-centeredness and possessiveness:
p. 94; the priest's ruined house--Pere Lilievre--Pere Labat -- self-centered
103
5. Race+ Gender: Antoinette's temperament--sense of doom and
insecurity
6. Race+ Gender: Antoinette's insisting on using voodoo on "beke"
(white people) |
name and identity--the African belief in name; naming as a way of constructing
identities (the characters' attempts at naming themselves or the others
in order to shape and construct their own/other's identities).
-
Daniel Cosway--Esau (p.73)/Is he a Cosway?
(p.94)
-
Antoinette: called Bertha (p.68, 81, 88, 106-7);
Marionette (p.92)--Why does Rochester change
her names and the significance of this change of names? What is the
significance in calling her Marionette (a doll)?
-
the unnamed male narrator in Part II ('the man in Part III--Why does Rhys
choose to let him be the main narrator? Why does she keep him unnamed?
(Why does she want to have him sign his name in "Obeah Night"?)
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signs of betrayals--cock crowing (p.71, 97-8)
-
When Antoinette leaves Christophine with the medicine she gives,
she hears the cock crowing and says:
"This is for betrayal. But who is the traitor?. . . what does
anyone know about traitors. . .?"(118/70-71)
. What does she betray?
-
Rochester's affair with Amele after the "obeah night" (p.84)--
Why is he having this affair? How do people around Rochester
and change their attitudes toward him after this one-nigh-stand and why?
(Antoinette, Amele, Baptiste)
-
the untold love story between Antoinette and Sandi (p.30)--hints
at their sexual relationship (p.72-3, 75, 109-10)--white
dress (p.76) for Rochester and red dress for
Sandi (p.109).
Why does Antoinette decide to go with Rochester
but not Sandi?
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Rochester after the obeah night
-
Rochester's hatred:
-
mutual hatred (p.170/102)--
but this is told from Rochester's perspective.
-
Rochester has given up all pretense of gentlemanliness. "If I was
bound for hell let it be hell. No more false heavens. . . .
You hate me and I hate you. We'll see who hates best. But first,
first, I will destroy your hatred."
-
// "Obeah Night" (p.143)
-
His possessiveness:
-
unwilling to let Antoinette go and marry someone
else. (p. 159)
-
his "obeah": changing Antoinette into "mad Bertha"
(pp. 147; 166)
-
Rochester's appearance
in Part III : grey in his hair and misery in his eyes(105)
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