Is there none for me? Tied to a lunatic for life – a drunken lying lunatic – gone her mother’s way. Both are unhappy Antoinette begins a quick descent into madness, and her husband to despair. ‘Oh England, England’ she called back mockingly, and the sound went on and on like a warning I did not choose to hear.Īnd things deteriorate quickly. He speaks to her often of England and notes her flippant response: The gentleman is never named, but it is evident to anyone who has read Jane Eyre to be Edward Rochester.Īntoinette is beautiful and wealthy, so Rochester tries to make a go of it, but quickly begins to have reservations. It will get worse.Īntoinette’s step brother pays a healthy dowry to an Englishman of good breeding and little fortune to marry Antoinette. Things don’t go as planned, and several tragedies drive Anette to madness.īesides this maternal tendency, Antoinette herself seems at times – just a bit aloof to reality. Her mother Annette struggles to keep the household intact, but eventually she marries a wealthy Englishman in hopes of restoring the former glory. Her family home, once a prosperous plantation, is languishing since the abolition of slavery, and death of her father. In the opening portion of Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette narrates her childhood in Jamaica.

She gave a name: Antoinette Cosway, and a face: a beautiful creole face, and a story to the poor woman. That’s rather unfair, and I guess Jean Rhys felt the same way. I loved Jane Eyre, but I admit I didn’t give much thought to the madwoman, other than as an obstacle to Jane’s happiness. Wide Sargasso Sea – is her story.Īnd a very interesting story. In Jane Eyre, Thornfield Hall has a mysterious secret that is eventually revealed to be a madwoman locked in an upper room, the wife of Edward Rochester, master of Thornfield Hall. Spoiler Alert: My comments contain spoilers, for both Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre.

I would call it an early form of fan fiction, though scholars refer to it as a feminist and anti-colonial response. Wide Sargasso Sea is the prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. So there is still the sound of whispering that I have heard all my life, but these are different voices.

Superhero by eli easton