I finished it, but I was confused, couldnt follow it, it made no sense. Its supposed to be the pre-quel to Jane Eyre which is such a wonderful idea, but I was befuddled and did not enjoy it.

This was amazing and changed the way I will think about Jane Eyre forever. Rhys's style is lyrical, the historical era she evokes so fraught and nuanced, so haunting and heartbreaking (that tension between white guilt and systemic cultures of oppression!) ( )

Excerpt from Linus's Blanket - Rhys is a thought provoking and insightful writer. She puts the truth of people and their situations into her colorful characters and their dialogue, and lets her readers draw their own conclusions. It’s not a happy book, and if you’ve read Jane Eyre you don’t go into it with much hope for Antoinette because you already now the ending, but I enjoyed reading it and the perspective that it provided. It’s also one of those books that will yield more with each reading. Jane Eyre fans and those looking to read plantation era Caribbean fiction should definitely check this one out. ( )

Very pre-feminist in its look at the mad woman in the attic. Nice and short too. Have i said I like short? ( )

Wide Sargasso Sea
By Jean Rhys

Several times I’ve come close to reading this short novel – and several times my courage left me. I love Jane Eyre – adore the novel and must say here – Jane Eyre is my favorite novel.
But I suppose Wide Sargasso Sea had to be written. That is what we do – especially women, we turn over the stone to see what truth crawls beneath, lance open the sore, press where it hurts.
But here I must say I was disappointed – in my fears.
I had nothing to fear because I soon realized I had no intention of defending Edward Fairfax Rochester. The man was drifting, filthy rich, lost soul, in Jane Eyre and in Wide Sargasso Sea that’s what he was as well.
And yes, larger books can be written about the differences between Jane, so Christian and Bertha, (Antoinette) so cynical but I won’t. Suffice it to say that one book was written in the 19th century with ideas and themes to the world – the other was written in the 20th century with ideas and themes to the world.
What both works share is a definite sort of axe to grind.
Prejudice – both Jane and Bertha suffered due to the “upper class,” disdain toward them – and the oddity that these “adults,” were picking on children – oddity I suppose is putting it too mildly – these were young girls and both authors made sure that we should blush on behalf of being adult.
The hate toward both young girls is staggering. The difference is that Jane was set, determined, understood she was plain, understood she had to find a way in the world. Bertha was hindered by her physical beauty – she was easily cast off because of her beauty - for who knows how quickly that would fall to ruin.
In the end – as Rochester defines his own suffering – the maiming of his arm, the loss of his hand and the even more terrible admonition “I’d give my sight,” Rochester stays the same. Vain. Self-seeking. Pandering – yes pandering of himself – his physical love - and not learning there is no satisfaction in it without love.
In keeping true to Rochester, Ms Rhys does make a viable and yes honest rendition of “The other Mrs. Rochester. “
I’m glad my courage did not fail me in the end. ( )

This short story was fabulous. But the background of it is even more fascinating. Jean Rhys grew up as a white woman in the Caribbean and went to study in England when she was 17. Even though she never returned for more than a few weeks, she always considered herself to be a white Creole and resented the English. She read Jane Eyre and felt that she related less to Jane and more to the minor character of Bertha. (I won't ruin it for anyone who hasn't read Jane Eyre.) So she wrote a beautiful story with Bertha as the main character. It's meaningful and interesting, and talks about zombies! (Although the voudou kind, not the contagious rage-filled monkeys kind) ( )

I’ve been meaning to read Wide Sargasso Sea for a while now, as Jane Eyre is one of my all-time favourites. This is not because I necessarily approve of the characters’ decisions (and I do think the ending is a cop-out), but I enjoyed Jane’s sincerity and compassion. Wide Sargasso Sea takes on the same story from the point of view of Mr. Rochester’s mad wife, and so addresses the problem of Annette/Bertha being dehumanised and neatly disposed of as a neat ending to Bronte’s problem.

I am glad I read this, but did not exactly enjoy it: I had a hard time engaging with the story. On the other hand, there was much to think about, and the dumb ending made a lot more sense with Rhys’s take on the matter. It was a good ending for this book.

I found the Norton Critical Edition to be extremely frustrating. Footnotes would often take up half a page, but only one in ten were actually useful. The rest were trivial, and for the most part, glaringly obvious comments. Nonetheless, I was continually distracted by them hoping that the next one would be enlightening. This edition not recommended. ( )

Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea is one of those novels: I know I ought to read them, because they're touchstones of entire genres of creative and critical writing, but I put them off for one reason or another. Well, let me be blunt: I put off reading anything else by Jean Rhys after slogging through her incredibly bleak 1939 novel Good Morning, Midnight in a British Modernism class in college. Regular readers of this blog will know that I do not shy away from the dark or dismal. Most of my favorite authors are widely regarded as "depressing," and I'm sure for many people there wouldn't be much to choose between the comically cynical (Bukowski, Céline, Thompson, Beckett) and the fluidly psychological (Woolf, Welty, Rushdie, Joyce). I devour the works of all these writers with abandon, and find many of them laugh-out-loud funny. But Jean Rhys almost did me in. Good Morning, Midnight struck me as the actual experience of clinical depression, distilled into book form. There was absolutely no relief from drab, ugly surroundings and crushing loneliness, not even in the form of a few equally-depressed friends to share the protagonist Sasha Jensen's burden, or an occasional wry humorous touch. There seemed to be no passion, love, or even affection left in any part of Sasha's psyche. Dismal, unredeemed, solitary alcoholism reigned from the book's opening pages to its brutal close. When I put it down, I had had enough.

Luckily, Wide Sargasso Sea is a much different novel. This re-working of Jane Eyre's madwoman-in-the-attic, which Rhys set largely in her native West Indies, was published in 1966 - ten years after most people thought its author had perished in an alcoholic stupor. It was instrumental in kicking off the whole field of postcolonial studies, and remains a touchstone text. Although the story of Antoinette Bertha Mason's terrifying childhood, arranged marriage, and subsequent slide into insanity is certainly dark, a few factors save this late novel from the all-out brutality of Rhys's early work. For one thing, whereas Good Morning, Midnight is set on the cold, rain-drenched streets of Paris and London, which Rhys and her characters plainly detest, Wide Sargasso Sea unfolds in the sometimes-sinister but always vibrantly beautiful West Indies, a place Antoinette loves passionately. (This alone separates her from Sasha, who I remember as loving nothing, even tepidly.) Rhys's feelings about her Dominican roots are not unmixed, but she and Antoinette share an ability to relate deeply to the West Indian landscape in a way she certainly doesn't do with Europe.

Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible - the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown 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, and deep purples, wonderful to see. The scent was very sweet and strong. I never went near it.

Encapsulated here is the tension of Antoinette's early life: a neglected existence in a beautiful place she loves, which is nonetheless full of darkness and forbidden objects and ideas. It is also host to an explosive racial politics that means she is never fully "at home," even in the house where she grows up. As the young daughter of a former slave owner just after emancipation, she is caught in a position impossible for a child to understand: her parents and the other white colonizers represent a shameful legacy that has recently been rejected, but she in turn is rejected by the black community for her white skin (and privileged attitude). Rhys conjures the oppressive atmosphere of secrets and fear with a sure and vivid hand; I love her style, particularly in the sections narrated by Antoinette.

Not only that, but I was pleasantly surprised by the complexity Rhys brings to both Antoinette and her husband (who is not explicitly named, but is patterned on Brontë's Rochester). Rochester is not cast as an unmitigated villain, nor Antoinette as a blameless victim. Their relationship from the first has the doomed cast of a Greek tragedy, but not because one or the other begins the story as a tyrant. I admired Rhys's subtlety and compassion in this regard: she obviously feels strongly for the oppressed West Indians both black and white, but she does not pretend that any particular member of the oppressing class is a heartless monster. At the same time, being a sympathetic person doesn't stop Rochester (or Antoinette, for that matter) from perpetuating the prejudices and cruelties begun by their compatriots.

Rhys does make a number of decisions that puzzle me - chief among them, the structure of the novel. One of her stated aims in Wide Sargasso Sea is to give a voice and a personal story to the "poor ghost" Bertha Mason in Charlotte Brontë's novel. This is what she starts out doing, letting Antoinette Bertha Cosway/Mason narrate the events of her childhood and early adulthood. But then, just as we reach the eve of Antoinette's meeting with Rochester, the narration switches to his internal monologue. With one brief exception, we don't regain Antoinette's narrative voice until she has succumbed to madness and been locked up in Thornfield Hall. This was obviously a conscious choice on Rhys's part, but it strikes me as such a strange one: just at the point when the reader would benefit most from Antoinette's point of view, she is silenced. I can think of a number of rationales for structuring the book this way; if it was important to Rhys to make Rochester a sympathetic character, for example, the easiest way is to get inside his head. In one of the essays appended to my edition (the Norton Critical), Lee Erwin argues that the structure of Wide Sargasso Sea is meant as a reaction against the traditional Regency/Victorian novel that ends (we assume happily) with the heroine's marriage. Antoinette's story seems to "end" with her wedding, but since her marriage rather spectacularly doesn't work out, she must return to enact the only other traditional feminine ending: madness and death. Erwin also points out that Rochester's narration, in which he is disgusted because his white wife reminds him of a black woman, lets us see how closely allied are the white Creoles and the black ex-slaves in the eyes of the colonizer, even if they are forever sundered in their own eyes. All of these ideas are interesting, but I was still left unsatisfied with Rhys's decision to let Rochester tell such a large portion of Antoinette's story. In a novel this short, it seemed tantamount to denying Bertha Mason a voice all over again.

And speaking of the appended essays to the Norton Critical Edition: I got a lot out of them. I collect Nortons but don't always read the additional materials; sometimes I finish the actual novel and feel "done." This time, though, maybe because the novel itself is so concise, I felt primed for some high-quality critical responses, and the Norton editors did not disappoint. I especially appreciated Sandra Drake's discussion of how Rhys incorporates West Indian obeah/voodoo beliefs, specifically imagery around zombi-ism, into Antoinette's story. She points out that:

Like many Caribbean beliefs, the zombi is of African origin. A number of African societies thought that bokors - "sorcerers" who turned great powers to evil ends - could reduce persons to automatons and force them to do the bokor's will, including work for him. A number of Caribbean scholars have been intrigued with the question of why this belief should have attained much greater importance in the Caribbean than in Africa, coming to its fullest development in Sant Domingue, later Haiti. Laroche and Depestre suggest that it was because it was so well suited to represent the condition of plantation slavery in the Americas.

So interesting! I will quite possibly never think of zombie movies in the same way again. Drake goes on to explain that Caribbean believers in obeah/voodoo feared zombi-ism much more than they feared death, since they believed that upon death their spirits would be transported back to Africa, whereas zombi-ism trapped the spirit indefinitely in a helpless slave state. Therefore, she argues, Antoinette's "awakening" from her zombi trance and plunge off the roof of Thornfield is actually a triumph, rather than a tragedy. I started out quite skeptical about this claim, but I have to say that Drake summons such strong textual evidence that I ended up more or less convinced.

As a postcolonial re-telling of Jane Eyre, Rhys's novel was hardly a revelation to me. When I studied Brontë's novel in college, there wasn't a student in the class that didn't gag, groan, or otherwise react negatively to the passage where Rochester equates the West Indies to a sinfully contaminated Hell, and is about to commit suicide until a "wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through the open casement...and the air grew pure." To a modern reader, the cultural chauvinism and xenophobia in this scene fairly leaps off the page; I hardly need an entire response novel to convince me of it. That wasn't the case, though, in 1966, and the fact that some of Rhys's points now seem obvious is a testament to how influential Wide Sargasso Sea and similar studies have been over the past forty years. Not only that, but its stylistic and character-driven merits make it a compelling read even without its political agenda.

This was supposed to be the story of Jane Eyre told from the point of view of the crazy woman in the attic, Bertha Mason. It does the trick, I suppose, but this suffers from a far worse pacing problem—about 75% of the book is dedicated to Bertha's childhood, while the remainder is the only part that's actually devoted to the story of how Bertha interacts with Jane Eyre and the rest of the household once she's taken out of the Caribbean. It was remotely interesting to hear from her perspective and to sort of piece together exactly why she was mad, but it wasn't exactly the attention grabber that I thought it would (and thought it would have the potential to) be. Unfortunate, because while it was rather boring except for a few scenes, it was written quite well. ( )

This review refers to the Norton Critical Edition of this book, which contains various background pieces, letters from Jean Rhys, and criticism related to the novel (as well as the text of the novel itself).

I had very mixed feelings about this book after finishing it. I had heard so much about it, especially in connection with Jane Eyre, to which it is related. Its kind of like Jane Eyre midrash, filling in the blanks in the perspectives of Mr. Rochester (we assume, as the main male character is never named) and his first wife, Bertha (Antoinette), the 'madwoman in the attic' from Bronte's book. I have to try to assess this book on two levels - first, as it relates to Jane Eyre (which is simpler but perhaps not as fair) and second, on its own merits (which is probably more difficult). I'm not sure this review will succeed in doing the latter.

I had really thought that I would come away with some additional insight into the relationship between Rochester and his wife or some new understanding of the 'truth' behind their story. Perhaps this was silly, as one of the underlying themes of this book seems to be that 'truth' is a very complicated and elusive thing. It was often unclear - purposefully? - what was going on in the story. Was Antoinette really insane or was Rochester simply bitter, angry, alienated and paranoid? I found myself doubting the accuracy of each of the narrator's perspectives. While this was often frustrating, I imagine that Rhys did not set out to clarify another author's work, but to deepen and enrich voices that had not been able to speak in that work. I did hope that I would come to understand Rochester's motivations a little better - full disclosure, I hated him in Jane Eyre - but he mostly came off as a brute and I did not understand why he was so cruel to Antoinette. Perhaps because of her background, he viewed her as less than fully white and therefore, less than fully human?

I loved how Antoinette finally gets to speak - reading Jane Eyre can often be irritating because the only things that we know about her come from Rochester, who is clearly not unbiased. The least enjoyable parts of this book for me were the portions narrated from his point of view because I thought that they mostly just confirmed the things he had told Jane about his marriage to Antoinette. These portions did show somewhat the workings of his psychology & his emotional-racial issues, however. I enjoyed her portions much more & wish more of their courtship, early marriage, and life in England had been narrated from her perspective. The jump from their move to Jamaica near the end of the second part of the book to England & the timeline of the Jane Eyre storyline in the third book was really jarring. What happened in between? How much time has passed? I don't remember of this is clarified in JE or if the lack of clarity is meant to mimic Antoinette's lack of knowledge of what has happened to her and where she is. It was disorienting and effective though.

On its own, I think the book raises a number of interesting issues about race & class. It was interesting to me how the white settlers in the West Indies were viewed with suspicion by both the local blacks and by the English whites - they were definitely associated with a powerful, privileged class but they were also viewed as lesser than fully white, I think. Rochester's fears - generally unarticulated, but clearly present - that his wife is somehow contaminated (spiritually and racially) by her West Indies background and upbringing - really reflected this. Antoinette's struggle to negotiate the dilemma of being neither white enough nor black enough was often painful to watch - as in the early scenes where she rejects her black friend Tia and then Tia attacks her, a fact which causes them both powerful sadness.

I am glad to have purchased the NCE of this book. Some letters Jean Rhys wrote while working on this book were included and I thought these provided a lot of insight into the author's thought processes & her inspiration for writing the story. A few also clarified minor plot points or questions that I had. I especially enjoyed the critical essay by Michael Thorpe entitled "'The Other Side': Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre" - it really enriched my understanding of the novel and its relationship to Bronte's work. Still finishing up all the other essays. About half the book is critical work, other material from the author, maps, etc. I will definitely be looking into getting the NCEs for other books, when they are available. ( )

Somehow, at some point, I got the crazy idea that this was by the author of Clan of the Cave Bear, and was part of that series. Boy did I feel silly when I finally discovered that it is in truth a prequel-of-sorts to Jane Eyre, a book of which I am rather fond. Strange, the incorrect connections our minds make.

This trend continued, since my mind associates Jane Eyre with turn-of-the-century England. I therefore assumed this book would be set in said location. Imagine my surprise when I opened the book and found that it was set in . . . Dominica? Which, it turns out, is not the same as the Dominican Republic. And the time during which it is set is the mid-1800s. Stranger and stranger.

I mention all of so that anyone reading this will know how I came to Wide Sargasso Sea, since I definitely think the many misunderstandings in my head affected my reading of the book. The story of Antoinette's (aka Bertha) childhood and eventual marriage to Mr. Rochester are told in a style somewhat reminiscent of stream-of-consciousness writers, such as Joyce or Faulkner, but then, not really. The two main characters take turns telling the story, without obvious indicators to let the reader known who is talking, and they tell it based on their understanding of the situation. Thus, the stories about what happened during Antoinette's childhood aren't always all that clear, and the reader gets the impression that this is because the events weren't clear to Antoinette. By the end of the novel, the chronology is very confused, since the narrator is no longer at all trustworthy.

For fans of Jane Eyre, this is an interesting addition to the story. For those who hated Jane Eyre, this might also be enjoyable, since I've heard many LTers use it as grounds on which to bash Mr. Rochester and Jane. I don't see it that way at all, but hey. The writing and story would make this a reasonably enjoyable read for anyone interested in colonialism, feminism during the 1800s, or stream-of-consciousnessesque/dreamlike narrative style, along with those JE fans/haters mentioned above. One last note- I almost never read prefaces/notes/annotations, since I find that they are more likely to distract me from the book than help deepen my understanding, but this book was definitely an exception. Once I started using the footnotes (I read the Norton Annotated Edition), the book became both easier to follow (the editors conveniently let you know when the speaker switches) and more enjoyable. YMMV of course, but I found the notes very helpful. ( )

Wide Sargasso Sea is well-known as the "prequel" to Jane Eyre. Rhys tells the life story of Antoinette Mason, a Creole who becomes the mad woman in Jane Eyre. The story itself is quite short (113 pages). My copy, a Norton Critical Edition, contained considerable supplementary material. Relevant excerpts from Jane Eyre helped refresh my memory and made the necessary connections between the two books. An essay by Rachel Carson described the natural phenomenon of the Sargasso Sea. There were also several essays of literary criticism analyzing this work, and numerous letters written by Jean Rhys.

As the supplementary material indicates, this book has received considerable acclaim, and been the subject of widespread analysis. Although I found Wide Sargasso Sea to be a mildly interesting read, and enhanced certain aspects of Jane Eyre, it fell short of my expectations. It was interesting to consider how Mr. Rochester and Antoinette came together, but their relationship was poorly developed. The reasons for Antoinette's descent into madness were unclear, and I found it difficult to identify or sympathize with the characters. ( )

The first time i read this i wasn't too fond of it, couldn't make much sense of it. Then after i read "Jane Eyre" for the third time for some reason i decided to read it again and this time i loved it. Maybe it was all the notes in this edition, or maybe it just took a second reading, or a couple of years. ( )