Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Wide Sargasso Sea (original 1966; edition 1999)by Jean Rhys, Charlotte Bronte
Work InformationWide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966)
» 72 more 20th Century Literature (115) Female Author (112) Folio Society (119) 1960s (14) Big Jubilee List (5) Short and Sweet (61) Best Historical Fiction (373) Reading Globally (2) Women's reading list (20) Historical Fiction (285) Top Five Books of 2018 (384) Best Love Stories (24) Books Read in 2014 (314) Best First Lines (30) Love and Marriage (23) Summer Reads 2014 (90) Books Set on Islands (17) Best Beach Reads (80) AP Lit (36) Books Read in 2024 (718) Books Read in 2021 (1,911) Books Read in 2017 (1,805) Overdue Podcast (271) Parallel Novels (16) Female Protagonist (714) Alphabetical Books (10) Five star books (1,274) Stuff from Bard (41) Books Read in 2011 (128) Ocean Setting (5) Historical Fiction (79) Favourite Books (1,744) Unread books (839) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. 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. ( ) 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. 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. Belongs to Publisher SeriesIs contained inIs a (non-series) prequel toHas the adaptationIs abridged inHas as a studyHas as a supplementHas as a student's study guideAwardsNotable Lists
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. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.912Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1901-1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. Penguin Australia2 editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia. Editions: 0141182857, 0241951550 W.W. NortonAn edition of this book was published by W.W. Norton. |