Wide Sargasso Sea, a masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys’s return to the literary center stage. She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-selling novel, she ingeniously brings into light one of fiction’s most fascinating characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. This mesmerizing work introduces us to Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.
THOUGHTS:
Although I consider this novel comes under the umbrella of fan fiction, it's a huge stretch of the term. I'm sure Jean Rhys was too incensed to consider herself a 'fan' of Charlotte Bronte's. That indignation is what prompted her to write this prequel-cum-protest. It's the backstory of Bertha Mason, the doomed first wife of Edward Rochester from Jane Eyre. I expected a grim read but quite a significant one, which is just what I got.
Jean Rhys herself had common ground with Bertha Mason Rochester, being the daughter of a Welsh father and Creole mother from the Caribbean. As a teenager in 1907, she was reportedly horrified to read Bronte's masterpiece, and decided to someday become the voice for this character, who was denied a voice of her own within canon.
It's an important novel within a historical context, prompting us to approach British classics and famous storylines with open minds, looking out for untold stories of marginalized folk. The fact that it cemented Rhys' name for her comes as no surprise.
The main character starts off as a little girl named Antoinette Cosway, who lives with her mother and ailing younger brother in their dilapidated estate, Coulibri. Antoinette's slave-owning father has passed away, but many former slaves, now liberated, still regard Cosway's wife and kids with resentment. Antoinette grows up with this hostile background murmur. Her only friend, Tia, is more of a frenemy. The district natives practice obeah charms, a type of black magic or voodoo, which nobody takes lightly.
In the course of time, Antoinette's mother marries Mr Mason, who has a son named Richard (whom we meet in Jane Eyre). The senior Mason assumes his wife is too sensitive and paranoid about the ill will of their neighbors. He discovers his mistake too late when they become the target of full-blown riot. So the only side of human nature Antoinette has experienced is malicious hatred, simply for being born into a particular family.
Next is the part many of us know so well already. Antoinette/Bertha is used as a pawn in somebody else's game. Her stepfather (who was surely intended by Bronte as her biological dad, but never mind) bargains with a rich Englishman to marry Antionette to his younger son, for her dowry.
This younger version of Edward Rochester expresses more of the same point of view he spouted in Jane Eyre. He considers himself to be a victim because he's a second son coerced to marry a stranger, who turns out to be in a far different headspace from his own. Rochester never takes time to reflect that Bertha is the ultimate victim, being presented by her male family members as a commodity to a stranger who is greedy to control her purse strings. 'I have not bought her, she has bought me,' is how he expresses it.
Not cool, Ed.
Sinister cultural differences is partly what begins to wedge them apart, but he sometimes expresses frustration for nothing much at all. 'I watched her holding her left wrist with her right hand. An annoying habit.' Talk about finding the slightest thing to pick on. He does make an effort here and there, in his own way, to make the best of the hand life seems to have dealt him, but to mention any more would be flirting with plot spoilers (although we all know where the story is headed).
Anyway, the main theme is, of course, the fact that Antoinette/Bertha is consistently fobbed off and abandoned by those stronger than her, who have pledged to care for her. 'If the razor grass cuts my legs and arms, I would think, "It's better than people."'
I didn't enjoy the story. It was a relief to finish and escape from all the mean, cutting, gloating, spiteful characters. There is not one single 'nice' person in the whole book. And from a structural perspective, some of the story's transitions between narrators seemed like a confused jumble at times, but if we know Jane Eyre well enough, we manage to latch on.
The Cosways have a cynical family servant named Christophine, whose observation aptly summarizes poor Bertha's story. 'When a man don't love you, more you try, more he hate you. If you love them, they treat you bad. If you don't love them, they after you night and day, bothering your soul case out.'
I googled the significance of the title, which turns out to be another symbol of poor Bertha's life. It seems there is a deceptively calm stretch of water near Jamaica where a type of seaweed named 'sargassum' lurks in tangled traps, ensnaring ships until they can only drift helplessly and hopelessly.
Overall, it is not a fun read, but quite obvious why it became Rhys' magnum opus. Within this reasonably slim book, she's made herself an advocate for femimism, anti-racism, and mental healthcare all in one. Even though I didn't like it, I feel it deserves three stars for its originality and significance.
It's one of those books which is 'important' but unpleasant. A bit like taking literary medicine maybe.
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