![]() ![]() ![]() I was thirsty for her, but that is not love. We get his cold-minded blunt thoughts about this marriage of convenience: “I did not love her. Here Rhys narrates from a man’s perspective which is highly uncommon in her fiction. Antoinette’s future is ambivalent, but in the second part we learn an unnamed English gentleman has come to marry her as the marriage comes with a large dowry. It’s her way of shattering what she views to be an illusion.Īfter the destruction of her family’s Jamaican home her mother suffers from mental instability and she is sequestered in a sanatorium. It leads Antoinette to feel “I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.” This anxiety can be felt throughout all of Jean Rhys’ writing, but in this novel it gives a kind of logic to her eventual destruction of Thornfield Hall because it’s somewhere she clearly feels like she doesn’t belong. In Jamaica, the house was burnt because some of the island’s black community were showing this Creole family (whose forefathers owned slaves) that they don’t belong. These destructions of home are physical expressions of the untenable existence of their inhabitants. This event foreshadows what is to come many years later when Antoinette lives as a virtual prisoner in Thornfield Hall and resolves to burn it down. One tense night their house is set upon and burnt to the ground leading to the tragic death of Antoinette’s disabled brother. But one day her mother marries again and, though they live in relative harmony, the racial tension increases as resentment against the family grows. She and her mother live reclusively in the run-down house after the death of her father. It’s filled with vibrant invocations of the sensations and social makeup of this racially-divided community. The first third of the novel is about Antoinette’s Jamaican childhood. The result is a stunning slender novel that stands as the crowning achievement of Rhys’ literary career. ![]() In the decades between the publication of her previous novel “Good Morning, Midnight” in 1939 and the eventual publication of “Wide Sargasso Sea” in 1966, Rhys laboured to formulate this story by writing many drafts and perfecting the language. ![]() It’s tremendously moving to think how Rhys came to identify with Brontë’s slighted “mad woman” when her second husband gave her a copy of “Jane Eyre” to read. This makes “Wide Sargasso Sea” a fascinating encapsulation of much of the material Rhys was working out in her writing throughout her entire life. In addition, Antoinette’s Caribbean upbringing is so clearly twined with Rhys’ own childhood in the island of Dominica. For instance, Antoinette’s claim that “I often stay in bed all day” echoes closely Anna in “Voyage in the Dark” who often does the same. I read this novel considering these aspects many years ago, but it’s been such a pleasure revisiting it alongside Rhys’ earlier novels as they share or provide a different perspective on many of its ideas, themes and characters. It’s also hailed as an important work of postcolonial literature for its portrayal of Antoinette’s conflicted sense of national/racial identity as her husband is repulsed and rejects her Creole heritage leading to her descent into madness. It’s seen as an important novel for being a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” by imagining the life of Bertha Antoinetta Mason (the famous mad woman in the attic/first Mrs Rochester at Thornfield Hall). Drawing on her own Caribbean background, she illuminates the setting’s impact on Rhys and her astonishing work.“Wide Sargasso Sea” is probably Jean Rhys’ most famous novel as it is widely taught in literature courses. 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.Ī new introduction by the award-winning Edwidge Danticat, author most recently of Claire of the Sea Light, expresses the enduring importance of this work. This mesmerizing work introduces us to Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. 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. She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. Wide Sargasso Sea, a masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys’s return to the literary center stage. This “tour de force” ( New York Times Book Review) celebrates its 50th anniversary. ![]()
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