About the EditionJean Rhys's reputation was made upon publication of this passionate and heartbreaking novel, in which she brings into the light one of citsion's most mysterious characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre'.A sensual and protected young woman, the narrator grows up in the lush, natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold into marriage to the cold-hearted and prideful Rochester, who succumbs to his need for money and his lust. Yet he will make her pay for her ancestors' sins of slaveholding, excessive drinking and nihilistic despair by enslaving her as a prisoner in his bleak British home.(back cover).

• Wide Sargasso Sea Novel
• Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea Free

Contents.Plot The novel, initially set in Jamaica, opens a short while after the ended slavery in the British Empire on August 1, 1834. The protagonist Antoinette relates the story of her life from childhood to her arranged marriage to an unnamed Englishman.The novel is in three parts:Part One takes place in Coulibri, a sugar plantation in, and is narrated by Antoinette as a child. Formerly wealthy, since the abolition of slavery, the estate has become derelict and her family has been plunged into poverty. Antoinette's mother, Annette, must remarry to wealthy Englishman Mr.

Mason, who is hoping to exploit his new wife's situation. Angry at the returning prosperity of their oppressors, freed slaves living in Coulibri burn down Annette's house, killing Antoinette's mentally disabled younger brother, Pierre.

As Annette had been struggling with her mental health up until this point, the grief of losing her son weakens her sanity. Mason sends her to live with a couple who torment her until she dies, and Antoinette does not see her again.Part Two alternates between the points of view of Antoinette and her husband during their honeymoon excursion to Granbois,. Likely catalysts for Antoinette's downfall are the mutual suspicions that develop between the couple, and the machinations of Daniel, who claims he is Antoinette's illegitimate half-brother; he impugns Antoinette's reputation and mental state and demands money to keep quiet. Antoinette's old nurse Christophine openly distrusts the Englishman. His apparent belief in the stories about Antoinette's family and past aggravate the situation; her husband is unfaithful and emotionally abusive. He begins to call her Bertha rather than her real name and flaunts his affairs in front of her to cause her pain. Antoinette's increased sense of paranoia and the bitter disappointment of her failing marriage unbalance her already precarious mental and emotional state.

Wide Sargasso Sea Novel

She flees to the house of Christophine, the servant woman who raised her. Antoinette pleads with Christophine for an potion to attempt to reignite her husband's love, which Christophine reluctantly gives her. Antoinette returns home but the love potion acts like a poison on her husband.

Subsequently he refuses Christophine's offer of help for his wife and takes her to England.Part Three is the shortest part of the novel; it is from the perspective of Antoinette, renamed by her husband as Bertha. She is largely confined to 'the attic' of, the mansion she calls the 'Great House'. The story traces her relationship with Grace Poole, the servant who is tasked with guarding her, as well as her disintegrating life with the Englishman, as he hides her from the world. He makes empty promises to come to her more but sees less of her. He ventures away to pursue relationships with other women—and eventually with the young governess. Antoinette is clearly mad and has little understanding of how much time she has been confined. She fixates on options of freedom including her stepbrother Richard who, however, will not interfere with her husband, so she attacks him with a stolen knife.

Expressing her thoughts in, Antoinette dreams of flames engulfing the house and her freedom from the life she has there, and believes it is her destiny to fulfill the vision. Waking from her dream she escapes her room, and sets the fire.Major themes Since the late 20th century, critics have considered Wide Sargasso Sea as a response to Rhys uses multiple voices (Antoinette's, her husband's, and Grace Poole's) to tell the story, and intertwines her novel's plot with that of. In addition, Rhys makes a postcolonial argument when she ties Antoinette's husband's eventual rejection of Antoinette to her heritage (a rejection shown to be critical to Antoinette's descent into madness). The novel is also considered a feminist work, as it deals with unequal power between men and women, particularly in marriage.Race Antoinette and her family had been slave owners up until the and subsequently lost their wealth. They are called ' by the Island's negroes because of their poverty and are openly despised. Rochester, as an Englishman, looks down on Antoinette because she is a. Antoinette is not English and yet her family history reflects her as a white woman.

Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea Free

Lee Erwin describes this paradox through the scene in which Antoinette's first house is burned down and she runs to Tia, a black girl her own age, to 'be like her'. Antoinette is rebuffed by violence from Tia, leading to her seeing Tia 'as if I saw myself. Like in a looking glass'. Erwin argues that 'even as she claims to be seeing 'herself,' she is simultaneously seeing 'the other', that which only defines the self by its separation from it, in this case literally by means of a cut.

History here, in the person of a former slave's daughter, is figured as refusing Antoinette', the daughter of a slave owner. Colonialism In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys draws attention to colonialism and the slave trade by which Antoinette's ancestors had made their fortune. The novel does not shy away from uncomfortable truths about British history that had been neglected in Bronte's narrative. Trevor Hope remarks that the 'triumphant conflagration of Thornfield Hall in Wide Sargasso Sea may at one level mark a vengeful attack upon the earlier textual structure'.

The destruction of Thornfield Hall occurs in both novels; however, Rhys epitomises the fire as a liberating experience for Antoinette. If Thornfield Hall represents domestic ideas of Britishness, then Hope suggests Wide Sargasso Sea is 'taking residence inside the textual domicile of empire in order to bring about its disintegration or even, indeed, its conflagration.' Awards and nominations. Winner of the in 1967, which brought Rhys to public attention after decades of obscurity. Named by as one of the '100 best English-language novels since 1923'. Rated number 94 on the list of. Winner of Cheltenham Booker Prize 2006 for year 1966Critical reception On November 5, 2019, the listed Wide Sargasso Sea on its list of the.

Adaptations. 1993:, film adaptation directed by and starring and. 1997: Wide Sargasso Sea, a chamber opera adaptation with music by Australian composer Brian Howard, directed by Douglas Horton. 2004: Wide Sargasso Sea, 10-part adaptation by, read by (repeated 2012, 2014). 2006:, TV movie adaptation directed by and starring and.

2011: 'Wide Sargasso Sea', song written by rock 'n' roll singer about the novel and film; it appears on her 2011 album.See also.References., The Black Presence, National Archive. 3 August 2000. Archived from on 28 September 2007. Retrieved 2 January 2011. Archived from on 16 December 2010. Retrieved 2 January 2011.

Erwin, Lee (1989). ' 'Like in a Looking-Glass': History and Narrative in Wide Sargasso Sea'. Novel: A Forum on Fiction.

Hope, Trevor (2012). 'Revisiting the Imperial Archive: Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, and the Decomposition of Englishness'.

College Literature. Lacayo, Richard (16 October 2005). Retrieved 2 January 2011., Library Thing. 5 November 2019. Retrieved 10 November 2019. The reveal kickstarts the BBC's year-long celebration of literature. Brian Kellow, Opera News, December 2012 — Vol.

Retrieved 28 October 2018.External links., The Magpie Poet blog., study guide, themes, quotes, & teacher resources. JaneEyre.net.