Wide Sargasso Sea Lesson Plan

What happens when Antoinette drugs Rochester? How does he react?

Help your students to recognize that this is a terrible violation on Antoinette's part. She intentionally drugged Rochester and then had sex with him. Rochester's insistence that “She need not have done what she did to me” seems more like an attempt to salvage agency and masculine pride than a genuine attempt to assuage the reader that their sex was consensual. This may be a good opportunity to discuss the topic of consent, and clear up any misunderstandings students may have about whether a drugged or intoxicated person can give it (they can't). It is perhaps here, and only here, that we can find some...