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

by Carl Plasa (Editor)

3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description
In this Reader's Guide, Carl Plasa provides a comprehensive survey and analysis of the most stimulating critical responses to Wide Sargasso Sea. The opening chapter outlines initial reactions to the novel from English and Caribbean critics, charting the differences between them. Chapter Two explores Wide Sargasso Sea 's dialogue with Jane Eyre and the theoretical questions it has raised. Succeeding chapters examine how critics have assessed the racial politics of Rhys's text, discuss the novel's African Caribbean cultural legacy, and explore how critics read the work both in terms of its moment of production and the early Victorian period in which it is set.

Book Description

In this Reader's Guide, Carl Plasa provides a comprehensive survey and analysis of the most stimulating critical responses to Wide Sargasso Sea. The opening chapter outlines initial reactions to the novel from English and Caribbean critics, charting the differences between them. Chapter Two explores Wide Sargasso Sea 's dialogue with Jane Eyre and the theoretical questions it has raised. Succeeding chapters examine how critics have assessed the racial politics of Rhys's text, discuss the novel's African Caribbean cultural legacy, and explore how critics read the work both in terms of its moment of production and the early Victorian period in which it is set.

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Product Details

Paperback: 194 pages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (September 6, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 184046268X
ISBN-13: 978-1840462685
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,025,420 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Citations (learn more)

70 books cite this book:

Jean Rhys by Elaine Savory on 20 pages
Jean Rhys and the Novel As Women's Text by Nancy R. Harrison on 9 pages
Reading the Novel in English 1950 - 2000 by Brian W. Shaffer on 8 pages
Reading the Novel in English 1950 - 2000 by Brian W. Shaffer on 8 pages
Jean Rhys's Historical Imagination: Reading and Writing the Creole by Veronica Marie Gregg on 7 pages

See all 70 books citing this book

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	19% buy Wide Sargasso Sea (Penguin Student Editions) 3.1 out of 5 stars (7)
	8% buy Jane Eyre (Dover Thrift Editions) 4.4 out of 5 stars (815) $3.50

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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews

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3.3 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "I feel bolder, happier, more free. But not so safe.", August 6, 2006

By	Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

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.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The horror... the horror... Wide Sargasso Sea is a searing indictment, September 14, 2007

By	Joshua G. Feldman "Technophile" (New York) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

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.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Evocative story does not mesh, October 8, 2008

By	R. Stickley (Virginia USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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 Sea Wide Sargasso Sea (Penguin Student Editions)Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea; A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism Wide Sargasso Sea (Essential Penguin)

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Uncanny and vividly intense
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... Read more

Published 20 months ago by Philippe Horak

1.0 out of 5 stars Has potential, but doesn't succeed
You should probably understand that like a lot of the reviewers who have written in here, Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books. Read more

Published on June 6, 2007 by Katie

2.0 out of 5 stars How the hell did this make the MLA 100?
This is not a good book. It is incoherent. It is poorly written. It is silly, pretentious, and, at times, melodramatic. Read more

Published on April 5, 2007 by C. Brandt

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