They are Victims Both

Antoinette is undoubtedly the primary victim in Wide Sargasso Sea. Her whole life has been filled with hardship after hardship: as a young child she was spurned by the former slaves, other whit Jamaicans, and even her mother. She witnessed a stranger take over her home and drive her mother insane. Her house is burned down and one of her only friends throws a rock at her, injuring her greatly. Eventually, she and all of her possessions are sold off to another person who goes on to lock her up in a prison of an attic. If Antoinette is the primary victim of the story, than it is easy to paint Rochester as the primary Villain. I would argue, however, that Rochester is another victim of the story and suffers at the hand of the same villain, although he undoubtedly does not suffer to the same extent as Antoinette.

I see the primary villain of the book as being the systems of laws and institutions that are the British empire. The extent of Antoinette’s suffering at the hands of British law and customs is closer to the surface and easy to see than that of Rochester’s, so I will explore Rochester’s suffering more. Under British law and customs, only the eldest son gets to inherit the possessions, status, and even identity of his family in full. As a younger son, Rochester is denied the home he grew up in and along with it his very place in the world. At the same time, society and likely his father send him the message that the entire measure of his success and worth is the extent to which he fills his father’s shoes. The fact that his father’s shoes are not left to him, puts him in a really challenging situation where his very identity is at stake.

In order to do his best to succeed in the context of the English aristocracy, even though he was locked out of it by his order of birth to some extent, Rochester heads to the east indies to marry and gain an estate to be his own. Once there, he finds himself in a completely unfamiliar world and feels very uncomfortable and very much the outsider. He then finds out that he had unwittingly married a woman thought widely to be crazy or on the way to it, confirming his suspicions that this new unfamiliar world was hiding something from him. Rochester’s life was such a series of painful events that its best moment may have been the death of his brother and father. Finally, he could become what society had taught him he must become, but his family members had to die so he could do it. Once he has finally achieved his ambition that he had had knowing or not since the day of his conception, Rochester seeks burry all of his painful past and to lock it away out of sight. His locking up of Antoinette can be seen as a physical manifestation of this psychological need to forget and repress.

Meursault Wants to Kill

It is hard to decipher just what motivates Meursault in The Stranger. He tells his story as if he is essentially emotionless and acts totally in the present, basing his actions only on his state of physical comfort or discomfort. I would like to propose this detachment of his is a subconscious defense mechanism thrown up to prevent him from doing harm to himself and others. This defense mechanism is guarding from one thing in particular: Meursault’s desire to kill, and the events that lead to Meursault killing the Arab on the beach constitute a breakdown in these defense messages.

At the start of The Stranger, we are struck my Meursault’s apparent disinterest and lack of grief at his mother’s funeral. Based on this proposed interpretation of his character, this can be explained as a result of Meursault subconsciously destroying any emotional response he might have to death in order to prevent his desire to inflict it. During the funeral scene we see the imagery of an overbearing sun, red dirt, and uncomfortable heat which reappears during the murder scene. This can be interpreted as an inner conflict of Meursault’s as the walls protecting him from emotions associated with death are assaulted by the numerous and powerful emotions associated with the death of his mother. The same defenses that block out Meursault’s desire to kill inadvertently prevent him from grieving for his mother.

The beach scene near the end of part one is a mystery in many ways. It is hard to explain Meursault’s motivation for repeatedly returning to the beach. One explanation is that he simply wants to kill the Arab. The entire Raymond story line is Meursault’s journey to the murder he commits, and this is signified by the fact the part one ends abruptly upon his shooting the Arab. Raymond’s violent nature slowly works away at Meursault’s defenses and his innate desire to kill is brought ever closer to the surface. The intensity of the events at the beach turn this gradual undermining into a full-on assault. The violence Meursault witnesses in the first fight is enough to greatly accelerate the deterioration of his defenses, and his taking the gun from Raymond is an admission of near defeat. The intense physical discomfort Meursault feels after the second engagement and preceding the third is a manifestation of his psychological defenses’ final stand against his desire to kill, and in the end this desire wins out. He kills the Arab, and his desire to kill satiated for the present, his shields are again raised. These shields prevent him from recognizing the potential impact of his actions and keep him from even trying to do anything to save himself from punishment.

Maybe.