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Wide Sargasso Sea Paperback – January 25, 2016
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This “tour de force” (New York Times Book Review) celebrates its 50th anniversary.
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.
A new introduction by the award-winning Edwidge Danticat, author most recently of Claire of the Sea Light, expresses the enduring importance of this work. Drawing on her own Caribbean background, she illuminates the setting’s impact on Rhys and her astonishing work.
- Print length176 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherW. W. Norton & Company
- Publication dateJanuary 25, 2016
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.5 x 8.3 inches
- ISBN-100393352560
- ISBN-13978-0393352566
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― New York Times Book Review
"The distillation of [Rhys's] life and craft… Nowhere is her prose more supple, more assured."
― Sara Paretsky, “You Must Read This,” NPR
"Working a stylistic range from moody introspection to formal elegance, Miss Rhys has us traveling under Antoinette’s skin. It is an eerie and memorable trip."
― The Nation
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Product details
- Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company; Reissue edition (January 25, 2016)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 176 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0393352560
- ISBN-13 : 978-0393352566
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.3 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #19,403 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #93 in Classic American Literature
- #685 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #1,383 in Reference (Books)
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In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester’s plans to marry Jane are frustrated by the revelation that the long-suffering man is already married and in fact, his mad wife is locked in the attic. But what is her story? And if she is ‘mad’, how did she get that way?
The wife is Antoinette Bertha Mason Rochester, nee Cosway; she prefers Antoinette. Rhys is masterful showing the descent of Antionette’s life and mind as well as the gradual rise of Rochester’s contempt and control of her. The evolution of Antoinette’s voice from clarity to ‘madness’ is exquisite and sad.
Like Rhys herself, Antoinette is of Creole descent. We meet her growing up in Dominica with her widowed mother and disabled brother. From the beginning, Antoinette is unsure of who she is. As white Creoles, they are rejected by both the English and the Blacks, who call them “white cockroaches.” As women, they lack status or agency. After the Emancipation Act frees the slaves, Antoinette’s slaveholding family, once wealthy, becomes destitute.
Antoinette’s mother pursues the only option she believes is open to her, and marries a rich white carpetbagger, Mr. Mason. Mason decides to replace the family’s remaining servants with Eastern coolie workers. The staff overhears, however, and they set fire to the home, Coulibri, resulting in the death of Antoinette’s brother and leading to her mother’s emotional devastation.
Mr. Mason abandons his mad wife to abusive caretakers and sends Antoinette to convent school. It is his responsibility to identify a husband for her, howe
ver, and he does. It’s an unnamed English gentleman, though readers of Jane Eyre will recognize him as Mr. Rochester.
As a second son, Rochester needs the money bequeathed to Antoinette by her stepfather. They wed, and at first the match seems successful. Rochester breaks down Antoinette’s reserve through affection and physical passion. Antoinette responds, opening herself to experience a happiness her childhood had trained her to never expect.
Yet Rochester has a nagging distrust of his exotic Creole wife, and antipathy for Dominica.
Geography becomes a proxy for the perceptions and misperceptions of the spouses. Neither view the home of the other as “real.” Antoinette sees England as cold and dark; in her eyes Dominica is lush, beautiful and fragrant. Rochester views the technicolor Dominica as ominous and threatening, as if he were about to be devoured by a giant Venus flytrap.
And then there is the Sargasso Sea, a dead-calm oceanic mire that Dominica borders upon. For Antoinette, it’s a metaphor for her deepest fears. For Rochester, it is a physical barrier between himself and his beloved England.
Rochester receives a letter received from a man who may or may not be Antoinette’s brother by her father and one of his slaves. The letter warns Rochester he was tricked into marrying a degenerate girl with a family history of madness. These allegations prey on Rochester’s insecurities and cause him to abruptly reject Antoinette. Her fragile sense of identity shaken and desperate to win back her husband’s affection, Antoinette resorts to means which unintentionally goad Rochester into acting on his worst impulses. The rift between them devolves into a chasm leading to her own undoing.
Rochester drags his broken wife to cold and dark England, where he confines her to the attic, under the care of servants paid for their discretion.
The Wide Sargasso Sea is a stunning work of understanding and empathy for all characters in this book – and the next.
Before launching into it, I had misgivings about a very thin bit of literature that purported to illuminate the life of a tragic and obscure character, threatening the secure opinions of known figures in a widely enjoyed story. After all, this is a classic we're tampering with. With several false starts, a little research about the author and fanning through passionate love/hate reviews, I decided to abandon all my ideas about the preceding novel and not be an annoying purist.
The author Jean Rhys, made a controversial move in shifting the Victorian timeline of the tale to that of the Emancipation period and in doing so, wove a complicated and poetic tapestry of a fractured Jamaican society fraught with themes of financial insecurity, elitism, imperialism, and existentialism; a showcase of human frailty with no one innocent, only varying degrees of vulnerability.
As you might have gathered, it is not a light headed fable with hopping bunnies and tweeting birds that encircle a handsome prince and his radiant bride - the egg in this Easter hunt is rotten and the Mad Hatter is serving you arsenic. Do people actually lose their minds or do they simply create their own reality because the one they are presented with is unacceptable? Can external circumstances drive you to extreme decisions? Are you crazy for making them?
I will admit to having been momentarily confused with several parts because the author allowed different characters to elaborate on their thoughts and events as opposed to a consistent point of view throughout. Consequently, I was invited to a more intimate seat with the personalities, some more repulsive than others. Having said that, I recognise the reason for the negativity towards the book. If you lionised the characters and their society in Jane Eyre, this poignant chronicle becomes a damning affront to your sacred cows.
Reading it for what it is, I found myself hurled into a whirlwind of innocence, betrayal, abandonment, deceit, and cruelty, wrapped up in sad ribbons of dreams that reference lyrically across the tumultuous lives featured. If The Wide Sargasso Sea was a song, it would be a haunting elegy to real lives that have been and that are still trapped in dark webs of humanity.
Once I was aware that this book was a prequel to Jane Eyre about the mad, passionate first wife of Mr Rochester, nothing would keep me from it - outside of a penny-priced copy of it being available on Amazon and it spending months & months stowed away in my bookshelf. So, after much ado, I dove in. It's a little disorienting to read between its dual narration and Antoinette's aggressive, spiteful prose, but it also reminds me of Alice Hoffman's A Marriage of Opposites headstrong heroine and her plight to know herself and who to trust in an almost anti-paradise.
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Leggero
Bellissima storia
Specialmente se uno ha letto Jane Eyre
Reviewed in India on December 15, 2022