Wide Sargasso Sea is the only book we’ve read this year to use multiple perspectives in telling a story, and I really liked the effect it created. While there was some confusion in who was narrating certain points, being able to explore the internal dialogue of both Antoinette and Rochester was incredibly illuminating. It is crucial for her gaining sympathy later on that Antoinette narrate her childhood scenes and give us a sense of her loneliness and innocence. However if Antoinette had narrated the rest of the book we wouldn’t experience Rochester’s confusion with the world, and we would lose Rochester’s thoughts which--in my opinion--actually make him a more hated character. Rochester’s thoughts are racist, judgemental, selfish, and uncaring, as seen in his description of Daniel Cosway and his reactions towards Antoinette living without him. The scene where he justifies bringing her along to England is especially revealing of how sick his character is by the end: wanting Antoinette to come with him because he is jealous and possessive of her; he’s allowed to start a new life, but she isn’t. “I’ll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She’s mad, but mine, mine. What will I care for gods or devils or for Fate itself. If she smiles or weeps or both. For me.” If we didn’t have Rochester’s perspective, we would perhaps view Rochester the same way as in Jane Eyre: a mysterious man who doesn’t always do good things, but may have some tragic backstory we don’t know about and therefore we don’t judge him as much because we see he’s in pain. But by narrating a majority of the story from Rochester’s point of view, Rhys is exposing his motives and internal thoughts, and making it impossible for the reader to give him the benefit of the doubt. It also allows us to have some sympathy for Rochester earlier in the novel where we know he is also lonely and lost, but by the end of the novel Rochester’s thoughts make him almost evil as he disregards everything about Antoinette as a person and just thinks of her as belonging to him. “My lunatic. My mad girl.”
After being exposed to the mindsets of both Antoinette and Rochester and getting exhausted from their emotional turmoil and general life problems, having a character like Christophine in the story is much appreciated. Rochester is cruel and Antoinette is emotionally unstable, but Christophine is actually productive and relatively level-headed. While I have sympathies for both Antoinette and Rochester, I definitely think Christophine is the easiest character to fully support. She is responsible, takes good care of Antoinette, has an admirable amount of respect/fear from the townspeople, and she gives pretty good advice. She’s a rational thinker and doesn’t get completely taken over by emotions the way Rochester and Antoinette do, yet she is still fiercely protective of Antoinette, and she can still understand what they are feeling.
Christophine is a vitally important person in Antoinette’s life, having had no other figure to love her or help her. Even when her mother was around, Christophine was the person Antoinette associated with safety and comfort. “I left a light on the chair by my bed and waited for Christophine for I like to see her last thing. But she did not come, and as the candle burned down, the safe peaceful feeling left me.” Christophine stays with Antoinette and though she is her maid, Antoinette respects her and trusts her with her most important questions. I think Christophine is pretty intimidating and maybe if she hadn’t performed Obeah for Antoinette, or if she hadn’t mentioned to Rochester the possibility of Antoinette remarrying, things would have turned out better. But in comparison to Rochester and Antoinette, her sound advice and also her loyalty and responsibility make her a much more likable character.
It would have been cool to get some of the story from Christophine’s perspective, but I don’t think it would have been completely necessary because she is able to speak about her emotions regarding Antoinette very effectively anyway, unlike both Rochester and Antoinette who go crazy trying. Still, her character is pretty mysterious and I'd be interested in knowing some of her backstory.
I think you're right that Rochester would be a more one-dimensionally evil or villainous character without his narration--even if Antoinette were able to present him in a more or less "balanced" way (if Rhys reflected her being enamored with him when she was enamored with him, for example, so there's no sense of this all being written in bitterness after the fact), there's so much she simply wouldn't know. In Jane Eyre's narration, Rochester flickers between sympathetic/tragic and self-absorbed/proud, but Jane has reason to be more forgiving and generally more patient and detached in her assessment of him. Antoinette has a strong investment from the start. But there's also the essential effect of getting outside of Antoinette's perspective, of hearing about her as Rochester sees her, and as he hears about her from others.
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