Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

 

Summary (from the publisher): Wide Sargasso Sea, a masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys’s return to the literary center stage. She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-selling novel, she ingeniously brings into light one of fiction’s most fascinating characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. This mesmerizing work introduces us to Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.

A new introduction by the award-winning Edwidge Danticat, author most recently of Claire of the Sea Light, expresses the enduring importance of this work. Drawing on her own Caribbean background, she illuminates the setting’s impact on Rhys and her astonishing work.

Review: This novel is Jean Rhy's best-selling and best-known book and is largely considered a classic. It is a prequel novel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and imagines the life of Mr. Rochester's first wife, who Rhys renames Antoinette Cosway. Antoinette grows up in Jamaica in sharp poverty, shortly after the emancipation of slavery. When she inherits a large sum from her stepfather, she is tricked (trapped?) into marriage with Mr. Rochester and the reader is taken along as her marriage unravels and finds out how she winds up in the attic in Bronte's novel. 

I first read this novel as a teenager, shortly after the first time I read Jane Eyre and remember being startled by the author's reimagining and reinvention of the character of Rochester's wife. This is very much written in Rhy's own unique voice with her distinct spin on the story, largely shaped by her own childhood and experiences. I think the book can be read as a standalone and can stand on its own two legs as a story, independent of Bronte's novel, but it is more interesting to read them and see the first wife given voice in Rhy's novel. This was a fascinating look at the social, cultural, and racial dynamics of the country in upheaval and also an interesting insight into mental health.

The setting of this feels lush and hot and sticky which contrasts sharply with the cold and windswept language of Bronte's novel. There is also a lot of fixation on color in this, including skin color. This is a damning portrait of Rochester, who is portrayed as taking advantage of his wife for her money and then discarded her when he is given the slightest hint that she might be racially other: "Long, sad, dark alien eyes. Creole of pure English descent she may be, but they are not English or European either." 

I have read three of Rhy's books now and understand why this one is the most well-known. They are all similar in themes, but this is my favorite of the three because of its lush setting, it's vivid descriptions, and the intriguing play on a classic and well-known character. I appreciate how Rhys took an established story and made it her own. 

Stars: 3.5

Related Titles: 

• Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys
  
• Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys