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Title: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, Francis Wyndham ISBN: 0-393-30880-4 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: June, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.44 (95 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Novel without a cause
Comment: Oscar Wilde once said that all art is useless, but if he could have read "Wide Sargasso Sea" I'm sure he would have agreed that some of it is more useless than others. It's nice that Jean Rhys, like many other readers including myself, admired Charlotte Bronte's monumental "Jane Eyre" and apparently was intrigued by Bertha, the infamous madwoman in the attic, but why did she feel compelled to write a novel filling in the blanks of this woman's past? The character of Bertha, who is said by some to symbolize repressed feminine sexuality, was intended by Bronte to be a mystery and to remain a mystery, and Rhys's attempt to invent a solution to this mystery is feeble, unenlightening, and unwelcome.
Rhys has all the details in order. Born as Antoinette Cosway to a semi-Creole family of slaveowners, "Bertha" grows up on a dilapidated estate in Jamaica with a widowed mother who later marries a man named Mason. After a fire which destroys the estate (wink, wink) and in which her younger brother perishes, Antoinette is educated at a convent and becomes the bride of a young Englishman named Rochester who receives a large dowry for her from Mason. However, there is unhappiness on both sides of the marriage bed, resulting in Antoinette's gradual descent into insanity and Rochester's exasperation with his new wife's neurotic behavior. In fact, one of the novel's better moments depicts Rochester, regretful of the prospect of being inseparably tied to this batty woman for the rest of his life, contemplatively drawing a stick figure representation of her locked up in the attic of an English house, the effect of which is unintentionally comical but not a little eerie.
The novel ends with Antoinette, whom Rochester now calls Bertha, as a pyromaniacal prisoner in Thornfield Hall as her husband envisioned in his crude sketch, and...well, so what? What exactly was Rhys trying to demonstrate with this little exercise in speculative character development? The unique intensity of her passion for "Jane Eyre"? Her sense of identity with Bertha because she was a West Indian Creole herself? The mess she could make of her prose by affecting a clumsy stream-of-consciousness narration that reads like third-rate Virginia Woolf? This is a misguided abortion of a prequel that does not merit an association with its source of inspiration.
Rating: 5
Summary: glad to have read it
Comment: i had to read this book my senior year in high school and i'm glad i did. this is a novel about the strength lost by a young girl the same as her mother did. it end in much unhappiness and misery. but for some reason you walk away with not only a sense of justice but of happiness. happiness for the young girl because she finally got some peace.
Rating: 4
Summary: A lush and exotic spin-off
Comment: "Wide Sargasso Sea" is my third Jean Rhys novel. I read "After Leaving Mr Mackenzie," and "Good Morning, Midnight" a few years ago, and I would rate both of those novels as "5 star books." So I came to "Wide Sargasso Sea" with really high expectations, and while I did enjoy the book, at the same time, I don't think it has quite the calibre of the other Rhys novels I've read.
The novel is set in 19th Century and is in three parts. The first part is narrated by Antoinette Cosway, the main character, when she is a child. The second part is narrated by Mr Rochester. He is now married to Antoinette, and in the third part of the novel, Antoinette has become "the madwoman in the attic"--Bertha Rochester--the unloved, bothersome nuisance who stands between Mr Rochester and one of the most famous literary characters of all time--Jane Eyre.
"Wide Sargasso Sea" as a novel on its own merits is an enjoyable story. Rhys captures the unique world of Antoinette Cosway at once showing the beauty of Jamaica and also the corruption and rot at the heart of the culture which was based on slavery. Slavery--although a thing of the recent past in Antoinette's experience--taints everything. Entire estates are in decay, and the creole landowners are suspicious and live in fear. It is a land of great beauty, and the language of the novel conveys the sense of exquisite beauty. I really would argue for a 'scratch and sniff' version of this novel. At times, the descriptive language is so strong that I expected the fragrances of the exotic, lush setting to leap out from the book's pages. The matchless descriptions of the decayed mansions, the colours and lush fragrances of the vegetation, the "orchids that flourished out of reach" all create an atmosphere of impending doom, and Antoinette seems oblivious to it, but at the same time, she is part of it too. Rochester seems to realise that there is something inherently wrong with the situation, but even he is seduced by the evil elements at work. I particularly loved "Massacre"--a place whose name no longer has any meaning, and certainly holds no interest to those already poisoned, tainted, and seduced. Antoinette is a doomed character (and here is the similarity with other Rhys novels); she is doomed in Jamaica, and she will be doomed in the cold sterility of an English attic.
Bertha Rochester from the novel "Jane Eyre" is one of those fascinating minor characters from literature who are pivotal to the action, and yet their roles leave ripples of questions in their wake. We are told by Mr Rochester in "Jane Eyre" that his wife is mad and must be locked up for her own safety and for the safety of others. And yet, somehow for me, this explanation only led me to questions--such as where was Bertha from before she took up residence in Rochester's attic? Additionally, Bertha's displacement does not augur well for Rochester--especially since he has designs on Jane Eyre. The connotations are not pleasant, and Rhys created a Rochester who could also very believably exist within the pages of the Bronte novel. Antoinette Cosway is also very believable as the discarded Mrs Rochester.
While I do not consider "Wide Sargasso Sea" as a perversion of "Jane Eyre", I don't think it's a perfect novel either. One part of "Wide Sargasso Sea" that I considered flawed is the depiction of the woman, Christophine. This character just did not ring true for me. I was also a little confused by the shift in narration, and was not prepared for the leap in time from Anotinette's childhood to adulthood. For several pages, I did not realise that the child narrator of the first part was now a married woman in part II. I was a bit confused by it, and ended up re-reading parts to get everything straight. If you enjoyed "Wide Sargasso Sea," there is a good chance that you will enjoy her other books too--although I would have to add here that if this was the first Rhys novel for me, I doubt that I would bother to seek out her others. I feel that the other Rhys novels were really far superior, and it is surprising to me that "Wide Sargasso Sea" was responsible for her reputation as a novelist--displacedhuman.
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