The Prequel Trap: Intertextuality in an HL Essay Proposal
An HL student submits a 300-word proposal for the HL Essay. Her line of inquiry is: 'How does Jean Rhys show that Bertha Mason was a victim?' She plans to write 1,500 words on Antoinette's marriage and madness, with no quotations from Jane Eyre. When the teacher points out that Wide Sargasso Sea is in dialogue with Brontë's novel, the student replies that she wants to 'focus on Rhys' and that Jane Eyre is 'just the background'. The teacher must respond before the proposal deadline on Friday. The student is predicted a 5 and is anxious about losing marks; she has read Jane Eyre once, two years ago. The department's HL Essay guide says that a line of inquiry should be 'focused, literary, and open to interpretation'.
1. Why is the line of inquiry weak for an HL Essay, and how would you reframe it as an intertextual question?
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Why the question is weak. 'How does Jean Rhys show that Bertha Mason was a victim?' is a theme-and-character question with a yes/no shape. It invites a list of ways Antoinette suffers, and it can be answered without Brontë. For the HL Essay, the line of inquiry needs to be focused, literary, and open to interpretation; this one is focused on a judgement ('victim') rather than on a textual relationship. It also risks treating 'victim' as a fixed label rather than something the novel complicates.
Intertextual reframe. Better: 'How does Wide Sargasso Sea revise the silence assigned to Bertha in Jane Eyre through Antoinette's first-person narration?' Or: 'How do names, money, and narrative voice in Wide Sargasso Sea contest Jane Eyre's account of madness?' These questions require both texts, but the essay can still centre on Rhys.
Why it helps the student. The intertextual version is more likely to produce analysis because every claim about Antoinette can be measured against Brontë's presentation. The student does not need to reread all of Jane Eyre; she needs four or five key passages: Bertha's laughter, Rochester's account of the West Indies, the arson, and the 'madwoman' language. The essay then argues about revision, not about whether a character is a victim.
2. What kinds of evidence count as intertextual evidence, and what would you tell the student to collect in a week?
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What counts as intertextual evidence. Not a summary of the other plot, and not the mere fact that one text came first. Look for:
- Paired passages: Brontë's Bertha laughing in the attic against Rhys's Antoinette hearing the parrot or the forest; the same image recurred with a different function.
- Names and labels: 'Bertha' versus 'Antoinette'; 'Mason' as a name that carries colonial and familial betrayal; the word 'madness' in each text.
- Narrative structure: Jane's retrospective first person against Rhys's shifting narrators (Antoinette, Rochester, Grace Poole). The shift changes whose account the reader trusts.
- Setting and money: Thornfield versus Coulibri; the English marriage settlement versus the Jamaican plantation economy.
- Direct echo or revision: a phrase, image, or plot event that gains meaning when read beside its counterpart.
A week's collection task. Build a three-column table: 'Brontë passage', 'Rhys passage', 'what changes'. Aim for six to eight pairs, with short quotations. Then write one sentence per pair beginning 'Where Brontë..., Rhys...'. This gives the essay an argumentative spine and prevents plot summary.
3. How would you explain the difference between 'influence' and 'dialogue' in 150 words, and why does the distinction matter for the essay's argument?
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Influence versus dialogue. 'Influence' suggests a one-way transfer: Brontë wrote something, Rhys took it, and the later text is a copy or correction. That model invites a ranking - 'Rhys gives Bertha a voice that Brontë denied her' - which can be true as a claim but is too crude to sustain 1,500 words. 'Dialogue' suggests that the later text answers the earlier one, and that the earlier text is also changed when read through the later one. The reader of Jane Eyre after Wide Sargasso Sea cannot hear Bertha's laughter in quite the same way.
Why the distinction matters. A dialogue model produces analytical questions: Whose voice is heard? What does the later text leave unanswered? Where does Rhys resist or repeat Brontë's colonial assumptions? A ranking model produces evaluation without evidence. The student can still argue that Rhys critiques Brontë, but she must show the textual mechanism - narrative voice, naming, money, or setting - rather than assert that one novel is more sympathetic. The phrase to avoid is 'prequel'; the phrase to use is 'revision' or 'writing back'.