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Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea; A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism

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Haunting and resonant, Wide Sargasso Sea evokes and era and place, mid-nineteenth century, with an almost hallucinatory beauty, a remote Caribbean island near Jamaica, a lonely young woman abandoned to her unwilling caretakers, forever searching for a safety that does not exist. The once powerful Creole family has fallen into desperate times, the profligate patriarch dead from his own excesses, his beautiful second wife, Annette, left to suffer in isolation with her two children, the small son impaired developmentally, and the daughter, Antoinette Cosway, emotionally damaged by a distant mother.

A recently emancipated slave society is no longer willing to suffer the conceits of their former masters. As the islanders become more hostile, the newly remarried Annette Cosway berates her groom for his inadequacies in protecting them, losing contact with reality after losing her frail son, the victim of an incident with the former slaves. Antoinette Cosway grows into womanhood a beauty like her mother, but an inherited fortune renders her a pawn of fate. Given by her guardian in marriage to the penniless Mr. Rochester (of Jane Eyre fame), Antoinette finds no solace in the arms of a man who does not love her, indeed, hardly knows her. For a time, the transports of physical passion are sufficient distraction, but, like island life, even pleasure is exhausting, burning out in its own brilliance. Convinced her husband no longer loves her, Antoinette seeks aid from her former nanny, Christophine, an obeah woman who attended her mother in days past.

Decay is pervasive on an island where the sun shines too intensely, Antoinette retreating to the fevered images of her imagination in lieu of the happiness she was promised. These two worlds cannot amicably coexist, Rochester longing to escape his terrible bargain, Antoinette clinging to the remnants of her dignity and disordered mind. Finally, the madwoman in the tower loses the only reality sustaining her, shut away from the world in an unforgiving climate of disinterest, banking the cold fires of a new hell in England: "This cardboard house where I walk at night is not England."

Drawing from her personal knowledge of the West Indies and the unfortunate Creole heiresses of the times, Rhys reveals the decadent, incestuous societies in which such women flourished, resented by the former slaves, ripe for the plucking from their exotic vines. The truth lies somewhere between the perspectives of Antoinette and Rochester, an odd blending of cultures inspired by the easy fortunes to be plundered in a society where women are irrelevant. Hypnotic and disturbing, Antoinette Cosway's tortured existence is a stunning indictment of an indifferent society, even Rochester victimized by the constraints of honor and propriety. Luan Gaines/2006.

Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea is a dreamlike feverish novel awash in passion and trauma. Forget for a moment that it's a sequel to "Jane Eyre" or that it is a seminal text in Feminism and Colonialist studies. Simply as a strikingly modern story of trauma and madness it is brilliant. Disorienting, agonizing, nightmarish yet stunningly beautiful; I was forced to read it in dribs and drabs - as the knife edge of Rhys' vision would compel me to come up, panting for air. This book is powerful - yet unforgivingly dark. But, of course, it is much more - it's a modernist masterpiece which brilliantly critiques the human costs of crimes of patriarchy, colonialism, slavery and subjugation. It is a searing indictment at the same time it is a haunting work of art.

Antoinette grows up poor and isolated at her family's plantation. Her companions are the black laborers and their children who simmer with resentment at the legacy of slavery. Slavery may have been abolished but has been replaced with economic and social subjugation and the resentment is palpable. Mr. Mason disregards this in a classic example of colonialist arrogance - which destroys their lives. Her mother's anger at Mr. Mason leads to her imprisonment as a mad woman. Women are not permitted to express rage. Patriarchy is central because Antoinette/Bertha is chattel. Her marriage to Rochester is effected because she owns land - it's an economic arrangement to gain property for Rochester. Once married, Antoinette/Bertha is stripped of all her claim to property and is completely under her husband's authority. Their marriage is marked by passion but it becomes apparent how culturally Caribbean (black) she is, tainted with scandal. Their relationship flames out spectacularly. When he decides he can't deal with her and chooses to abandon her to be locked as "the madwoman in the attic" she is reduced to, essentially, a prisoner. A woman, in that society, is literally the prisoner of her husband. Both Antoinette and her mother, Bertha are confined as mad - but their pathologies are the simple act of blaming their spouses and acting out their anger. Rebellion is seen as madness - both in the context of rebellion against slavery and rebellion against patriarchy.

As for the literary context - "Wide Sargasso Sea" as sequel to "Jane Eyre". By situating WSS's story within the classic Victorian novel "Jane Eyre", Rhys sets up a host of powerful resonances. Jane Eyre is a tale of redemption; of love's power to redeem. England's brutal social and economic inequities are hurdles to be overcome - but ultimately love overcomes them all in a healing and redemptive way. The fly in the ointment is Bertha, the mad woman in the attic. Her presence complicates the otherwise straightforward romantic narrative and gives it tension and fire. By inverting this tale to tell the story of Antoinette/Bertha, Rhys deepens the misery by shattering "Jane Eyre"s redemptive message. In "Wide Sargosso Sea" love is a tragic by-product of the economic abuses of patriarchy. Love has no redemptive power for Antoinette. It's just more salt in the wound. A lot of the negative reviews here center around resentment at Rhys for besmirching their beloved innocent "world of 'Jane Eyre'". They've missed the point. Inverting and besmirching the innocent world of 'Jane Eyre' is exactly the point. Colonialist England's apparent grace is built on the blood and toil of subjugated peoples. The subjugation extends to English women as well. You are meant to see that and the experience is not meant to be pleasant.

I can't say enough about this book's importance or the brilliant, polished skill with which it is written. Published in 1966 - at the height of the civil rights movement and free speech movement - WSS's issues were dead on the zeitgeist of the moment. You can imagine how the lush, dark, evil imagery of the jungle must have resonated in with an America embroiled in Viet Nam and a rising anti-war moment. It's not a pleasant read, however. The messages are hard, dark ones. There are no happy endings here and as the story unfolds the brutal details big and small are as oppressive as the tropical humidity. This is fine literature, indeed - but also a journey into pain, deprivation, madness and tragedy. It's not a journey to be taken lightly.

In "Wide Sargasso Sea", Jean Rhys offers the reader another side to "Jane Eyre". The story of Bertha, the first Mrs Rochester, "Wide Sargasso Sea" is a damning history of colonialism in the Caribbean.
The story is set just after the emancipation of the slaves, in that difficult time when racial relations in the Caribbean were at their most tense. Antoinette is descended from plantation owners. She can be accepted neither by the black community nor by the representatives of the colonial centre. As a white Creole she is nothing. The taint of racial impurity, coupled with the suspicion that she is mentally imbalanced bring about her downfall.
Rhys divides the speaking voice between Rochester, who is never named in the novel and Antoinette. Rochester is portrayed a proud younger brother betrayed by his family into a loveless marriage. His double standards are exposed when he chooses to sleep with the maid, Amélie, so displaying the promiscuous behaviour and attraction to the black community which he accuses Antoinette of harbouring. Their happiness at Granbois is ended by his willingness to believe the worst of Antoinette.
The lack of understanding between two cultures is at the root of Antoinette's subsequent madness. Madness for Antoinette mostly derives from the uneasy feeling of being unable to tell the difference between dream and reality, when reality eventually becomes dream-like.
The book is read by Anna Bentinck for ISIS Publishing. An impressive performance given the wide range of accents used by the reader.

This story is somewhat difficult to follow as the dialogue is fragmentary, and there is little narrative explanation to help the reader. There are significant unreconcilable (and unnecessary) discrepancies between the accounts of the Mason-Rochester marriage in Jane Eyre and in Wide Sargasso Sea. The source is the same, in each case Rochester is relating much of the tale, so point of view does not account for the discrepancies.

For example, in WSS Bertha Antoinetta is not a blood relation of Richard Mason, his father, her insane step mother, or her idiot step brother. In Jane Eyre, Bertha Antoinetta Mason comes from a mad family for three generations, and Richard Mason is her full brother. Rochester, in Jane Eyre, relates that Bertha Antoinetta was foul-mouthed, unchaste, a drunkard, and an erratic martinet in her management of their household from the very beginning. This knowledge was kept from him, by keeping him at arms length from her during their managed and whirl-wind courtship. In WSS, these symptons manifest for the first time after Rochester's treatment of Bertha Antoinetta and his willingness to believe the worst of her bring on her madness.

What led Rochester to take Bertha Antoinetta to Thornfield Hall? In WSS, it is his possessiveness, insistence on control, and his greed, but certainly confining her at Thornfield Hall was a great deal more compassionate that confining her in an insane asylum of the time would have been. Unlike Jane Eyre, in WSS Rochester never interacts with Bertha again.

Wide Sargasso Sea is hauntingly evocative of a time and place. The juxtaposition of points of view is interesting. By setting the novel immediately following the British emancipation of slaves in 1833, more possibilities were created for exploring the rottenness of the culture at that time, though it was about ten years later than I think it should have been to mesh with the Jane Eyre story. Wide Sargasso Sea succeeds on some levels, but as a prequel to Jane Eyre it misses the mark.Wide Sargasso SeaWide Sargasso Sea (Penguin Student Editions)Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea; A Reader's Guide to Essential CriticismWide Sargasso Sea (Essential Penguin)

You should probably understand that like a lot of the reviewers who have written in here, Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books. Also, I am a stickler for canon, and anything that's off even a little will drive me crazy.

Honestly, it was hard enough for me to get over the basic changes that Rhys made. Changing the character's name is probably the worst offense. An earlier reviewer said that it was probably just because the name "Bertha" didn't sound pretty enough to her 20th century ears, and I completely agree. Second, changing the character's background. Rhys tried to make Bertha (no, I will not call her Antoinetta) into herself, and impose her own views upon her--if you read about Rhys's life, it makes perfect sense. Perhaps you will argue that Jane Eyre was also a carnation of Charlotte Bronte, but Bronte was creating the world, not trying to fit herself in it. Also, in doing this, Rhys had to make Antoinetta half Creole, and completely violate canon by making Mason only her half-brother. In Jane Eyre, Rochester says that Mason will also one day likely become an imbecile like the rest of the family, so his not being related to the psychotic mother makes absolutely no sense.

These are just superficial complaints, however. As you read the rest of the novel, it goes deeper. Some may claim that Rhys was merely trying to draw parallels between Jane and Bertha, but to me it felt like a blatant ripoff and way of cheating through the novel to get to the "good part." Lessee... poor birth and low social status, check. sad childhood, check. Cold and unfeeling school where the character doesn't quite fit in. Check. However, unlike Jane, you never really like Bertha all that much. She doesn't have Jane's pride and fighting spirit. Why should I root for this sad, mopey character who rarely even speaks in complete sentences? I'd say that it was the negative symptoms of schizophrenia beginning to kick in, but I think that would be giving Rhys too much credit (more on the mental illness as portrayed in the book later.)

And then we get to the Rochester part. This, ladies and gentleman, is character assassination at its finest. I am not arguing that Rochester was the greatest guy ever in Jane Eyre, but Rhys's argument that he was whitewashed makes no sense to me. Jane recognizes that Rochester has sinned, and she even reproaches him for how he has treated Bertha. Also, it is implied that Bertha cheated on Rochester--not the other way around. If Rochester did cheat on her, why would it be with another Creole, a group with which he obviously feels no affection? There were plenty of Englishwomen in Jamaica. Also, we're supposed to feel that his locking her in the attic is the worst crime imaginable, but it's hard for me to agree: being locked in the attic is kind compared to what Bertha would have undergone in a 19th century insane asylum.

The implication, too, that Rochester is the one who drove Bertha mad makes no sense, psychologically (sorry, I am a psychology student, and I have spent much time analyzing the character of Bertha, as I am particularly interested in psychosis) when one considers Jane Eyre. The general view of schizophrenia is that it requires two "hits": genetic and environmental. You are genetically predisposed, but it takes things in the environment to set it off. Rochester makes indications of having disliked Bertha before her symptoms were completely manifested, but he also claims that he would do things such as attempt to make conversation. Also, from what he told Jane, he was initially infatuated with his wife. It was not until she began to act off-hinged that he became disgusted (remember that Bertha was Jamaican, but also well-off and English: I doubt that she would have committed mannerisms so offensive were they not inspired by pathology.) The childhood that Rhys gives Bertha alone would make her suspectible to the disease. Schizophrenia usually does not manifest itself until the early 20's, so it would make sense that her psychosis would appear to begin after the marriage.

Also, part the reason schizophrenia is so dehabilitating is because of the negative symptoms. Rhys's portrayal of Bertha does not appear to have those negative symptoms; most schizophrenics would be not too passionate, but not passionate enough. Granted, there are always exceptions, but someone who is lacking those negative symptoms would be healthier than someone who has them, and I was always under the impression that Bertha was severely ill. Also, Bertha lacks the language and cognitive problems associated with schizophrenia (it is a language and cognitive-based psychosis.) She speaks in fragments and perhaps her speech is a little disorganized, but there is nothing even close to the level of what an unmedicated schizophrenic would say (granted, then we might not understand the book, but such is the problem with first person--it has to be realistic.) I don't know how much about schizophrenia was known when Rhys wrote this book, but if she'd only done a little research to see how schizophrenics truly behave... Maybe attended therapy sessions or visited an institution?

Basically: I understand what Rhys was trying to do, and I think that if you read it on paper, the novel's idea is good. But in trying to fit it with the world of Jane Eyre, she made her mistake. The girl portrayed in this book does not fit with Bertha, and her husband is certainly not Rochester. Also, the portrayal of a character's descent into madness could have been handled so much better. I didn't really feel that Bertha was psychotic until the last part, which isn't too long before she dies.

Sorry if this review wasn't well-organized. Also, I read the novel a while ago, so I may be a bit rusty on it. Consider the fact too that I am a diehard Jane Eyre fan, and thus may be biased.

This is not a good book. It is incoherent. It is poorly written. It is silly, pretentious, and, at times, melodramatic. How can this be one of the hundred best novels of the 20th century? Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One is ten times the book that this is. The only positive thing I can say about Wide Sargasso Sea is that it doesn't take very long to read.