Wendy recommends:
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Having read Jane Eyre as a teenager and hated it, partly due to its portrayal of ‘the madwoman in the attic’, I was so pleased when I discovered the haunting novel Wide Sargasso Sea. Jean Rhys had decided to ‘write a life’ for the shadowy figure of the madwoman in the attic, and at last one of fiction’s most mysterious characters had a voice and a remarkable but tragic story to tell. For me, it felt a bit like history had been set to rights.
The novel focuses on the character of Antoinette, a Creole heiress, who becomes the first Mrs Rochester. It tells her story from the time of her youth in the Caribbean, to her unhappy marriage to Rochester, and her eventual relocation to England, a land that is alien to her. In polite English society, Antoinette’s passionate and spirited nature is reviled and ultimately repressed by those around her. This novel is very atmospheric and dreamlike, the kind of book that lingers on in your mind long after you’ve finished reading it.
Rhys tackles huge themes such as colonialism, race and culture, patriarchy and displacement but ultimately the novel is about one woman’s struggle, and the oppressive society that hastens her descent into madness. Read this book and be prepared to never look at Jane Eyre the same way again.
