Quote 1
There
is no looking glass here and I don't know what I am like now. I
remember watching myself brush my hair and how my eyes looked back
at me. The girl I saw was myself yet not quite myself. Long ago
when I was a child and very lonely I tried to kiss her. But the
glass was between us—hard, cold and misted over with my breath.
Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place
and who am I?
This passage, narrated by Antoinette
in Part Three, reflects several significant themes regarding her
captivity in Thornfield Hall. Delivered in the present tense, these
lines suggest the immediacy of Antoinette's situation and place
us within the attic alongside Rhys's heroine. While Antoniette is
unable to follow the passage of time, she remains acutely perceptive
about her immediate surroundings, maintaining a lucidity that often
breaks the surface of her madness. For instance, she notices the
absence of a mirror, as it would provide her with a reflection of
herself and a reassurance of her existence. An important motif throughout
the novel, mirrors underscore the important questions of identity
that pull at Rhys's central characters. Annette, Antoinette's mother,
constantly looked for her own reflection—a habit adopted by her
daughter, and one that indicates their shared need to be visible
in a world that neither accepts nor invites them. By putting Antoinette
in a mirrorless prison, alone save for a taciturn guard, Rochester
exacerbates her feeling of disconnection. He has already deprived
her of her name, calling her Bertha and effectively erasing her
existence as Antoinette. Without a name, she does not know what
to call herself; without a face, she becomes a ghost. As a child,
Antoinette tried to kiss her reflected image, uniting the two halves
of her split cultural identity, but she came up against the hard,
separating glass. Antoinette's lifelong desire to close this gap—to
become a visible, accepted member of any community—informs this
passage and accounts for her inability to grasp and master reality.
