Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780141185422
ISBN number: 0141185422
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Page Count: 160
Printing Date: August 03, 2000
Publishing house: Penguin Classics
Sale Popularity Level: 1432299
Studio: Penguin Classics
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Product Description:
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.
Amazon.com Review:
In 1966 Jean Rhys reemerged after a long silence with a novel called Wide Sargasso Sea. Rhys had enjoyed minor literary sucess in the 1920s and '30s with a series of evocative novels featuring women protagonists adrift in Europe, verging on poverty, hoping to be saved by men. By the '40s, however, her work was out of fashion, too sad for a world at war. And Rhys herself was often too sad for the world--she was suicidal, alcoholic, troubled by a vast loneliness. She was also a great writer, despite her powerful self-destructive impulses.
Wide Sargasso Sea is the story of Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress who grew up in the West Indies on a decaying plantation. When she comes of age she is married off to an Englishman, and he takes her away from the only place she has known--a house with a garden where 'the paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched.'
The novel is Rhys's answer to Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë's book had long haunted her, mostly for the story it did not tell--that of the madwoman in the attic, Rochester's terrible secret. Antoinette is Rhys's imagining of that locked-up woman, who in the end burns up the house and herself. Wide Sargasso Sea follows her voyage into the dark, both from her point of view and Rochester's. It is a voyage charged with soul-destroying lust. 'I watched her die many times,' observes the new husband. 'In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty.'
Rhys struggled over the book, enduring rejections and revisions, wrestling to bring this ruined woman out of the ashes. The slim volume was finally published when she was 70 years old. The critical adulation that followed, she said, 'has come too late.' Jean Rhys died a few years later, but with Wide Sargasso Sea she left behind a great legacy, a work of strange, scary loveliness. There has not been a book like it before or since. Believe me, I've been searching. --Emily White
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Rated by buyers 
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I read this book because it's on the Modern Library's Top 100 list, so unfortunately I haven't read Emily Bronte's Jane Eyre. I think once I read that book, I'll be able to come back to Wide Sargasso Sea, and understand it on a deeper level. Even so, I enjoyed reading this book, and was intrigued by the mysterious portrayal of the characters. The main character Antoinetta's tragic life, turbulent relationships and eventual madness is all beautifully portrayed. I can't wait to follow up by reading Jane Eyre, the source of Rhys inspiration for this novel.
Rated by buyers -
I'm a big fan of the Brontes', and I'd always heard academics animatedly discussing Wide Sargasso Sea. Here's the skinny: In Jane Eyre, we discover near the end of the novel that Jane's intended (Edward Rochester, her former employer) is actually already a married man. We learn that he'd been duped into marriage to a crazy, wealthy woman from the West Indies (she's called Bertha in Charlotte Bronte's novel) by not only her family, but by his own. (The arrangement was a financial boon for his money-grubbing family, and her family was just glad to get her out of the way). At any rate, this mad woman has been sequestered in the drafty attic of Rochester's mansion for YEARS, and she conveniently dies at the end of Bronte's novel so that Jane and Edward can live happily ever after.
Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys, tells "Bertha's" side of the story. I found this to be a beautiful, wonderfully atmospheric novella. Bertha is re-christened Antoinette in the slim volume, and though her family does have its share of mental illness, Rhys also explains the history and relationships that have led to such outcomes. The language describing the landscape of the West Indies is rich and thick with scent, colour and flavor. Racial tensions are starkly drawn, and the sinister nature of all the tropical unknowns (jungle, ruins, grey magic) are lurking on every page.
This one I can recommend, particularly if you are a fan of Jane Eyre. It will make you think of that classic in a new way, and it will also have you digging out your bikini and wondering if you can keep on orchid alive in your kitchen window.
Rated by buyers -
'Wide Sargasso Sea' is certainly an interesting read. Although a prequel to 'Jane Eyre', it can be read on its own merit. The story is about a rather disturbed young woman in the West Indies and her husband who both tries to understand and escape from her. The author captures the time period (1830s) perfectly and has obviously researched the lifestyle and the language of the local people. She is also a brilliant writer; her prose and characterizations are of a high caliber. Yet since much of the book is written in the very first person of a stressed, emotionally unstable woman, I found it sometimes difficult to catch all the subtle nuances. Thankfully there are appendices in the back of the book which proved most helpful.
Bottom line: a very different, at times difficult, but very remarkable piece of literature.
Rated by buyers -
With her vivid imaginative skills, Jean Rhys offers us the tale of "Bertha" Rochester, the madwoman in the attic of "Jane Eyre." The skies of the West Indies are an ever-changing backdrop in this moody novel of fear, memory, and desire. Rhys' style challenges the reader to "fill in the blanks" many times throughout, making necessary intuitive connections to amplify her sometimes sparse prose. What could have been merely a lightweight story of "love and greed in the tropics" turns into an engaging, beautifully unfolding narrative laden with mystery and sadness.
Rated by buyers 
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I bought this novel with anticipation of a thrilling story and a dramatic yet suspenseful story. What I got was a boring love story followed by an atrocious climb to a lackluster climax. The story is narrator from opposing views, mainly the Creole protagonist, Antionnette, yet also from a Colonialist whose name is never mentioned. Why the name was never mentioned is unclear, obviously to try and give a sense of imagination and creativity to the story (EPIC FAIL). Characters are introduced randomly and seemingly without a purpose in the novel. The racism towards English is evident in Rhys obsession towards depicting them as soulless colonial butchers when this is obviously not the case. The novel is simply a silly novel, not bad, but silly. The love story seemingly falls apart out of nowhere, there is no cohesion to the story and the characters seemingly were created out of a Jamacain woman's desire for a popular story. The climax of the novel is pointless and silly, the story translating to England out of nowhere. There is no point to the novel, as it should never have been written. This is the most racist and atrociously silly novel I have ever read. Couldn't stop laughing after I read it.
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