HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Loading...

Wide Sargasso Sea (original 1966; edition 1999)

by Jean Rhys, Charlotte Bronte

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
8,4072521,013 (3.55)800
Beautiful and wealthy Antoinette Cosway's passionate love for an English aristocrat threatens to destroy her idyllic West Indian island existence and her very life.
Member:paruline
Title:Wide Sargasso Sea
Authors:Jean Rhys
Other authors:Charlotte Bronte
Info:Buccaneer Books (1999), Hardcover, 189 pages
Collections:Women, Your library
Rating:***1/2
Tags:1001, added 2018, 2019 CC

Work Information

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966)

  1. 272
    Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (aces, kjuliff)
    kjuliff: Mr. Rochester
  2. 71
    The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra M. Gilbert (Imprinted)
  3. 20
    Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector (Petroglyph)
    Petroglyph: Even though Near to the wild heart was written some twenty years prior to Wide Sargasso Sea, these two share numerous features: the interior monologue, the lyricism, the heroine mostly living inside her skull, the central character who doesn’t see a way out of their mental frustrations with life. Lispector kicked all that up a few notches, but to me these two belong close together on my mental shelves.… (more)
  4. 42
    March by Geraldine Brooks (CGlanovsky)
    CGlanovsky: Classic stories (Little Women/Jane Eyre) re-imagined through the experiences of characters who are important to the plot while being almost entirely unseen.
  5. 20
    The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (Philosofiction)
  6. 20
    Grendel by John Gardner (CGlanovsky)
    CGlanovsky: Classics retold to give voice to silent characters important to their plots.
  7. 10
    After Mrs Rochester by Polly Teale (srdr)
    srdr: This brilliant drama illuminates the themes that run through Jean Rhys's life, Wide Sargasso Sea, and Jane Eyre.
  8. 00
    Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (Cecilturtle)
    Cecilturtle: colonialisme
  9. 22
    Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica by Zora Neale Hurston (cammykitty)
  10. 00
    A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen (lucy.depalma)
  11. 01
    Bug-Jargal by Victor Hugo (Medicinos)
    Medicinos: Bug-Jargal décrit une société antillaise basée sur l'exploitation des esclaves qui éclate lorsque ces derniers se rebellent. La prisonnière des Sargasses décrit une société analogue après la rébellion.
  12. 02
    Blessed Is the Fruit by Robert Antoni (IsolaBlue)
  13. 02
    Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (GlebtheDancer)
    GlebtheDancer: Dark, foreboding, claustrophobic feel. Self-destruction of central character. Similar prose styles.
  14. 03
    Signed, Mata Hari: A Novel by Yannick Murphy (Anonymous user)
    Anonymous user: Lush depiction of tropics with natives playing important roles, women "bought" and tragic endings
1960s (14)
AP Lit (36)
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 800 mentions

English (241)  Dutch (2)  Spanish (2)  French (2)  Italian (1)  Portuguese (Portugal) (1)  Catalan (1)  All languages (250)
Showing 1-5 of 241 (next | show all)
This is a classic and I have been meaning to read it a long time but I just couldn't connect with it. I get the themes of colonialism, race, and mental illness but I don't get why this is such an enduring classic. Is it because I couldn't connect it with the story of the woman in the attic? I am not sure. ( )
  siok | Mar 24, 2024 |
Fascinating read for anyone familiar with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. At times I had to re-read sections to find out who was who but Jean Rhys's moody, atmospheric writing sets up Jane Eyre as a horror story. I love this genre of spin-off books that can take you through dimensional doorways in other stories resulting not only in richly nuanced stories but by their sheer power, the original stories are given new dimensions. I would rate this book up there with John Updike's Gertrude and Claudius. It was so good that it sent me back to Charlotte Bronte and re-reading Jane Eyre and then to Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights because those Bronte sisters are a literary treat. ( )
  simonpockley | Feb 25, 2024 |
Published in the mid-1960s, this was Rhys's last and best novel. Madness in the Caribbean. ( )
  ben_r47 | Feb 22, 2024 |
Ideally, read just after finishing Jane Eyre. ( )
  Byakhee | Feb 21, 2024 |
Spoiler alert: Mr. Rochester definitely comes off as the selfish, arrogant, self-pitying villain in this Jane Eyre prequel that imagines the events leading up to his wife Bertha's madness and attic confinement. But he's not the only villain in the piece: colonialism, sexism, racism, greed, and misogyny also play roles in this heartbreaking tale of a woman traumatized and betrayed to her ruin.

First things first, she's Antoinette in this tale - Bertha being a cruel nickname that Rochester assigns her after he, Othello-like, allows himself to be convinced by an Iago stand-in that he's been tricked into marrying a madwoman. Humiliated, he lashes out at Antoinette as the source of his disgrace, seeking revenge: first by humiliating her, then betraying her, then labelling her as mad before finally ripping her away from her beloved tropical island and whisking her off to England to live the rest of her life as his prisoner.

But who gets to define madness? At what point do the combined impacts of grief, disenfranchisement, betrayal, and profound social isolation cross over into madness? Rhys paints an aching portrait of a woman whose only crime is loving too deeply. Perversely, even her passionate nature, the result of having grown up in the lush and sensual tropics, is construed as evidence of madness - lust in a woman being, in those Victorian times, a sure indicator of mental dissipation.

Rhys's storytelling is elegant, inventive, and evocative. Her character sketches are as artfully brutal as her descriptions of Jamaica are exquisitely sensuous. Sweeping in its themes (pride, greed, love, grief) but explicit in its tragic examination of female agency, I get why this continues to show up on "Greatest Works of English Literature" lists. ( )
  Dorritt | Feb 20, 2024 |
Showing 1-5 of 241 (next | show all)

» Add other authors (45 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Rhys, Jeanprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Ashworth, AndreaIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Buchlerova, Alexandrasecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Daunt, ChrisIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Dorsman-Vos, W.A.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Mooney, BelIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Smith, AngelaIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Walitsek, BrigitteTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Wilks, SueCover photographsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Wright, KimberleyIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Wyndham, FrancisIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Dedication
First words
They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.
Quotations
'If you are buried under a flamboyant tree,' I said, 'your soul is lifted up when it flowers. Everyone wants that.'
The saints we hear about were all very beautiful and wealthy. All were loved by rich and handsome young men.
Reality might disconcert her, bewilder her, hurt her, but it would not be reality. It would be only a mistake, a misfortune, a wrong path taken, her fixed ideas would never change.
'So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.'
'You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone.'
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

Beautiful and wealthy Antoinette Cosway's passionate love for an English aristocrat threatens to destroy her idyllic West Indian island existence and her very life.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.55)
0.5 7
1 49
1.5 10
2 194
2.5 48
3 467
3.5 140
4 606
4.5 65
5 306

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

Penguin Australia

2 editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia.

Editions: 0141182857, 0241951550

W.W. Norton

An edition of this book was published by W.W. Norton.

» Publisher information page

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,221,516 books! | Top bar: Always visible