"She Was Not Even Normal": Unreliable Narratives of Female Insanity in Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and Wide Sargasso Sea

In my thesis, I interrogate narrative reliability related to depictions of female insanity in Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and Wide Sargasso Sea. By subjecting the trustworthiness of her storytelling to criticism, especially as regards the concealed madwoman, Bertha Mason, Jane's narration is revealed as unstable, offering problematic insight into a character long considered unflinchingly honest. In du Maurier's later literary adaptation of Jane Eyre, Bertha's parallel character, the eponymous Rebecca, comes to the fore, while the novel's unnamed narrator remains in the shadows, and bases much of her storytelling upon hearsay, rather than the "autobiography" of Jane Eyre. The most transparent narrative voice, however, is Antoinette, the main character of Wide Sargasso Sea, the 1966 prequel to Jane Eyre. Despite her madness, Antoinette's narration makes no attempt at dissemblance, speaking forthrightly about her marriage and experience, proving a truthful narrator and openly rejecting the marginal status the earlier narrators try desperately to hide.

Review of Complete Crime and Punishment Series

Some examples of topics covered include undocumented immigrants, guns, and terrorism within Crime and Criminal Behavior, vigilantes, Miranda warnings, and zero-tolerance policing within Police and Law Enforcement; insanity laws, DNA evidence, and victims' rights within Courts, Law, and Justice; gangs and prison violence, capital punishment, and prison privatization within Corrections; and school violence, violent juvenile offenders, and age of responsibility within Juvenile Crime and Justice. Note that Sage offers numerous reference works that provide focused analysis of key topics in the field of criminal justice, such as the Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment (2002), the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (2009), the Encyclopedia of Victimology and Crime Prevention (2010), the Encyclopedia of White Collar & Corporate Crime (2004), and the Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Violence (2008), available in print or as e-books via Sage Reference online.