'Wide Sargasso Sea' by Jean Rhys is a haunting and dreamlike novel that serves as a prequel to 'Jane Eyre'. It delves into the life of Antoinette Cosway, the first Mrs. Rochester, exploring her descent into madness within the lush landscapes of the West Indies. The book provides a compelling backstory to the character of Bertha, portraying the complexities of class and racial tensions in a post-colonial and post-slavery society, all while challenging the reader's sympathies between Antoinette and Rochester.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content warnings include mental illness, domestic abuse, imprisonment, racial tensions, and themes of colonization.
From The Publisher:
One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World'
Jean Rhys's spell-binding novel Wide Sargasso Sea, inspired by Jane Eyre and winner the Royal Society of Literature Award is beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range.
'There is no looking glass here and I don't know what I am like now... Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?'
If Antoinette Cosway, a spirited Creole heiress, could have foreseen the terrible future that awaited her, she would not have married the young Englishman. Initially drawn to her beauty and sensuality, he becomes increasingly frustrated by his inability to reach into her soul. He forces Antoinette to conform to his rigid Victorian ideals, unaware that in taking away her identity he is destroying a part of himself as well as pushing her towards madness.
Set against the lush backdrop of 1830s Jamaica, Jean Rhys's powerful, haunting masterpiece was inspired by her fascination with the first Mrs Rochester, the mad wife in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.
'Compelling, painful and exquisite' Guardian
'Brilliant. A tale of dislocation and dispossession, which Rhys writes with a kind of romantic cynicism, desperate and pungent' The Times
'Rhys turns a menacing cipher into a grieving, plausible young woman, and one whose story says whole worlds about global mixtures, about the misunderstandings between the colonized, the colonizers and the people who can't easily say which they are' Time
Jean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1890, the daughter of a Welsh doctor and a white Creole mother, and came to England when she was sixteen. Her first book, a collection of stories called The Left Bank, was published in 1927. This was followed by Quartet (originally Postures, 1928), After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930), Voyage in the Dark (1934) and Good Morning, Midnight (1939). None of these books was particularly successful and with the outbreak of war they went out of print. Jean Rhys dropped from sight until nearly twenty years later she was discovered living reclusively in Cornwall. During those years she had accumulated the stories collected in Tigers are Better-Looking. In 1966 she made a sensational reappearance with Wide Sargasso Sea, which won the Royal Society of Literature Award and the W. H. Smith Award. Her final collection of stories, Sleep It Off Lady, appeared in 1976 and Smile Please, her unfinished autobiography, was published posthumously in 1979. Jean Rhys died in 1979.
Ratings (41)
Incredible (2) | |
Loved It (10) | |
Liked It (7) | |
It Was OK (10) | |
Did Not Like (11) | |
Hated It (1) |
Reader Stats (83):
Read It (41) | |
Want To Read (26) | |
Did Not Finish (1) | |
Not Interested (15) |
4 comment(s)
It feels like a crime to admit I didn't really like Jane Eyre. It's not bad written I just don't like how it goes but anyway this isn't a review of Jane Eyre. Spoilers bellow
I wasn't sure I wanted to read this at first but the more I thought about it the more curious I get. The tone of this book reminds me slightly of the beginning of Jane Eyre, but the tone just continues and gets darker. It's a story of a woman who didn't have control over her own life and sadly fell in wrong with the wrong man. I appreciated this novel and the way it was written much more.
And I just have to say: I don't like Mr Rochester. Didn't like him in Jane Eyre and definitely don't like him in this
Jane Eyre should never be read without this novel.
Wide Sargasso Sea is the other side of JE's coin; it illuminates aspects of the classic 19th century novel that Bronte either hints at or was not aware of due to her historical context.
The prose is luminous; reading from Antoinette's perspective is like being inside the mind of a hothouse butterfly, flitting and exotic and magical, and smart if butterflies are smart; but also delicate, easily bruised, and sure to die outside of her habitat. Not to mention being brutally locked away by the man who took you from the only place where you were happy.
Not just a companion to Jane Eyre, this is a feminist novel for our own times.
Wide Sargasso Sea is one of the fifty books included in
This is the Canon.
Wide Sargasso Sea is not the most comfy of books in that it doesn’t have the most enlightened depiction of colonialism and racism. Instead, the book offers a moderately self-aware, but not perfect, white view of colonialism in Jamaica, and uses the story of Jane Eyre to critique colonialism and misogyny.
Mr. Rochester narrates most of the book, representing how his perspective is forced not only on his first wife, Antoinette (who he renames Bertha), but also on the readers. Mr. Rochester senses the hostility of the inhabitants and the island itself, but he can’t fathom the reason for the hostility (I mean, other than a racist reason) as it doesn’t fit in with his colonizer worldview. Mr. Rochester believes that everything exists for him to possess, including Antoinette and her fortune. What Antoinette tells Mr. Rochester is incomprehensible to him: “[The island] is not for you and not for me. It has nothing to do with either of us. That is why you are afraid of it, because it is something else.”
Wide Sargasso Sea is an interesting book that I will probably have to read again to understand every nuance.
'There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.'
'Two at least,' I said, 'for the fortunate.'
I don't know how to rate this. Three stars feels too high because I didn't really
like this, but two stars seems a little low since it intrigued me and was too short to ever be frustrating.
The good: The setting was beautifully rendered. Apparently Jean Rhys grew up in the Caribbean, and her memory of the tropical location clearly served her well. Between the setting, cast of characters, and narrative style,
Wide Sargasso Sea has a very unique flavor that I found interesting.
The bad: This book ultimately fails as a critical exploration of how Antoinette/Bertha ended up in Mr. Rochester's attic because both main characters exhibited extremely unrealistic behavior at key plot points. Antoinette goes mad because…
she gets her heart broken/her husband doesn't pay enough attention to her (they've known each other for a little over a month)
? Yes, she's sympathetic, but incredibly weak (and the madwoman in
Jane Eyre did not seem weak). Rochester, whose role is even more critical as it's his behavior Rhys is supposedly critiquing, makes out even worse. Gone is any of the complexity with which Charlotte Brontë imbued his character. Instead he's a mix between an idiot and a villain:
he immediately falls out of love with his new wife because some random alleged relative writes to him saying she's going to go mad, and then he transforms into a sort of monster, cheating on her and taunting her by calling her "Bertha," the name of her dead mother (wtf?)
. It is neither compelling nor convincing. To add to the book's problems, the narrative is a bit confusing in parts, especially when it switches between Antoinette's and Rochester's perspectives with no warning or indication that it has done so (thankfully this edition has endnotes that clued me in). Many of the scenes feel disconnected from one another and seem to lack narrative purpose, and the pacing is incredibly strange (many, many pages are spent exploring Antoinette's childhood, but key moments—such as the month in which she meets, falls in love with, and agrees to marry Rochester—are completely omitted). Things completely fall apart in the third part, which is not only rushed but is so filled with references to
Jane Eyre that it's unable to stand on its own.
Overall,
Wide Sargasso Sea feels like a curiosity. I'm glad I read it to see what the fuss was about (and it does feel like it's almost culturally required reading after
Jane Eyre, which I adore), but I'm baffled at how it's managed to garner such acclaim as a brilliant work of feminism.
Some passages that struck me:
Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible - the tree of life grown and grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were over grown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched. One was snaky looking, another like an octopus with long thin brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root. Twice a year the octopus orchid flowered then not an inch of tentacle showed. It was a bell-shaped mass of white, mauve, deep purples, wonderful to see. The scent was very sweet and strong. I never went near it.
And if the razor grass cut my legs and arms I would think 'It's better than people." Black ants or red ones, tall nests swarming with white ants, rain that soaked me to the skin - once I saw a snake. All better than people.
Better. Better, better than people.
A great many moths and beetles found their way into the room, flew into the candles and fell dead on the tablecloth.
'
Rose elle a vécu, I said and laughed. 'Is that poem true? Have all beautiful things sad destinies?'
'A zombi is a dead person who seems to be alive or a living person who is dead…'
She was so lonely that she grew away from other people. That happens… You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls of away course, and you are alone.
If she says good-bye perhaps adieu.
Adieu - like those old-time songs she sang. Always
adieu (and all songs say it). If she too says it, or weeps, I'll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She's mad but
mine, mine. What will I care for gods or devils or for Fate itself. If she smiles or weeps or both.
For me.
Antoinetta - I can be gentle too. Hide your face. Hide yourself but in my arms. You'll soon see how gentle. My lunatic. My mad girl.
...If I was bound for hell let it be hell. No more false heavens. No more damned magic. You hate me and I hate you. We'll see who hates best.
What can you read after
Wide Sargasso Sea?
About the Author:
Jean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1894. After arriving in England aged sixteen, she became a chorus girl and drifted between different jobs before moving to Paris, where she started to write in the late 1920s. She published a story collection and four novels, after which she disappeared from view and lived reclusively for many years. In 1966 she made a sensational comeback with her masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea, written in difficult circumstances over a long period. Rhys died in 1979.
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