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Wide Sargasso Sea | Introduction

When Wide Sargasso Sea was published in 1966 it helped to rescue its author, Jean Rhys, from the obscurity into which she had fallen. Her previous novels and short stories, published between the two world wars, were out of print. Rhys, who had succumbed to an alcohol addiction, lived an isolated life in a remote village in England, a country she had always despised. Wide Sargasso Sea caught the immediate attention of critics, won the prestigious W. H. Smith Award and Heinemann Award, and earned Rhys a place in the literary canon. The unique novel seeks to recreate the true story of Bertha Mason, the Jamaican mad wife of Edward Rochester in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. In telling Bertha's story (known in Wide Sargasso Sea as Antoinette Cosway), Rhys explores the complex relations between white and black West Indians, and between the old slaveholding West Indian families and the new English settlers in the post-emancipation Caribbean. Set mainly in Jamaica and Dominica, the country of Rhys's birth, the novel describes how Antoinette became mad. In Bronte's novel, Bertha/Antoinette is a monster, described as violent, insane, and promiscuous. Rhys creates instead a sympathetic and vulnerable young woman who seeks, unsuccessfully, to belong. The themes explored in the novel, especially the status of women and the race relations between newly freed slaves and their former owners, have drawn the attention of critics. Other critics debate the merits of the novel, saying that it relies too closely on Jane Eyre and cannot stand alone. Certainly, Rhys's novel forces readers to reexamine Bronte's novel and consider the significance of race in the nineteenth-century English novel.

Wide Sargasso Sea Summary

Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea attempts to fill in the blanks of a fictional character's life story. Here Rhys creates a biography for Bertha Mason, the insane wife of Edward Rochester in Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre. As Rhys's novel begins, Bertha Mason, known through most of the narrative as Antoinette Cosway, is a child living on the overgrown and impoverished Coulibri Estate in Jamaica.

The story begins in 1839, six years after slavery was abolished in the British Empire, of which Jamaica was part. Antoinette, the young narrator of Part I, describes both her family's isolation and poverty in the wake of emancipation. She lives alone with her mother Annette, her brother Pierre, and three black servants, Christophine, Godfrey, and Sass, on the sprawling, but crumbling Cosway family plantation. No neighbors visit the family because Annette Cosway, who was born on Martinique, is considered an outsider. The family's only friend, Mr. Luttrell, kills himself on the novel's opening page. Antoinette believes he was tired of waiting for the world of former slaveowners to improve. Soon after, Annette's horse is poisoned, presumably by former slaves. Voicing the precariousness of their position, Annette remarks, ''Now we are marooned.’’

Antoinette is even more isolated than her mother. Her mother devotes her time and attention to Pierre, who is mentally retarded, and repels Antoinette's affectionate advances. Black children taunt Antoinette, calling her a ''white cockroach.'' When she finally does make friends with Tia, a black girl, the friendship soon ends. After Antoinette calls Tia a ''nigger,’’ Tia retaliates by saying that Antoinette and her family are ‘‘white niggers,’’ not like the... » Complete Wide Sargasso Sea Summary