Haunted by Silences and Absences

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A key and defining difference between the two female protagonists is their antithetical treatments by their mothers. Eve Green demonstrates the great importance of parental love. Susan Fletcher effectively interweaves her own feelings of how important this aspect of love is into the novel. It is arguable that it is not the place that Eve loves but rather the presence of her mother and the strong sense of belonging. This is demonstrated through the strong sensory descriptions and an effective simplicity in her writing. Eve describes how her toy dog ‘smells of home’, of ‘jasmine, laundry, cigarette smells’, all of which relate to her mother in some sense. Eve grows up in a loving and largely positive environment. Through Eve’s narrative perspective, it is evident that her mother nurtures and cares for her deeply, such as when she tells her that she was ‘special from the word go’ and inventing the story of Eve’s birth into a magical fairy-tale. Eve’s memories are tainted with every detail of her mother, from the way ‘she loved thick body creams and scented talc’ to her ‘blue-black hair dropping around me’, highlighting the safety which Eve felt even as a young child. Use of a childish perspective depicting the death of Eve’s mother creates an innocent tone, allowing the reader to more deeply feel and experience the events with Bronwen’s own personal loss which she struggles to deal with. Fletcher also utilises metaphor to demonstrate this. On the day her mother died, Eve describes how the ‘cold terraced house seemed to hold its breath’. This emphasises how it is not the home itself she loves but rather her mother, hence without the warm living presence of her, the house seems cold and sinister. In my opinion, it is clear here that Eve is deeply affected by the death of her mother even in the first moments of her death. This point is emphasised further when Eve is leaving Birmingham, she says how she ‘didn’t want to go’, and she ‘wanted [her] beanbag and a glass of milk and the warm smell of [her] mother’s hair’. The repeated use of ‘and’ in the list adds to the childish narration, as if she is speaking and her words are tumbling out. The safety that her mother’s hair provides suggests how connected Eve feels to her mother. This urges the reader to consider the sense of loss comes from losing her mother rather than leaving her home. Additionally, when Eve is desperate to leave Birmingham, it becomes evident that love of place is linked to the people. She does not want to leave behind Birmingham because of her memories of her mother. Realistically, it’s unlikely that the place would still be home to her if her mother was not there. This is because of Eve’s description of Birmingham – all the positive notions she describes seem to fundamentally link to her mother rather than Birmingham itself. Love of family is an aspect of novels which is extremely important to Fletcher, one which she always feels the strong need to communicate.

Although an effective replacement is impossible, Eve’s grandmother serves as her new mother figure, providing a different yet still positive sense of love and security. Again, this is demonstrated using sensory description and Eve’s childish perspective. When she arrives in Wales, she describes her Grandmother’s ‘rough, pink hands’ and the new smell of ‘straw, dung, petrol… the tang of wood smoke’, yet the way she ‘grasped’ her collar with her fist and ‘would not let go’ shows the beginnings of this new and important relationship. Eve’s feelings of being loved and cared for in childhood shape her as a woman later in her life. It means she can love and trust others as she has had this sense of security. Hence, she is able to give herself and love Daniel without the strong element of fear which Antoinette seems unable to shake.

Contrastingly, Antoinette is rejected by her mother. Antoinette used to ‘make excuses to be near to her’ but is frequently cast aside and forgotten - ‘she pushed me away, not roughly, calmly, coldly without a word as if she had decided once and for all that I was useless to her’. She constantly seeks her mother’s protection. Like in Eve Green, Antoinette sees her mother’s hair as protection - ‘A soft black cloak to cover me, hide me, keep me safe’. The metaphorical ‘soft black cloak’ describes the safety and protection Antoinette connotes with her mother. However, she abandons her attempts. This is further informed with simple sentence structure – ‘but not any longer. Not any more’ – the structure heightens the emotional impact, allowing the reader to deeply empathise with Antoinette’s efforts to be physically and emotionally close to her mother. Antoinette’s lack of security dramatically contrasts Eve’s. The exclusion from her mother’s life is made more evident by Annette’s lenience to Pierre as Annette clearly has the capacity to love, yet chooses to cast Antoinette aside. This rejection never seems to be resolved for Antoinette, in my opinion, this initial rejection serves as the origins of her fearful nature and the way she willingly gives herself to Rochester. Jean Rhys even wrote a poem to express a closeness she once felt with her mother. Her nostalgia and reminiscence of this comes through in her depiction of Antoinette’s rejection. Jean Rhys’ ‘ruptured relationship with her mother created a void that she filled with nostalgic yearnings and a dread of future betrayal’[1]. An additional lack of clarity in Antoinette’s life is the ambiguity regarding other parental figures. Christophine is one example but is not enough to serve as an effective mother replacement. Christophine’s brash attitude depicted in careful verb choice - she ‘scrubbed’ Antoinette’s face and dialect used - “throw away that thing. Burn it” show how Antoinette is cared for but not compassionately loved in the way a child needs to be. This is also a reflection of Rhys’ own life, as she too had a black nurse and was torn between feelings of love and fear towards her. Postcolonial critics have pointed out that Christophine’s characterisation is very stereotyped. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, dealt with this issue and ever since, it has been taken up by other critics. In 1993, Maria Olaussen connected Christophine to the stereotype of the black ‘mammy’, a nurturing black servant figure found in many novels and films.

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