Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys (1966)
“The madwoman in Charlotte Brontë's attic finally gets to speak — and what she says demolishes everything Jane Eyre took for granted.”
At a Glance
Set in 1830s Jamaica and Dominica, Wide Sargasso Sea tells the story of Antoinette Cosway — the 'madwoman in the attic' of Jane Eyre — before her imprisonment in Thornfield Hall. A white Creole heiress in post-emancipation Jamaica, Antoinette marries an unnamed English gentleman (Rochester), who is repelled by the island, suspicious of Antoinette's heritage, and determined to possess what he cannot understand. He renames her Bertha, strips her of identity, and eventually transports her to England, where she burns. Rhys gives the silenced woman a voice — and uses it to indict the colonial and patriarchal systems that erased her.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Wide Sargasso Sea is the founding text of postcolonial literary criticism in English — the first major novel to take a canonical work (Jane Eyre) and systematically dismantle it from the perspective of the silenced figure within it. Published in 1966, it appeared at the height of Caribbean independence movements and second-wave feminism, synthesizing both. It created the template for what is now called 'writing back' to the imperial canon.
Diction Profile
Variable: Antoinette's Caribbean prose is sensory and rhythmically open; the husband's voice is formally controlled Victorian English; Christophine's is Creole-inflected and direct
High in Antoinette's sections, moderate in the husband's. Rhys uses color as primary figure