ANGLAIS :: EXCERPT 6 - Antoinette is getting mad

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ExCerpt 6 - Antoinette is getting mad

Plan de l'article

After her visit to the servant Christophine, Antoinette tells her husband the sad story of her family, as Christophine advised her. Though Rochester relents a little, she gives him Christophine’s love potion, which makes him sick. Thinking he has been poisoned he sleeps with the servant Amélie for a revenge.
Antoinette, who has heard it all, runs away and when she comes back she gets drink.

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I - Antoinette behaviour

Daniel Cosway’s false accusation now seems to come true. Now, Antoinette is driven to the verge of madness.

She drinks like a fish / a bar fly (l.5-26).

Her hair is disheveled, uncombed (l.2). She is “wild-haired” (l.51).

Her eyes are “inflamed and staring” (l.2), she is “red-eyed” (l.51).

Her face is “flushed and swollen” (l.2-3).

She is bare-footed (l.3).

She has a “crazy laugh” (l.41).

Her speech is rather incoherent (l.11-22).

She curses shout obscenities.

She threatens Rochester with a broken bottle (l.48).

She has murder in her eyes.

She bites him.

She even promises death to him (l.36) in the light of the last pages, this sounds ominous.

Though she is not actually a lunatic, she looks like one to Rochester whose mind has been prepared to it by Daniel’s Cosway better.

II - Antoinette's bitterness

Far from her former happiness, Antoinette is now revolted.

A - The family

She brings both her father and her mother into the scene to put Rochester to shame.
She reminds him that her mother was a victim of injustice by the English government (no compensation money), by the white community (she was a kind of outcast pariah); she is a victim of fate too (destiny): her only son was crippled and died early, her property was burnt down.

Finally, she was abused and probably raped by a black couple before dying an insane woman.

She idealizes her father into a heroic knight who would have come to save her.

B - Slavery

Antoinette alludes to the way planters used to treat their female shaves accuses Rochester of doing worse with Amélie (l.13-15) taking advantage of her then quickly getting rid of her.

C - Rochester’s unfaithfulness

Antoinette hints at Rochester’s sleeping with Amélie (l.13). But she doesn’t directly accuse him.

Maybe she doesn’t really care about his sleeping with Amélie.

What she cares about is his not loving her, is the fact that she didn’t love her.

She seems ready to forgive him. “Don’t you love me at all?” (l.38).

She might put up with unfaithfulness if she had his protection. “It’s not the girl” (l.32).

She can’t bear his destroying the cocoon in which she sound safety (l.32-35).

Now she has fallen what consumes her, not Rochester’s brief affair.

There seems to be no recovery now from such antagonism between Antoinette et Rochester (things are past recovery).