Wide Sargasso Sea (Penguin Modern Classics)

Rhys, Jean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141185422 ISBN 13: 9780141185422

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2000

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'

'Rhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th Century and turned it inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th Century' Michele Roberts

Jean Rhys's masterpiece tells the story of Jane Eyre's 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester.

Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness, and her husband into the arms of another novel's heroine. This classic study of betrayal, a seminal work of postcolonial literature, is Jean Rhys's brief, beautiful masterpiece.

Edited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith

Review:

Rhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th Century and turned it inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th Century (Michele Roberts)

Rhys's iconic prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is rich in motifs and devices both modernist and postmodernist (Hephzibah Anderson)

Beautiful and subversive [...] the novel didn't just take inspiration from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, it illuminated and confronted it, challenged the narrative. (Danielle McLaughlin Paris Review)

Wide Sargasso Sea is not just a great novel, it is many brilliant books in one (Independent)

Synopsis:

Inspired by Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre", "Wide Sargasso Sea" is set in 1830's Jamaica. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness. This classic study of betrayal is Jean Rhys' brief, beautiful masterpiece.