"How would you like to be made exactly like other people?" is a question that echoes in Antoinette's mind at the beginning of Jean Rhys's reactive and revisionist text, Wide Sargasso Sea (Rhys 22). Building his protagonist from Charlotte Brontë's mad Bertha Mason, Rhys sets out to write the story, the preface, of one of the most discussed feminist figures in the literary canon. Giving voice to the voiceless, Rhys reconsiders the circumstance that culminated in Bertha's (Antoinette here) descent into madness. However, one character in particular – Christophine, Antoinette's former slave and surrogate guardian – continues to refuse to subscribe to this question of erased identity that shapes the novel. A character "embedded in multiple hierarchies" (Hai 494), Christophine challenges the subordination and assimilation of other, more powerful characters within the text whose actions aim to reduce her to the demeaning role of "other." Although her race, color, and gender leave her open to the discrimination and marginalization typical of members of these social groups, she subtly undermines these stereotypes not through explicit activist proclamations but through her silence and exit from a novel dominated by two white narrators. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Throughout the novel, Rhys exemplifies Christophine's narrative as a double submission and subversion in order to describe her challenge to patriarchal colonial powers and illustrate the resistance power of subtle and marginal actions. The opening of the novel presents a tone of colonial hegemony par excellence, immediately characterizing Christophine as an “other” within the text. However, what is perhaps most notable – and unusual for colonial discourse – is that Christophine opens the novel as the first woman named to the reader. Rhys opens his text: "They say when trouble comes near, and so did the white men... Jamaican women had never approved of my mother, 'for she's as pretty as herself,' said Christophine" (Rhys 9 ). By allowing Christophine to open the novel, great power is instilled in both her voice and her narrative; however, this power to be the first to speak is confounded by Christophine's inability to speak for herself. While his words open the story, Antoinette's words tell it at the end. This action of making herself speak exemplifies the authority that colonial and slaveholding traditions hold over Christophine, as she is unable to speak for herself despite possessing a quotable and insightful opinion. The language of Christophine's opinion particularly marks her out as an ignorant other. By declaring Annette "pretty and pretty," in her colloquial Caribbean dialect, Christophine's voice is inherently seen as less educated and less insightful. The juxtaposition of this native tongue to Rhys's eloquent opening prose of “serrate ranks,” crafted in long and complex syntax, further marginalizes Christophine and her voice as subsidiary. Repeatedly analyzed as the native trope of the other, Christophine's role is often diminished through postcolonial critic Gayatri Spivak's observation that "she is simply cast out of the story, with neither narrative nor characterological explanation or justice" (Spivak 246). However, it is this strange and confusing openness that gives Christophine power and takes it away, presenting the character as one with complex motivations, histories, and means. Furthermore, Rhys' narrative structure implies the ownership, both legal and informal, that Antoinette holds over Christophine. Her role as a slave, and then as a servant, in the novel makes herimmediately notice her as a dominated woman, but coupled with the statement to “close ranks” illuminates a characterization as a member of a minor, excluded group – a characterization assigned to her by the opening of the text. Christophine, despite her initial assignment to this place of marginalization, repeatedly threatens the powers, and the people, who aim to subjugate her. Throughout the novel, Christophine maintains an undoubtedly complex relationship with both Antoinette and Rochester, challenging one of the primary forms of her marginalization, servitude. To address bell hooks' black feminist exploration of what it means to be oppressed, Christophine undermines those who aim to dominate her while in her place of servitude. While Hooks recognizes that the concept of marginalization typically has a rather negative and oppressive connotation, she inverts this construct, uniquely defining the margin as the “primary space for counterhegemonic discourse… not only… in words but in habits of being and in the way which you screw” (hooks 206). Using this perspective, it becomes clear that Christophine's actions – while still at times in a position of submission – alter the forms of oppression imposed on her. For example, at the moment when Christophine is cleaning and serving coffee to the couple, Rochester harshly criticizes: "I can't say I like her language... And she seems so lazy, a loiterer" (Rhys 50-51). Despite being set at a time when Christophine is working and repeatedly refers to the two as “masters” (Rhys 50), Rochester chooses to distinguish her as, above all, “lazy.” This portrayal overtly refers not to his work ethic, but to his blackness, equating his performance with his race. The idea that “she loiters” inherently diminishes her to an entity responsible only for service and subject to the judgments of her “masters.” This moment, by contrast, gives way to the power Christophine relinquishes over language, once again complicating her submission. While clearly not Rochester's preferred rhetoric, Christophine's rhetoric creates a dialogue that disrupts expectations of submission and silence. It is through her language – even within a role of servitude – that Christophine asserts her power, aligning her edge with hooks' “place of radical possibility, [and] space of resistance.” (hooks 206). Christophine further dismantles her submissive role when she refuses Antoinette's money for an obeah love potion. By repeatedly begging Christophine to repair her marriage and love with Rochester, Antoinette, by participating in the obeah trade, legitimizes both Christophine's practice and her knowledge of the culture. Aiming to dominate the trade and by extension Christophine, she attempts to throw her “purse out of [her] wallet” (Rhys 70), claiming control of capital over her former slave. However, Christophine subverts this capitalist hegemony by simply refusing money, responding: “You don't have to give me money. I do this foolishness because you beg me, not for money” (Rhys 70). By directly rejecting Antoinette's money, Christophine distances herself from a capitalist interaction aimed at dominating her. He further extends his claim to power over the situation, denoting Antoinette's desires for the obeah potion as "madness". Although it is Christophine's own cultural practice, she aligns herself with the dominant rhetoric that considers obeah silly, not to belittle herself, but to embarrass Antoinette. In this moment, Christophine aims to redefine the power dynamics present between the two women, simply by moving away from the traditional interaction of money trading. Moving away from this practicecapitalist, Christophine voluntarily leaves the accepted mainstream and, probably, places herself on the margins. The occupation of this space, while traditionally undesirable, breaks the oppressive expectations that Christophine must maintain on the periphery. It is here that it becomes clear that Christophine's marginalization maintains hooks' ideal resistance "where one can say no to the colonizer, no to the depressor" (hooks 207), allowing her to deny and rebel against Antoinette's standards, dismantling capitalist ideals often associated with colonial hegemony. Perhaps the most powerful moment that Christophine commands within the novel is when she addresses Rochester's treatment of Antoinette, in a sense, verbally emasculating him. While Christophine's rebellion against Antoinette's expectations is powerful for its corrosion of master/servant and black/white dichotomies, her assertion of Rochester is arguably vastly more powerful in that it also addresses the patriarchal authority he holds over her as a man. Detested by his treatment of Antoinette, she accuses "all you want is to destroy her... you've made her worse" (Rhys 92-93), culminating in the vivid insult: "But you're as evil as Satan himself!" (Rhys 96). This proclamation that Rochester lives to see Antoinette deteriorate verbally assaults his wife's treatment. The harsh accusation of making his wife “worse” is particularly blatant and rather out of place from a servant, making Christophine's words that much more cutting. Describing Rochester in the simile “as evil as Satan” not only places Christophine's immense disgust towards him, but also compares him to an evil so grotesque that the only image it can conjure is that of the devil. This degradation not only diminishes Rochester, but also assigns to Christophine and her language a power for which he has already expressed contempt. His assertive speech, intended directly to question his patriarchal authority as Antoinette's husband, challenges his decisions and his command over a servant over whom he is supposedly expected to exercise great colonial dominion. Thus, Christophine's verbal attack subverts Rochester's position of authority, allowing her to combat colonial standards that seek her subjugation. Despite her dramatic proclamations of power against both Antoinette and Rochester, Christophine disappears from the novel in a rather abrupt exit. In the same way that Christophine subverts the subordination of the paired narrators, she refuses to leave the physical periphery and enter the center: England. At the height of her fight with Rochester, Christophine proclaims: “'Reading and writing I know not. Other Things I Know,'” at which his arc in the novel concludes, “He left without looking back” (Rhys 97). Christophine's adamant declaration of lack of literacy – something often attributed to intelligence and knowledge – does not capture her ignorance, but rather reveals an awareness of her own limitations. By confessing her deficit, Christophine reclaims her lack of understanding and instead supports her "other things I know" claim. This brief but poignant moment establishes Christophine's certainty in her role throughout the novel, as the short syntax rings out "know" at the close of the sentence, solidifying Christophine's rebellious confidence. Furthermore, he asserts a sense of wisdom and understanding in his action of “walking away.” It is this definitive past: "he left" that ultimately becomes Christophine's most powerful act of defiance. Without even “looking back,” she is able to reject a physical presence once the white narrators depart for England, instead clinging to its margin as “a place where one stays, to which one also clings… to.