In the book Wide Sargasso Sea, written by Jean Rhys, which mainly explores the relationship between Antoinette/Betha and Rochester before appearing in Jane Eyre, there are many allusions (or disillusions) to the pinnacle of high English society. One of the most notable and subliminal of these allusions is when Antoinette describes Thornhill, and she refers to England as a place built from cardboard. Rhys writes, "Then I open the door and walk into their world. It is, as I always knew, made of cardboard. I have seen it before somewhere, this cardboard world where everything is coloured brown or dark red or yellow that has no light in it [...] This cardboard house where I walk at night is not England." (Rhys 107). Rhys's use of cardboard here is interesting because it directly contradicts the victorians' notion of their greatness by highlighting key societal structural issues, especially between class and gender.
The history of cardboard is obscure, with varying accounts of its creation; most scholars agree that cardboard was commercialized in 1817, but they disagree on who created it. Of the many people and groups linked to cardboard's conception, three names most often emerge as Malcolm Thornhill, the business M. Treverton & Son, and an unnamed German toy company (Blitz). The first cardboard boxes were vastly different from modern-day cardboard boxes. They were more like paper and much more fragile and flimsy than their modern-day successor (Printcosmo). It wouldn't be till 1856 when Edward Allen and Edward Healey created the first corrugated paper, which is used in modern cardboard boxes, but Allen and Healy’s corrugated paper was being used in the construction of tophats. Due to corrugated paper's solid and durable design, it allowed hatmakers to extend and emphasize the height of tophats (A Brief History of the Indispensable and Ingenious Cardboard Box).
Judging that Wide Sargasso Sea was set sometime between the 1830s and 1840's Antoinette most likely referred to the first non-corrugated cardboard that came around in 1817. Due to its weak and flimsy design and given the negative context that Antoinette speaks of Thornhill, she could have been calling Victorian Era's societal values faulty and very material. This point is only extended when Antoinette begins to describe the colors of what she is seeing. She lists the shades of brown, dark red, and yellow, all of which were colors used to describe Jamacia and people from there in the story. Given Jamaica's history with slaves and the Western world's view that slaves were objects, a unit of material to be bought or sold, the notion of Antoinette attacking victorian values is only highlighted more by the sentiment.
However, given that Wide Sargasso Sea was published in 1966, Rhys herself could have been commenting on the patriarchal structure of the victorian era in an attempt to connect it to the civil rights movement that was going on globally. Given that at the height of the victorian era, the tophat was a mainstay of high-class male fashion. The invention of corrugated paper allowed hatmakers only to extend the height of the hat. Rhys could have been very well making the claim the artificial structure of the male dominate society was arbitrary and without merit, much like a fashion accessory.

Works Cited

“A Brief History of the Indispensable and Ingenious Cardboard Box.” Paper & Packaging, https://www.howlifeunfolds.com/packaging-innovation/brief-history-indisp....

Blitz, Matt. “How the Cardboard Box Was Invented.” Gizmodo, Gizmodo, 9 Feb. 2015, https://gizmodo.com/how-the-cardboard-box-was-invented-1684626050.

Levins, Cory. “All Boxed up: An in-Depth Look at How the Corrugated Box Is Made.” Air Sea Containers, Inc., Air Sea Containers, Inc., 5 Nov. 2021, https://www.airseacontainers.com/blog/all-boxed-up-an-in-depth-look-at-h....
Printcosmo. “What Started the Cardboard Boxes?” Cardboardboxes, 29 Mar. 2018, https://printcosmo.wixsite.com/cardboardboxes/post/what-started-the-card....

Rhys, Jean, et al. Wide Sargasso Sea. W.W. Norton, 1999.