Dreams in Wide Sargasso Sea
Dreams are frequently used as a motif in literature. Why? In Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, dreams are so intricately intertwined with reality that the reader often has a hard time discerning which is which. Jean Rhys uses dreams to manifest Antoinette’s emotions she is unable to express in waking life. Antoinette, the main character, has three significant dreams. Her first dream occurs when Antoinette is merely a child. One day while swimming, Tia, her dark skinned childhood playmate, cheats her out of three pennies, steals her dress, and calls her “a white nigger”. And a “black nigger better than a white nigger” (22). She comes home in Tia’s dress with no money and sleeps.
Antoinette's first dream is clearly related to the characterization of Antoinette as well as the plot of the novel. Antoinette is walking in the forest, so it's probably dark, suggesting fear. She feels someone else's presence and is aware that they do not like her. Antoinette struggles throughout the novel with people who mistreat her. The fact that they’re out of sight in her dream suggests that perhaps Antoinette is never really sure who it is that “hates” her. This becomes apparent later in her life when she is married to Rochester and there is a palpable tension between the couple, and even a suggestion of hatred for Antoinette coming from Rochester. The heavy footsteps approaching and Antoinette’s inability to do anything about it represents her outward reaction to her environment: even when she is scared and unhappy, Antoinette rarely acts according to her emotions. Instead of running away in her dream, all she can do is scream and struggle. Although it’s an outward expression in her dream, it represents the inability to express these feelings. As a result, Antoinette seems to have a passive demeanor when in fact she merely cannot express her feelings. In her waking life, Antoinette cannot explain to her mother or her nurse where her dress is; she cannot explain what happened with Tia. Later in her waking life, Antoinette cannot express to her husband that she wants to stay on the islands and that England will kill her. Antoinette’s first dream characterizes Antoinette’s major flaw: an inability to express her feelings. The first dream also introduces the idea that Antoinette struggles with her relationships with others, and is aware that they often dislike her.
Antoinette’s second dream:
Antoinette’s second dream comes almost immediately after her stepfather has told her he will begin to arrange for suitors to see her. Inevitably, the dream has a lot to do with sex and purity and the struggle between the two, which will continue to be a theme throughout the novel. Antoinette is wearing a beautiful white dress that she doesn’t want to “soil”, a metaphor for Antoinette herself. She “follow[s] him (the man who is holding up the skirt of her dress), sick with fear but [makes]no effort to save [herself]; if anyone were to try to save [her, she] would refuse.” Here Antoinette is again unable to express her feelings, in a way almost identical to her first dream. She is scared and cannot, will not, do anything about it. However, now Antoinette says “this must happen.” Now Antoinette is no longer completely naïve, but submissive, further characterizing Antoinette. The man turns and looks at Antoinette “his face black with hatred”, bringing up again the hatred Antoinette feels from others. The dream could also be interpreted as strictly foreshadowing: the pure dress is a wedding dress, the man is Rochester, Antoinette’s reluctance to follow the man is the reluctance to marry Rochester, the submission to fate “this must happen” is marrying Rochester, the command of the man “Here, here” is Rochester’s command over Antoinette, the change from forest to enclosed garden is the future change from the uncontrollable Caribbean to stifling England.
By Antoinette’s third dream, she has lost the barrier between dreams and reality. She is living in the locked attic of Rochester’s mansion, and is considered crazy. Memory of Coulibri melts into Antoinette’s dreams, and she cannot distinguish between the two. The narration at this point in the novel is by Antoinette herself, and therefore it is unclear what actually happens, and what is dreamt. However, it is inferred that the dream will tell Antoinette what she must do. Before falling asleep, she looks at her red dress lying on the floor: “it was beautiful and it reminded me of what I must do.”
Antoinette’s third dream:
Letting herself out of the attic, Antoinette floats through the house. She senses someone following her (like in her first dream). She describes Thornfield and Coulibri without transition: She sees herself in Aunt Cora’s room at Coulibri, then sees a set of candles from Thornfield. It is unclear to the reader what is dream, and what is memory. "I saw the sunlight coming through the window, the tree outside and the shadows of the leaves on the floor, but I saw the wax candles too and I hated them" (188). Antoinette then sets fire to a set of curtains and a tablecloth in her dream. She calls for her childhood nurse to save her, and believes to be protected by the wall of flames that Christophine must have provided. Antoinette runs to the tower of Thornfield and sees her memories and dreams:
Antoinette’s final dream represents all the emotions she could never express: her love for Aunt Cora, the love and fear of the untamable life of Coulibri, the disappointment and anger at the man who suffocated her, the desire to be a bird and fly free from the hard stones of Thornfield.
Rhys uses dreams frequently in WSS to express what Antoinette cannot. Antoinette is a submissive character who cannot express her emotions. The reader learns this most clearly from her dreams. The author also uses dreams as a sneak preview for the future events of the novel. Rhys uses dreams as tools to characterize Antoinette and to foreshadow.
Dreams in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet
In Act 1 Scene 4 of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy Romeo & Juliet, Mercutio is trying to encourage Romeo to go out to a party. Romeo is hung up on a girl, and is downtrodden and morose. After much unheeded encouragement, Romeo states that he has had a dream about the evening, and that it does not bode well for him. Mercutio, intrigued, delivers his famous Queen Mab monologue. He speaks of Queen Mab, a fairy, riding in a walnut shell, bringing people their dreams as they slumber: lovers dream of love, lawyers “dream on fees”, soldiers dream of cutting foreign throats. What begins as a fairy tale becomes a tale of an “angry Mab” who “bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, which once untangled, much misfortune bodes.” Mercutio speaks of Queen Mab and her dreams as if in a trance. Shakespeare is suggesting that dreams are related to the dreamer, that they reveal their desires. However, the desires are not always pleasant, and by the end of the speech, the dreams and Queen Mab’s intentions are almost perverse. Queen Mab no longer brings that which is pleasurable, but instead she is “the hag, when maids lie on their backs, That presses them and learns them first to bear, Making them women of good carriage.” Romeo interjects, trying to break Mercutio from his trance: “Thou talk’st of nothing.” Mercutio, as if he were not just hypnotized by some greater power, agrees:
True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.
The passage does not make it clear whether or not Shakespeare believes dreams to have any truth. Prior to the Mab speech, Romeo says that dreamers “lie in bed asleep, while they do dream things true.” Next, Mercutio delivers his speech, initially saying that dreams are the inner desires of the dreamer, then suggests that they are the perverse desires that are often held in, then agrees with Romeo when he says he is talking of nothing; dreams are the “children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy.”
Dreams in Hamlet; Act 3, Scene 1
In Hamlet’s monologue from Act 3 Scene 1, he contemplates death, suicide in particular. Shakespeare chooses to have Hamlet compare death to sleep, and in doing so, brings up the matter of dreams. Now Shakespeare has already discussed dreams in Romeo and Juliet, and seems to have come to the conclusion that dreams hold desires; also, Shakespeare decides they are meaningless. In Hamlet, dreams have a similar perversion and darkness as they do in the end of Mercutio’s monologue.
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause
Hamlet is looking at death as an escape from life’s “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”However, death is like sleep, therefore there will be dreams. And what if these dreams are worse than the fate Hamlet is trying to escape? “With this regard…currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.” Hamlet’s monologue suggests that Shakespeare believes dreams are not pleasant.
Weaving it All Together
Shakespeare and Jean Rhys have conflicting opinions about the significance of dreams, both which can be discerned by the way each author uses them in their respective works: Rhys believes dreams are insightful and can characterize as well as foreshadow; Shakespeare believes they are almost irrelevant, but nearly always dark and perverse. Nevertheless, each author uses dreams to create juxtapose certain ideas: Rhys uses dreams to contrast lightness and darkness, purity and innocence with sin and impurity; Shakespeare uses dreams to contrast life and death, purity and impurity. Although neither authrist has the same opinion about the significance of dreams, there is a general consensus that dreams are important tools in literature.
