Wide Sargasso Sea
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Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys
Literature
James Mustich
Jul 31, 2018
In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the revelation of the existence of Bertha Mason, the first wife of Edward Rochester (the man Jane is about to marry), exposes Rochester’s duplicity, disrupting his bigamous wedding to Brontë’s heroine. The madwoman in the attic plays a larger role in the novel’s plot—but that’s another story. This story, Wide Sargasso Sea, imagines the early life of Brontë’s strange, benighted character, detailing her childhood and adolescence in the West Indies and tracing her tragic progress to her ultimate confinement in Rochester’s Thornfield Hall. Far from the monster Rochester loathes and Jane describes with fascinated horror, Rhys’s Bertha (known as Antoinette Crossway for most of Wide Sargasso Sea) is a sympathetic, tender, poignant figure. There but for the grace of God, the reader can’t help but think, goes Jane. If Jane Eyre is the most brooding and beautiful of romantic ballads, lushly orchestrated and achingly sung, Rhys’s compact and haunting tale is like a jazz improvisation on the same melody and themes: edgy, exploratory, startling, and unforgettable.
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Kathryn McBarron
Feb 20, 2019
A beautiful spin on the classic Jane Eyre storyline. Adds more dimension to "the crazy wife in the attic".
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