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In reading Wide Sargasso Sea you do have to keep Jane Eyre in mind as it acts as a prequel to Charlotte Brontės novel despite the fact it was written a hundred years later. Rhys text is obviously set within the mother-text of Jane Eyre and as such its end is predestined as it literally comes before Rhyss beginning. ... She was reportedly outraged at the representation she found in Jane Eyre of Bertha as she is portrayed not only as a horrific and dangerously passionate woman but also as a bestial and racially inferior subject. ... As Spivak shows Jane Eyre herself is marginalized and is only saved from this interminable position by the cultural contestant of Bertha, Jane is thrown into the centre and received as superior following this passage where Bertha is rendered as bestial and animalistic by imperialist prejudice:
"In the deep shade, at the further end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face" (Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontė p. ... However, in Wide Sargasso Sea Rhys gives the madwoman in the attic her own voice, interior logic and sympathetically portrays the psychological demise of Antoinette. Rhys charts the effects of the political shifts on individual lives and identities and gives Antoinette a voice to speak back to Rochesters and Brontės indictment of her in Jane Eyre. ...
In Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys neglects the linear autobiographical narrative, as in Jane Eyre, preferring the trisect form where parts one and three are in Antoinettes own voice with a gap of Rochesters narration between them. ... Culture is set against culture; "She called the ajoupa, I the summer house". ...
First published in 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea emerged after a break of thirty years since Rhyss other novels: Quartet, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, Voyage in the Dark and Good Morning, Midnight. ...
Rhys born on the Caribbean island of Dominica, drew on her own memories of the West Indies to create the environment of Wide Sargasso Sea as her own childhood visions inform the intoxicating and luxuriant despoiled Eden of Coulibri and the landscape forms an inextricable part of the novels tensions and cultural conflicts. ...
The title itself further highlights the dangerous confusions to be faced in the course of the novel - the Sargasso Sea lies between Europe and the West Indies; situated suitably between the two dominant cultures which clash in the novel. ...
Set in the mid nineteenth century, Wide Sargasso Sea opens amid the tensions of the 1833 Emancipation Act in the British West Indies. ...
Similarly, in Wide Sargasso Sea, Rochester and Antoinettes marriage can be seen as being doomed from the start due to the landscape that they pass through on their journey to the honeymoon house. ...
Just as the name Jane Eyre can be seen to reflect Janes character, the title of Rhyss novel can be seen to reflect the development of its plot. The Sargasso Sea, (Sargasso being the weed that gives that part of the North Atlantic its name), is almost still but at its centre has a mass of swirling currents, an image suggestive of Antoinettes character, and of the turmoil of her imprisonment and the method of her escape.
Approximate Word count = 2724
Approximate Pages = 10.9
(250 words per page double spaced)
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