Wide Sargasso Sea 2
"Bertha is not my name. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name," (147)
This passage struck me with this whole idea of name as identity. Of course, if someone walked up to you on the street and asked you for your name, and when you gave it, told you they knew what you are, who you are, you would refuse to believe them. How could a name be the essence of something?
A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet, right? But in this book, the name hold much more weight than that. It would be easy to suggest that the reason for this is this subtle magic "obeah" that seems to be pulling the mystical strings of the novel. Sometimes, magics deal in naming, which can alter the identity of the object, if I name a tree a table, that is what it becomes.
On the other hand, there is always the stigma of identity that is attached to the name. If you don't know what someone's name is, you make an assumption sometimes, "oh, he looks like a John." It's in kidding, but it's still a reality. Nicknaming people based on their appearance is another normality that happens every day. The name is used to identify someone, so in some ways, a name really does matter. You think two completely different things if you hear "that red flower" and "rose." The same goes for "Antionetta" and "Bertha." So when Rochester calls her "Bertha," she must get the feeling that he considers her to be like her mother. If he is identifying her that way, then he must be identifying her with her mother, which, in keeping with this logic, would effectively make her into her mother, thus marking her crazy or mad.
Another thing that strikes me is the use of "trying." "Trying," to me, denotes lack of success. He's trying real hard to turn her into someone else, but at this point its not working. Obviously it works later on, because she loses it completely and becomes Bertha and burns that shit down, but at this point it is still not working. Also, "trying" denotes purpose. Like she's accusing Rochester of purposefully attempting to change her into this lunatic that her mother became. Like the madness is his fault (and it probably is, let's face it, that guy really sucks) and she knows it.
I also think Rochester calls her Bertha as a way to separate himself from her. If her name is something else, then she is not the woman he married, she is something—someone different, and apart from him. It is what allows him to live as an "unmarried" man later on and get all up on Jane.
I think the moral of this story is that Rochester is a cruel, closed minded, racist bastard who deserves to be blinded, because as a young man he was completely blind to the beauty of another culture.













