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Wide Sargasso Sea A Novel Jean Rhys Books

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Wide Sargasso Sea A Novel Jean Rhys Books

Truth can lie between two different realities.

In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester’s plans to marry Jane are frustrated by the revelation that the long-suffering man is already married and in fact, his mad wife is locked in the attic. But what is her story? And if she is ‘mad’, how did she get that way?

The wife is Antoinette Bertha Mason Rochester, nee Cosway; she prefers Antoinette. Rhys is masterful showing the descent of Antionette’s life and mind as well as the gradual rise of Rochester’s contempt and control of her. The evolution of Antoinette’s voice from clarity to ‘madness’ is exquisite and sad.

Like Rhys herself, Antoinette is of Creole descent. We meet her growing up in Dominica with her widowed mother and disabled brother. From the beginning, Antoinette is unsure of who she is. As white Creoles, they are rejected by both the English and the Blacks, who call them “white cockroaches.” As women, they lack status or agency. After the Emancipation Act frees the slaves, Antoinette’s slaveholding family, once wealthy, becomes destitute.

Antoinette’s mother pursues the only option she believes is open to her, and marries a rich white carpetbagger, Mr. Mason. Mason decides to replace the family’s remaining servants with Eastern coolie workers. The staff overhears, however, and they set fire to the home, Coulibri, resulting in the death of Antoinette’s brother and leading to her mother’s emotional devastation.

Mr. Mason abandons his mad wife to abusive caretakers and sends Antoinette to convent school. It is his responsibility to identify a husband for her, howe

ver, and he does. It’s an unnamed English gentleman, though readers of Jane Eyre will recognize him as Mr. Rochester.

As a second son, Rochester needs the money bequeathed to Antoinette by her stepfather. They wed, and at first the match seems successful. Rochester breaks down Antoinette’s reserve through affection and physical passion. Antoinette responds, opening herself to experience a happiness her childhood had trained her to never expect.

Yet Rochester has a nagging distrust of his exotic Creole wife, and antipathy for Dominica.

Geography becomes a proxy for the perceptions and misperceptions of the spouses. Neither view the home of the other as “real.” Antoinette sees England as cold and dark; in her eyes Dominica is lush, beautiful and fragrant. Rochester views the technicolor Dominica as ominous and threatening, as if he were about to be devoured by a giant Venus flytrap.

And then there is the Sargasso Sea, a dead-calm oceanic mire that Dominica borders upon. For Antoinette, it’s a metaphor for her deepest fears. For Rochester, it is a physical barrier between himself and his beloved England.

Rochester receives a letter received from a man who may or may not be Antoinette’s brother by her father and one of his slaves. The letter warns Rochester he was tricked into marrying a degenerate girl with a family history of madness. These allegations prey on Rochester’s insecurities and cause him to abruptly reject Antoinette. Her fragile sense of identity shaken and desperate to win back her husband’s affection, Antoinette resorts to means which unintentionally goad Rochester into acting on his worst impulses. The rift between them devolves into a chasm leading to her own undoing.

Rochester drags his broken wife to cold and dark England, where he confines her to the attic, under the care of servants paid for their discretion.

The Wide Sargasso Sea is a stunning work of understanding and empathy for all characters in this book – and the next.


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Wide Sargasso Sea A Novel Jean Rhys Books Reviews

This novels got commentary on racial issues, cheating in relationships, power, and culture. Decent read, but some of the translated material is difficult to understand at times.
This book was recommended to me as a "classic, must read". At first I resisted as I did not want to change my understanding of "Jane Eyre". but now I am pleased that I did read it. Actually, it enhances my understanding of Jane and Mr. Rochester.
Am still firmly convinced that "Reader, I married him" is the best line in literature.
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in late May while on vacation in Telluride, Colorado.

Once I was aware that this book was a prequel to Jane Eyre about the mad, passionate first wife of Mr Rochester, nothing would keep me from it - outside of a penny-priced copy of it being available on and it spending months & months stowed away in my bookshelf. So, after much ado, I dove in. It's a little disorienting to read between its dual narration and Antoinette's aggressive, spiteful prose, but it also reminds me of Alice Hoffman's A Marriage of Opposites headstrong heroine and her plight to know herself and who to trust in an almost anti-paradise.
This is one of my all-time favorite novellas. It feels like a book ahead of its time, considering how it challenges paternalistic structures and shifts modern perspectives on a classic literary work. Bronte certainly pushed the envelope in Jane Eyre by creating a heroine who bucked traditional feminine ideals, but Rhys takes it one, large step further. Bertha is no longer the beastly villain. Rather, Rhys humanizes her and fleshes out her backstory, and we as readers come to appreciate the complex powers at play in Antoinette's life--colonialism, racism, sexism, spirituality, psychology... Antoinette defies categorization, and so she is stripped of her individuality, dehumanized, and reshaped into a more palatable (read submissive) woman. This is an important book for women worldwide, and I share it with all my friends. Such an enduring masterpiece!
Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea is a beautiful postcolonial response to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. It's complex because in only 100 pages it touches upon multiple issues race, feminism, and class. It also offers multiple points of view and addresses stains in human history that are ignored by Jane Eyre. That is, Wide Sargasso Sea reminds the reader that most of the white characters throughout these stories, with the exception of the British servants, made their fortune through trading men, women, and children.
Unlike, Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea is hardly a romance. In many ways, it is in fact, a chilling horror story that exposes the harsh realities of the world.
While Antoinette Cosway lacks Jane Eyre's strength and inner dialogue that has captivated readers for centuries, she manages to leave the reader haunted.
Ultimately, Jane succeeds where Anne fails because she makes the best of the unfair hand that she was dealt and overcomes adversity. Anne never seems to try very hard, leaving one to presume that she suffered from the same genetic defect that plagued her mother.
The strongest woman in Wide Sargasso Sea is Christophine, a former slave who completely understands human nature.
Incredible. I first read Good Morning Midnight after hearing how Rhys could write her way into the reader and lodge there like a ghost, but that book left me disappointed.

I've read Jane Eyre (not required reading for Wide Sargasso Sea) and liked it, so decided to try Rhys again and was bowled over by this book!

If you want to be haunted by what you read to the point where the characters, imagery and overall feeling of the work follow you around for days afterward, Wide Sargasso Sea is the book for you. This is the Jean Rhys I was looking for. Hats off to her. Short, but tremendous.
Truth can lie between two different realities.

In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester’s plans to marry Jane are frustrated by the revelation that the long-suffering man is already married and in fact, his mad wife is locked in the attic. But what is her story? And if she is ‘mad’, how did she get that way?

The wife is Antoinette Bertha Mason Rochester, nee Cosway; she prefers Antoinette. Rhys is masterful showing the descent of Antionette’s life and mind as well as the gradual rise of Rochester’s contempt and control of her. The evolution of Antoinette’s voice from clarity to ‘madness’ is exquisite and sad.

Like Rhys herself, Antoinette is of Creole descent. We meet her growing up in Dominica with her widowed mother and disabled brother. From the beginning, Antoinette is unsure of who she is. As white Creoles, they are rejected by both the English and the Blacks, who call them “white cockroaches.” As women, they lack status or agency. After the Emancipation Act frees the slaves, Antoinette’s slaveholding family, once wealthy, becomes destitute.

Antoinette’s mother pursues the only option she believes is open to her, and marries a rich white carpetbagger, Mr. Mason. Mason decides to replace the family’s remaining servants with Eastern coolie workers. The staff overhears, however, and they set fire to the home, Coulibri, resulting in the death of Antoinette’s brother and leading to her mother’s emotional devastation.

Mr. Mason abandons his mad wife to abusive caretakers and sends Antoinette to convent school. It is his responsibility to identify a husband for her, howe

ver, and he does. It’s an unnamed English gentleman, though readers of Jane Eyre will recognize him as Mr. Rochester.

As a second son, Rochester needs the money bequeathed to Antoinette by her stepfather. They wed, and at first the match seems successful. Rochester breaks down Antoinette’s reserve through affection and physical passion. Antoinette responds, opening herself to experience a happiness her childhood had trained her to never expect.

Yet Rochester has a nagging distrust of his exotic Creole wife, and antipathy for Dominica.

Geography becomes a proxy for the perceptions and misperceptions of the spouses. Neither view the home of the other as “real.” Antoinette sees England as cold and dark; in her eyes Dominica is lush, beautiful and fragrant. Rochester views the technicolor Dominica as ominous and threatening, as if he were about to be devoured by a giant Venus flytrap.

And then there is the Sargasso Sea, a dead-calm oceanic mire that Dominica borders upon. For Antoinette, it’s a metaphor for her deepest fears. For Rochester, it is a physical barrier between himself and his beloved England.

Rochester receives a letter received from a man who may or may not be Antoinette’s brother by her father and one of his slaves. The letter warns Rochester he was tricked into marrying a degenerate girl with a family history of madness. These allegations prey on Rochester’s insecurities and cause him to abruptly reject Antoinette. Her fragile sense of identity shaken and desperate to win back her husband’s affection, Antoinette resorts to means which unintentionally goad Rochester into acting on his worst impulses. The rift between them devolves into a chasm leading to her own undoing.

Rochester drags his broken wife to cold and dark England, where he confines her to the attic, under the care of servants paid for their discretion.

The Wide Sargasso Sea is a stunning work of understanding and empathy for all characters in this book – and the next.