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Wide Sargasso Sea: A Novel
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780393310481
ISBN: 0393308804
Label: W. W. Norton
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: August 19, 1992
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Studio: W. W. Norton
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Editorial Review:
In 1966 Jean Rhys reemerged after a long silence with a novel called Wide Sargasso Sea. Rhys had enjoyed minor literary success in the 1920s and '30s with a series of evocative novels featuring women protagonists adrift in Europe, verging on poverty, hoping to be saved by men. By the '40s, however, her work was out of fashion, too sad for a world at war. And Rhys herself was often too sad for the world--she was suicidal, alcoholic, troubled by a vast loneliness. She was also a great writer, despite her powerful self-destructive impulses.
Wide Sargasso Sea is the story of Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress who grew up in the West Indies on a decaying plantation. When she comes of age she is married off to an Englishman, and he takes her away from the only place she has known--a house with a garden where "the paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched."
The novel is Rhys's answer to Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë's book had long haunted her, mostly for the story it did not tell--that of the madwoman in the attic, Rochester's terrible secret. Antoinette is Rhys's imagining of that locked-up woman, who in the end burns up the house and herself. Wide Sargasso Sea follows her voyage into the dark, both from her point of view and Rochester's. It is a voyage charged with soul-destroying lust. "I watched her die many times," observes the new husband. "In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty."
Rhys struggled over the book, enduring rejections and revisions, wrestling to bring this ruined woman out of the ashes. The slim volume was finally published when she was 70 years old. The critical adulation that followed, she said, "has come too late." Jean Rhys died a few years later, but with Wide Sargasso Sea she left behind a great legacy, a work of strange, scary loveliness. There has not been a book like it before or since. Believe me, I've been searching. --Emily White
The fortieth anniversary reissue of the best-selling "tour de force" (Walter Allen, New York Times Book Review).Jean Rhys's reputation was made upon the publication of this passionate and heartbreaking novel, in which she brings into the light one of fiction's most mysterious characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.A sensual and protected young woman, Antoinette Cosway grows upin the lush natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold intomarriage to the coldhearted and prideful Rochester, who succumbsto his need for money and his lust. Yet he will make her pay forher ancestors' sins of slaveholding, excessive drinking, and nihilistic despair by enslaving her as a prisoner in his bleak English home.In this best-selling novel Rhys portrays a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Interesting and Exciting Read
I read this book because it's on the Modern Library's Top 100 list, so unfortunately I haven't read Emily Bronte's Jane Eyre. I think once I read that book, I'll be able to come back to Wide Sargasso Sea, and understand it on a deeper level. Even so, I enjoyed reading this book, and was intrigued by the mysterious portrayal of the characters. The main character Antoinetta's tragic life, turbulent relationships and eventual madness is all beautifully portrayed. I can't wait to follow up by reading ... Read More
Rating: - Rich, sensual take on a classic character
I'm a big fan of the Brontes', and I'd always heard academics animatedly discussing Wide Sargasso Sea. Here's the skinny: In Jane Eyre, we discover near the end of the novel that Jane's intended (Edward Rochester, her former employer) is actually already a married man. We learn that he'd been duped into marriage to a crazy, wealthy woman from the West Indies (she's called Bertha in Charlotte Bronte's novel) by not only her family, but by his own. (The arrangement was a financial boon for his money ... Read More
Rating: - prequel to Jane Eyre intriques...
'Wide Sargasso Sea' is certainly an interesting read. Although a prequel to 'Jane Eyre', it can be read on its own merit. The story is about a rather disturbed young woman in the West Indies and her husband who both tries to understand and escape from her. The author captures the time period (1830s) perfectly and has obviously researched the lifestyle and the language of the local people. She is also a brilliant writer; her prose and characterizations are of a high caliber. Yet since much of the ... Read More
Rating: - moods as varied as the skies over the West Indies
With her vivid imaginative skills, Jean Rhys offers us the tale of "Bertha" Rochester, the madwoman in the attic of "Jane Eyre." The skies of the West Indies are an ever-changing backdrop in this moody novel of fear, memory, and desire. Rhys' style challenges the reader to "fill in the blanks" many times throughout, making necessary intuitive connections to amplify her sometimes sparse prose. What could have been merely a lightweight story of "love and greed in the tropics" turns into an engaging, beautifully ... Read More
Rating:  - Greatest tragedy in the world: loss of three trees in North Carolina for the purpose of the novel
I bought this novel with anticipation of a thrilling story and a dramatic yet suspenseful story. What I got was a boring love story followed by an atrocious climb to a lackluster climax. The story is narrator from opposing views, mainly the Creole protagonist, Antionnette, yet also from a Colonialist whose name is never mentioned. Why the name was never mentioned is unclear, obviously to try and give a sense of imagination and creativity to the story (EPIC FAIL). Characters are introduced randomly and seemingly ... Read More
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