Product Description

Jean Rhys's late, literary masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent sensuality and beauty. After their marriage the rumours begin, poisoning her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is driven towards madness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2500 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
Jean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1894. Coming to England aged 16, she drifted into various jobs before starting to write in Paris in the late 1920's. QUARTET was first published as 'Postures' in 1928. Her novels, often portraying women as underdogsout to exploit their sexualities, were ahead of their time and only modestly successful. From 1939 she lived reclusively, and was largely forgotten when she made a sensational comeback with 'Wide Sargasso Sea' in 1966. She died in 1979.

Customer Reviews

The madwoman from the attic is rescued
This novel not only gives a voice to Bronte's madwoman from the attic, but it shows the woman as the true underdog she is --doubly oppressed by race and sex. A white Creole, the heroine Antoinette comes from an impoverished former slaveholding family on a Caribbean island, and as such is hated both by the black population (who continue to be exploited despite the formal abolition of slavery) and by the rich English "newcomers." After the death of her father and stepfather, and after her mother has been driven mad by their desperate citcumstances, Antoinette is sold, for the price of her dowry, to a young Englishman who wants to make a quick fortune. Rochester (who is never named and whose identity can only be guessed from the plot), is at the same time attracted and intimitated by her independence and exotic beauty, but soon the lush beauty of Antoinette's island turns into a nightmare for him too, as he is drawn into a net of lies and intrigues. Not willing nor able to listen to her side of the story ("There always is the other side," she once says to him), he begins to hate Antoinette with a hatred so fierce that it drives him to crush her personality until the point of madness.

In this novel, identity is never a simple and stable thing, and this is as true for Rochester as it is for Anoinette and the black servants who work for them. Despite the antagonistic feelings they all have for each other, there is a subtle mirroring taking place, blurring the distinction between "you" and "me", "them" and "us." Rochester's first person narrative (sandwiched and interrupted by Antoinette's first person account) reveals the extent to which he, too, increasingly feels a loss of control over his life and world, himself getting to the brink of madness. But with typical male dominance he decides to break Antoinette rather than be broken by her world (which he can neither understand nor accept), and so he ships her off to England, into the exile of his attic from which she shall never return alive. You will never read "Jane Eyre" the same way after having read this novel!

A prequel to Jane Eyre telling the story of Mrs Rochester
A wonderfully written prequel to Jane Eyre, recounting the story of the mad Mrs Rochester in her native land. It is a highly unusual genre of a novel, where the writer knows that the majority of the audience is fully aware what happens in the novel before they've read it.

Died Hard Charlotte Bronte fans approve of this novel, which shows the completeness with which Jean Rhys is successful in telling the untold story of Bertha (Antoinette as she is in this novel).

The novel is a fusion of opposing forces, and delves into the conflict within Antoinette as she fights the opposing forces in her and Rochester. The forces of black and white (of which she is both and neither)play on Antoinette, as do those of the cold, stark, hardness of Rochester compared to her own passionate warmth, with neither Rochester or Antoinette understanding each other's culture, personality or needs. Rhys wonderfully portrays the opposing worlds of the warm vibrant Caribbean of Antoinette's homeland and the cold, austere England where she finds herself even more a victim.

The major protagonists are both portrayed as victims, one of circumstance and environment and one of arrogance. Our sympathies are forced to lie with Antoinette as she has no control over anything, and in a sense is a pure victim. Whilst Rochester is seen as losing control over his own perceptions, and therefore chooses to believe the rumours, whilst Antoinette is painfully incapable of refuting the rumours.

This is ultimately a satisfying book, giving voice to the mad creature in Jane Eyre.

Caribbean then and now
I re-read this upon finding it - along with Phyllis Shand Allfrey's The Orchid House - on a bookshelf a decade after first buying and reading both. They both depict a colonial way of life which has come to an end. Wide Sargasso Sea is quite simply an exquisite portrayal of Jamaica and the other un-named island which the newly-weds travel to and albeit short, a marvellous novel. Jane Eyre was an must for O-level but I never warmed to her, unlike Antoinette, whose story is tragic and still an enigma in the novel. Who really made her insane?...