Wide Sargasso Sea

For other uses, seeWide Sargasso Sea (disambiguation).

Wide Sargasso Seais a 1966 novel by Dominican-British authorJean Rhys.The novel serves as apostcolonialandfeministprequeltoCharlotte Brontë's novelJane Eyre(1847), describing the background to Mr. Rochester's marriage from the point of view of his wifeAntoinette Cosway,aCreoleheiress. Antoinette Cosway is Rhys's version of Brontë's "madwoman in the attic".Antoinette's story is told from the time of her youth inJamaica,to her unhappy marriage to an English gentleman, Mr. Rochester, who renames her Bertha, declares her mad, takes her to England, and isolates her from the rest of the world in his mansion.Wide Sargasso Seaexplores the power of relationships between men and women and discusses the themes of race, Caribbean history, andassimilationas Antoinette is caught in a white,patriarchalsociety in which she fully belongs neither to Europe nor to Jamaica.

Wide Sargasso Sea

First edition cover
Author	Jean Rhys
Cover artist	Eric Thomas
Language	English
Genre	Postmodern novel
Set in	Jamaica,DominicaandThornfield Hall,1830s–40s
Publisher	André Deutsch(UK) W. W. Norton(US)
Publication date	October 1966
ISBN	0-233-95866-5
OCLC	4248898
Dewey Decimal	823.912
LC Class	PR6035.H96

Rhys lived in obscurity after her previous work,Good Morning, Midnight,was published in 1939. She had published other novels between these works, butWide Sargasso Seacaused a revival of interest in Rhys and her work and was her most commercially successful novel.

In 2022, it was included on the "Big Jubilee Read"list of 70 books byCommonwealthauthors, selected to celebrate thePlatinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.

Plot

The novel, initially set inJamaica,opens a short while after theSlavery Abolition Act 1833abolished slavery in theBritish Empireon 1 August 1834.The protagonist Antoinette relates the story of her life from childhood to her arranged marriage to an English gentleman, Mr. Rochester.

The novel is in three parts:

Part Onetakes place in Coulibri, a sugar plantation inJamaica,and is narrated by Antoinette as a child. Formerly wealthy, since the abolition of slavery, the estate has become derelict and her family has been plunged into poverty. Antoinette's widowedMartiniquemother, Annette, must remarry to wealthy English gentleman Mr. Mason, who is hoping to exploit his new wife's situation. Angry at the returning prosperity of theplanter class,emancipated slaves living in Coulibri burn down Annette's house, killing Antoinette's mentally disabled younger brother, Pierre. As Annette had been struggling with her mental health up until this point, the grief of losing her son weakens her sanity. Mr. Mason sends her to live with a couple who torment her until she dies. When Antoinette visits her after the fire, Annette refuses to see or speak to her. Antoinette visits her mother once more when she is older but is alarmed at the abuse she witnesses by the servants to her mother and goes away without speaking to her.

Part Twoalternates between the points of view of Antoinette and her husband during their honeymoon excursion to her mother's summer estate Granbois,Dominica.Likely catalysts for Antoinette's downfall are the mutual suspicions that develop between the couple, and the machinations of Daniel, who claims he is Antoinette's illegitimate half-brother; he impugns Antoinette's reputation and mental state and demands money to keep quiet. Antoinette's old nurse Christophine openly distrusts Mr. Rochester. His apparent belief in the stories about Antoinette's family and past aggravate the situation; her husband is unfaithful and emotionally abusive. He begins to call her Bertha rather than her real name and flaunts an affair in front of her to cause her pain. Antoinette's increased sense of paranoia and the bitter disappointment of her failing marriage unbalance her already precarious mental and emotional state. She flees to the house of Christophine. Antoinette pleads with Christophine for anobeahpotion to attempt to reignite her husband's love, which Christophine reluctantly gives her. Antoinette returns home but the love potion acts like a poison on her husband. Subsequently he hardens his heart against reconciling with his wife and decides to take her away from Granbois out of spite.

Part Threeis the shortest part of the novel; it is from the perspective of Antoinette, renamed by her husband as Bertha. Mr. Rochester's father and brother have died, so he has returned to England with Antoinette to claim his sizeable inheritance. She is largely confined to "the attic" ofThornfield Hall,the mansion she calls the "Great House". The story traces her relationship with Grace Poole, the servant who is tasked with guarding her, as well as her disintegrating life with Mr. Rochester, as he hides her from the world. He promises to come to her more but never does. Antoinette is thought mad by those who interact with her and has little understanding of how much time she has been confined. She dreams of freedom, when she remembers, and writes to her stepbrother Richard in Jamaica who, however, says he cannot "interfere legally" with her husband. Desperate and enraged, she attacks him with a knife bought in secret. She later forgets this encounter. Expressing her thoughts instream of consciousness,Antoinette dreams of flames engulfing the house and her freedom from the life she has there, and believes it is her destiny to fulfill the vision. Waking from her dream she escapes her room, and sets out candle in hand.

Themes

Postcolonialism

Since the late 20th century, critics have consideredWide Sargasso Seaas apostcolonialresponse toJane Eyre.Rhys uses multiple voices (Antoinette's, her husband's, and Grace Poole's) to tell the story, and intertwines her novel's plot with that ofJane Eyre.In addition, Rhys makes a postcolonial argument when she ties Antoinette's husband's eventual rejection of Antoinette to herCreoleheritage (a rejection shown to be critical to Antoinette's descent into madness).

Feminism

The novel is also considered a feminist work, as it deals with unequal power between men and women, particularly in marriage.

Slavery and ethnicity

Antoinette and her family wereplanterswho owned slaves until the passage of theSlavery Abolition Act,which resulted in the family losing their wealth. They are pejoratively called "white nigger"or" white cockroach "by the island's Black inhabitants because of their poverty and are openly despised, harassed, and assaulted. The villagers, inadvertently or not, kill Antoinette's brother, setting fire to the home and seem poised to murder the rest of the family if not for the apparition of an ill omen - their dying green parrot. Meanwhile, Rochester looks down on Antoinette because of her status as aCreole.Scholar Lee Erwin describes this paradox through the scene in which Antoinette's childhood home Coulibri is burned down and she runs to Tia, a black girl her own age, to "be like her". Tia attacks Antoinette, throwing a rock at her head. Antoinette then says she sees Tia "as if I saw myself. Like in a looking glass". Erwin argues that "even as she claims to be seeing" herself, "she is simultaneously seeing" the other ", that which only defines the self by its separation from it, in this case literally by means of a cut. History here, in the person of a former slave's daughter, is figured as refusing Antoinette", the daughter of a slave owner.

In the novel, Rhys also explores the legacy of slavery and theslave trade,focusing on how abolition dramatically affected the status of Antoinette's family as planters in colonial Jamaica. Scholar Trevor Hope has noted that the "triumphant conflagration of Thornfield Hall inWide Sargasso Seamay at one level mark a vengeful attack upon the earlier textual structure ". The destruction of Thornfield Hall occurs in both novels; however, Rhys epitomises the fire as a liberating experience for Antoinette. Hope has suggested that the novel" [takes] residence inside the textual domicile of empire in order to bring about its disintegration or even, indeed, its conflagration ".

Publication and reception

Rhys's editorDiana Athilldiscusses the events surrounding the publication of the book in her memoir. The book came out of a friendship between Rhys andSelma Vaz Diaswho encouraged her to start writing again. At the time, Rhys was living in a shack made ofcorrugated ironandtar paperin a slum neighbourhood ofCheriton Fitzpaine.The book was virtually completed in November 1964 when Rhys, who was 74 years old and complained of the cold and rain in her shack, suffered a heart attack. Athill cared for Rhys in the hospital for two years, keeping a promise not to publish the book until Rhys was well enough to compile the manuscript and add a few final lines. The income from the book provided enough money for Rhys to improve her living conditions.

On 5 November 2019,BBC NewslistedWide Sargasso Seaon its list of the100 most influential novels.

Awards and nominations

• Winner of theWH Smith Literary Awardin 1967, which brought Rhys to public attention after decades of obscurity.
• Named byTimeas one of the '100 best English-language novels since 1923'.
• Rated number 94 on the list ofModern Library's 100 Best Novels
• Winner of Cheltenham Booker Prize 2006 for year 1966

Adaptations

• 1991:Sargasso: A Caribbean Love Story,a hybrid film adaptation also telling the life story of Rhys, directed byMichael Guilkes.
• 1993:Wide Sargasso Sea,film adaptation directed byJohn Duiganand starringKarina LombardandNathaniel Parker.
• 1997:Wide Sargasso Sea,a chamber opera adaptation with music by Australian composer Brian Howard, directed by Douglas Horton.
• 2004:Wide Sargasso Sea,BBC Radio 410-part adaptation byMargaret Busby,read byAdjoa Andoh(repeated 2012, 2014, 2019).
• 2006:Wide Sargasso Sea,TV movie adaptation directed byBrendan Maherand starringRebecca HallandRafe Spall.
• 2011: "Wide Sargasso Sea", song written by rock 'n' roll singerStevie Nicksabout the novel and film; it appears on her 2011 albumIn Your Dreams.
• 2016: BBC Radio Four dramatization (one hour) byRebecca Lenkiewicz(repeated 2020).

See also

• Sargasso Sea

External links

• "Wide Sargasso Sea, Bertha and Jane Eyre",The Magpie Poet blog
• Wide Sargasso Sea,study guide, themes, quotes, & teacher resources
• ReviewJaneEyre.net