The Other Perspective..

         There is a whole new perspective upon Bertha Mason (Antoinette) as I read Wide Sargasso Sea. From the novel, Jane Eyre, Bertha has already endured madness of which we question the author as of why she has become as such. We may criticize her and her mentality, but we forgot one important factor of why Rochester would lock her up in the attic. Her brother is mental and her mother is undergoing the state of being mad, which both will eventually die at the end of Part 1. The reason why fire was mentioned repetitively in Jane Eyre was from this novel, the origin of Bertha Mason. The fire that destroyed her home followed by the death of both her relatives caused her to depict the same image in her head when she caused the fire in Rochester's mansion. Ironically, the fire that we know so much in Jane Eyre that stands for loving, warmth, and positive, is actually negative in Wide Sargasso Sea. Bertha Mason is overall, the other side of Jane Eyre, where she suffers everything that Jane Eyre does not or fully experienced. She has no friends because apparently, they betray her and also she has no one to love her because of her mentality. Antoinette, I say, is now the most pitied character in Jane Eyre now that we know how she was already placed inside the attic.