Charlotte Brontë

Wide Sargasso Sea (WSS)

Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Jean Rhys is generally considered to be a peculiar post-Modernist & post-
Colonial re-interpretation of Jane Eyre: An Autobiography (1847) by Charlotte Brontë.
It was published in the same year with Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, another
famous ‘sequel’ to Shakespeare's Hamlet.

The link with Jane Eyre

The link with Jane Eyre was made explicit in a letter in 1949 when Rhys explained that the title for her
new novel she was working on would be The First Mrs. Rochester.
Although by 1949 she claimed that the novel was semi-completed with the remainder mentally worked out,
surviving letters don't raise it again until 1957, when she re-read Jane Eyre in a copy borrowed from the
public library in Bude, where she lived at the time.
Rhys' reaction to this encounter with Brontë's Bertha was more negative, but it did re-establish a significant
connection with her story.
Rhys on Jane Eyre
"The creole in Charlotte Bronte's novel is a lay figure -- repulsive which does not matter, and not once alive
which does... For me ... she must be right on stage. She must be at least plausible with a past, the reason
why Mr. Rochester treats her so abominably and feels justified, and the reason why he thinks she is mad
and why of course she goes mad, even the reason why she tries to set everything on fire, and eventually
succeeds ... "
The discarded title
Rhys’s first idea for the title was “Le Revenant” — meaning one who comes back from the dead and speaks
on his/her experiences in the 'otherworld'.
There are also indications that a manuscript of an earlier version called ‘Le Revenant' was burnt during the
war, and the first actual reference to Wide Sargasso Sea is to be found in one of Jean Rhys's letters in 1945.
The Revenant (2015)
Literary predecessors can sometimes come back to surface in rather stange ways, as the case of the novel
The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge, a 2002 novel by an American author Michael Punke, based on the true
story of the American frontiersman Hugh Glass; amply shows.
After a number of years in preparation, it was adapted into film as The Revenant (2015), directed
by Alejandro González Iñárritu, with a screenplay by Iñárritu and Mark L. Smith, and starring Leonardo
DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.
Wide Sargasso Sea
The book Wide Sargasso Sea is set on the beautiful Caribbean island of Jamaica in the 1830's. It was there
that Antoinette Cosway, a young Creole heiress and a descendant from what used to be a wealthy white
family of French and English origins; discovered in a painful way to be living in a world and the time period
that she did not belong to.
The novel is structured in three parts, which can be also interpreted as three-act tragedy of this young
woman.
Having spent years of troubled childhood and adolescence at the estate of Coulibri at the nearby French
colony of Dominica, under the shadow of her mother’s mental instability and in atmosphere of constant
threats to her life, as well as of her family by liberated slaves, which would end with the tragic death of her
mentally disabled brother Pierre; Antoinette met and married an unnamed English gentleman through a
mediation of an influential friend of her family, Mr. Mason, whom her widowed mother Annette would
eventually marry.
Although the name of a young yet impoverished suitor has never been distinctly revealed in WSS, it is
obvious from the third part of Rhys’s novel that the author had recreated in him the character of Edward
Fairfax Rochester from Jane Eyre.

Bringing two texts together

Although the two works are divided by more than a hundred years of history, Rhys still wanted to give a
distinct voice to Brontë’s famous madwoman in the attic, Bertha Mason-Rochester, the Creole wife of
Edward Rochester, whom Brontë’s main female protagonist Jane Eyre had faced under such poignant
dramatic circumstances in Jane Eyre.
Identities recalled & revealed
That ‘mad woman’ is identified in the prequel as Antoinette Cosway, and Wide Sargasso Sea is the story
of her life in the Caribbean and in England, before her tragic end as a deluded arsonist at Thornfield Hall.
Thornfield Hall
There are many other similarities at this point that bring together both texts. The narrative events are similar.

In addition to using protagonists as copies of an earlier cast (Antoinette Cosway Mason is Bertha Mason,
her unnamed husband is Mr. Rochester), she extends these apparent relationships to other minor characters.

Family ties
Mr. Mason, the Englishman who marries Antoinette’s mother, has been named after Bertha’s brother; and
the woman who is paid to look after the mad Bertha is named Grace Poole in both texts. Both Brontë’s and
Rhys's Rochesters have been sent (displaced!) into an alien, colonial culture for financial reasons, since
elder brothers inherited the family estate.
In a similar sense, both brides have married an Englishman to restore the family to the identity and stability
of the dominant social order.
Three families
The Cosways
Mr. Alexander Cosway Pierre
Mrs. Annette Cosway Sandi
Daniel

Antoinette

Daniel Boyd Cosway (?) Aut Cora

The Masons Richard Mason
Mr. Mason

The Rochesters
Mr. Rochester (Father)
Mr. Rochester (Son)

Antoinette
The daughter of ex-slave owners Grows up with neither her mother’s love nor
Sensitive and lonely young Creole girl friends
Married to an Englishman Inherited emotional fragility

Annette

Antoinette’s young and beautiful mother. Madness and melancholy.

Married twice: first to Alexander Cosway and Abandoned, scared and persecuted.
later to Mr. Mason. Died when Antoinette was at convent school.
Originally from Martinique.

Antoinette’s husband

Antoinette’s unnamed English husband. He was very angry after discovered that
The youngest son of a wealthy Englishman Antoinette used black magic
He is pressured into marrying Antoinette to him.
Got married because of wealth

Christophine Dubois

A very loyal black servant. A wise and ageless figure who practices obeah
From Martinique (black magic).
Treated as an outsider by the Jamaican servant A wedding gift from Mr. Alexander Cosway to
women. Annette.

Neighbours or friends
Mr. Lutrell Sister Marie Augustine
Louise da Plana Caroline
Mother st. Justine Cousin Julia, Cousin Ada, Aunt Lina

Minor characters (servants)

Servants (Female)
Maillotte Hilda Grace Poole
Tia Rose Leah
Myra
Amélie Mrs. Eff
Servants (Male)
Godfrey Emile Jo-jo
Sass Baptiste Nameless Boy
Mannie Bertrand
Young Bul
Composition and structure
Wide Sargasso Sea is composed of the two first person narratives, structurally sub-divided into three parts
or chapters that form the body of the novel. They chapters alternate between Antoinette, Rochester and
Antoinette again.
However, the roles of each narrator when perceived from the author’s conscious choice of dividing the point
of view between the two main characters are not presented in a balanced manner.
Part One consists of 40 or so pages in the edition consulted (Rhys, WSS, 2000), Part Two is almost twice
as bigger with 70 pages, whereas Part Three, where the two novels, or urquel and prequel/sequel, seem
to merge or converge, is comprised of only 10 pages, but they are crucial ones for the whole novel.
As with Rhys’s earlier fiction, the narrative is subdivided into smaller sections, mostly simply designated
by a gap in the text, although sometimes by asterisks. Asterisks mark the shift back and forth between
“Rochester”’s voice and Antoinette’s voice in Part Two.
This novel is highly plotted, which makes it an appropriate prequel to the equally highly plotted Jane Eyre.
Rhys uses flashbacks again but this time in a more coherent manner, so the story is more suspenseful.
(Savory, 2009, p. 81).
Three Parts Plot
Part I
After a troubled childhood and adolescence, Antoinette meets and marries Edward Rochester.
Part II
While their honeymoon is passionate at first, it cools drastically when Rochester receives a letter containing
malicious gossip about Antoinette. It becomes downright frigid when Antoinette drugs Rochester and
Rochester sleeps with Antoinette's maid.
Part III
Rochester hides Antoinette away in his estate in England, but she escapes with murderous dreams of setting
fire to the whole place.

Three settings of Wide Sargasso Sea

Part 1: Takes place in Coulibri, Jamaica, told from Antoinette/Bertha’s perspective, and it describes her
childhood.
Part 2: Takes place in Granbois, Dominica, alternates between Bertha’s and Rochester’s (unnamed)
perspectives, describes Bertha’s descent into madness and the marriage’s downfall. Both spouses mistrust
each other; but Bertha’s nurse Christophine also mistrusts “Rochester.”
Part 3: Takes place in England at Rochester’s mansion (“Great House”), it has been told from Bertha’s
perspective in a stream of consciousness, and it traces the disintegrating marriage and Bertha’s relationship
with Grace Poole.

Madwoman in the attic

Although the two works are divided by more than a hundred years of history, Rhys still wanted to give a
voice to Brontë’s madwoman in the attic, Bertha Mason-Rochester, the Creole wife of Edward
Rochester, whom Brontë’s protagonist Jane Eyre faces under such poignant dramatic circumstances in
Jane Eyre.
That ‘mad woman’ is identified in the prequel as Antoinette Cosway, and Wide Sargasso Sea is the story
of her life in the Caribbean and in England, before her tragic end at Thornfield Hall.
Writing back
Stimulated by resentment against Charlotte Brontë’s atttitude towards simplified and degrading presentation
of the ‘madwoman in the attic‘, Wide Sargasso Sea ‘writes back' as a creative yet forceful response to the
earlier novel.
More than a simple dialogue between the two texts, this book is an attempt by another female novelist
(Rhys) to question, expose and correct a major English novel by the fellow-female author (Brontë) in the
diferent set of literary, social, spatial and temporal circumstances.

Follow-up in reverse
Having applied her own approach to the issue of the surpressed ‘Other’ in Victorian fiction, Rhys continues
her follow-up by seemingly going back in time and space, thus reversing in various ways the absent or
omitted segments from Brontë’s novel by concentrating on her creative re-interpretation of events and
characters that had far-reaching effects on the life and fate of this minor and neglected character.
Double and even triple oppression
Through her creation of Antoinette Cosway, Rhys creates a parallel character to Bertha Mason of Brontë
with the intention of creating a different, not altogether naïve character, quite different from the horrific mad
woman in the attic.

The madness of Bertha, or in other words, previously uknown Antoinette, is totally related to the double
and even triple oppression that she suffers as a woman from the patriarchy and as a Creole woman in the
West Indies, the burden that places her just in-between sneering white English society and newly
emancipated slaves.
New kind of narrative universe
At the same time, Rhys subtly makes a number of striking comparisons between Jane Eyre and Antoinette
by presenting some details that both characters seem to have shared without being aware that their life
stories – from childhood to the point of marrying the same person – can be seen as spectral reflections.
This mirroring technique brings two texts to a much closer level, where, in the intertwined narratives, they
happen to form a new kind of narrative universe that emerges on the surface.

Tripartite structure of both books

Both novels have three parts – sections or books, with a number of sub-sections.
It is in the third part of the Wide Sargasso Sea that the two narratives somehow merge into the same story,
only told from the perspective of a minor character in Jane Eyre, who suddenly is allowed to speak – she
found her voice, which the character of Jane Eyre is also struggling with throughout Brontë’s narrative.

A multiple narrative
In Wide Sargasso Sea Rhys shifts the perspective on Jane Eyre by expressing the viewpoints of the
different characters in the source material, so taking a different structural approach to the first-person
narrative technique employed by Brontë.

She wrote her version as a multiple narrative, giving Bertha a previously-unheard voice.
Antoinette’s narration
The sections narrated by Antoinette in the first, with some segments of the second, and, finally, in the third
part, where she emerges to the narrative surface again as Antoinette Cosway Mason Rochester although her
husband keeps calling her Bertha, are given in the past tense.
They might appear to have been written in England, at Thornfield Hall of Jane Eyre, in an isolated country
mansion of unspecified size, with a number of apparently unused rooms that become important to the
narrative during the 'Bertha Mason' passages. They can also be understood as Antoinette's recollections
during her rare moments of lucidity at Thornfield Hall
However, if one compares the narrative of either Antoinette in her native, Caribbean setting with the one of
her English husband, and, again, the way Rochester presents his character once back to his normal habitat
in England in relation to Antoinette/Bertha’s lunatic outbursts in the same setting; many differences can be
observed.
Un-named “Rochester”
Rochester, even though un-named in Wide Sargasso Sea, takes over the narration in part two, and Grace
Poole enlightens us at the opening of part three. Rhys can be seen as repaying Brontë for her failure to give
Bertha a voice by not allowing Jane one, even though she does appear in the novel.
Antoinette, as Bertha is named in Rhys' novel, declares: 'There is always the other side', and this proves
to be the governing theme throughout both novels.

Alien in Colonial situation

In Jane Eyre Rochester is shown on his own soil, functioning in his own society, where his own moral
codes are relevant. Quite the opposite, or reverse, happens within Rhys’ West Indies setting, since her
English fiancée is seen in a situation that is not his own. He is always ill-at-ease there and does not feel
comfortable or accepted. Although “Rochester” did in fact spend time in the West Indies, it is clear that he
has been thrown into a (colonial/colonised) society which does not appreciate him in the terms of his English
habits or attitudes.

“Rochester” and his narration

The majority of the sections narrated by “Rochester” in WSS, although also told in the past tense, must be
interpreted or taken as specifically different.
His narration takes place at the moment when events occur, so his revelations and growing horror are
somewhat understandable. The two seemingly opposite voices happen to tell the one but not the same story.
Male and English dominance
While allowing “Rochester” to express his own voice in Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys is providing him amply
with the space in the central part of her novel to utter his own narrative. In such a way he has accomplished
an elusive sense of his own male and English dominance, which somehow makes up for his insufficiencies
in Jane Eyre. It becomes obvious that Rochester himself is endowed with a complex and interesting
personality, although they might appear in a negative context, especially when one bears in mind his
treatment of Antoinette during the passage from the West Indies to England. During the voyage to England
Antoinette actually goes mad and subsequently knows only intermittent moments of sanity in her garret
prison. One must remember that Edward came out to Jamaica and was married to his arranged bride after
only a few weeks' acquaintance. Although at first he is sexually attracted to Antoinette, Rochester realized
soon enough that he did not love her. His attitude is only reinforced when her coloured half-brother told him
that he had been tricked into marrying the daughter of a disturbed nymphomaniac, as he portrayed
Antoinette's mother and her marriage to Mr. Mason.
Punishment as a sign of domination
Confronted also with her infidelity, and in order to protect his "honour" as well as to "punish" Antoinette,
“Rochester” decided to bring her to England, upon learning the news that his own father and elder brother
had died and the estate passed upon him.
Stripping of Colonial Identity
He was firm to make the voyage back to his puritanical, conservative England, where he imprisoned her in
Thornfield Hall under the newly assigned identity of “Bertha Mason”, or “a mad woman in the attic.”
By calling her out “Bertha” rather than “Antoinette” he stripped her of the last remnants of her Creole
identity, and brought to surface her mental instability. However, there is no evidence to suggest cruelty on
the part of Rochester which drove his wife to madness in Jane Eyre, since he hired for her the best help he
could, and provided for all her needs.

The aura of mystery

In WSS, however, the aura of mystery in the Third Part went into yet another opposite direction, since the
true nature of Bertha’s mental condition was juxtaposed of Rhys’s idea of her as a victim. It is not altogether
clear why Rhys had not expanded this section and provided more details or explanation for such
understanding.
Grace Poole’s intrusive appearance
Grace Poole’s intrusive appearance (given in italics) at the beginning of this section could be a solid basis
not only for the suppressed voice of Bertha’s keeper, but also of both Edward/“Rochester” and
Bertha/Antoinette in their fully reversed role. Perhaps Rhys had originally wanted to bring together all the
narrative threads and left them as she understood the initial narrative as unresolved.

Different viewpoints presented

Having given each of the partners in marriage the opportunity to express her/his thoughts, Rhys displayed
a peculiar ability to understand and express different viewpoints. It gives her version of the narrative a
certain additional value of presenting facts in a double perspective, thus allowing those suppressed, silent
and marginalised voices of Antoinette/Bertha and Grace Poole and Leah to move to the centre of the story.
Previously dominant voices, i.e. of Jane Eyre and Rochester in Brontë's novel, are joined by those whose
version or interpretation of events have never been heard.
Striking comparisons and similarities
At the same time, Rhys subtly makes a number of striking comparisons and similarities between Jane Eyre
and Antoinette by presenting some details that both characters seem to have shared without being aware
that their life stories – from childhood to the point of marrying the same person – could be seen as spectral,
mirroring reflections
Parallels & contrasts
Rhys draws parallels between Jane (Eyre) and Antoinette:
Both are isolated, powerless and without protection, in a world hostile to unsupported women
Both of them lose their mothers, if in different ways, but find important substitutes who are teachers or
servants
Both experience dreams that are significant for later events in their stories.
Both are forced to lie or withdraw information that might cause a substantial harm to their future.

Parallels & contrasts

However, there are also strong contrasts between them:
Antoinette is vulnerable while Jane is made stronger by her experiences.
Jane has a more coherent sense of herself.
Jane establishes equality in her relationship with Rochester.

Three different perspectives - locations

However, they are both closely linked and related to their male ‘partner’ Edward Rochester, so the three
characters must also be interpreted from three different perspectives.
The same can be said about inner and outer geography – at least three main locations in Jane Eyre’s
England (Gateshead, Lowood, Thornfield Hall) and the same in the Caribbean (Coulibri, near Spanish
Town, Jamaica; Granbois near Massacre, Dominica) and with the Atlantic (Sargasso Sea) in between the
First and the Third World.
The hypertext and the hypotext - transtextuality
The timeline of the hypertext (Wide Sargasso Sea) is located before the hypotext (Jane Eyre), not after it,
like it would appear in the case of classic transtextuality.
Transtextuality
Jane Eyre describes the life and hardships of Jane Eyre, who finally discovers love with a strange
gentleman, who owns not only a nobile mansion, but a secret past and a mad wife, too, locked up in the
attic, whereas Wide Sargasso Sea deals with the marriage of Mr. Rochester and his two spouses -
Antoinette/Bertha Mason - and tries to give reason to the unreasonable, tries to find logic in the instinctual,
wild and mad from opposite angle.

The Sargasso Sea in the novel’s title

The Sargasso Sea is a unique geographical phenomenon, since it doesn’t have any coastline, beaches,
shores and it doesn’t come into contact with any land whatsoever. It is located in the middle of the Atlantic
Ocean. The name of the sea originates from the 15th century thanks to Portuguese sailors who were amazed
by the massive collection of seaweed (of the Sargassum variety) that they found floating in it. The seaweed
is pushed into the sea by the strong ocean currents that surround the area.

The Sargasso Sea

Calmness vs. Fury
It is in the neighbourhood of the Bermuda triangle, and it had been considered dangerous because of the
sea-weed that was believed to entangle the ships.
In spite of these suppositions, the real danger consists in the calmness of the sea, as its waters are so still,
that ships before modern motorized ones might have stayed there a great deal of time.

Subversive features
Wide Sargasso Sea as the experimental novel that can be safely described as "literary fiction," subverts
other literary genres or their sub-genre varieties, such as "Coming of Age," "Historical Fiction," "Horror
and Gothic Fiction," and “Modernism.“ In this sense it forecasts a number of subsequent features of Post-
Modernist and Post-Colonial literary devices, despite the fact that it had been published in mid-1960s.

Similarities in style
There are some similarities in style between the two novels. Like Charlotte Brontë, Rhys makes use of:
The Victorian Gothic tradition includes Images and devices central to Jane Eyre, including the colour
red, ghosts and dreams.

Gothic features

He also has uncanny experiences of the strange and eerie. The place feels full of ghosts, of the past, of
barely contained violence. Sometimes he feels as if he has become a ghost too.
By using Gothic and uncanny devices in her writing in this way, Jean Rhys is able to represent Rochester's
interior fears and conflicts about the place, its culture and Antoinette.

Differences
Nevertheless, there are obvious differences:
The first sections of Wide Sargasso Sea are set against Jane Eyre obliquely; even if one knows the latter
novel well, it does not become aware of it initially.
Antoinette Cosway is not immediately recognisable as Bertha Mason, although the name Mason may
provide a strong clue confirmed by Grace Poole's narration when opening Part Three.
The time scale is also more specific. Wide Sargasso Sea is set in the years immediately after the 1833
Emancipation Act, whereas Jane Eyre could be set any time between the 1820s – 1840s.

Narrative approach – multiple voices

One of the most significant technical differences between the two novels is the narrative method:
Jane Eyre is told in the first person
Wide Sargasso Sea is told by different narrators; Antoinette, Grace Poole and Rochester in the main,
although it also manipulates additional devices for making audible the voices of others.
The result is a novel which ‘writes back' against its ‘master narrative' through the different perspectives of
these multiple voices.
Marginalized voices move to the centre, so that dominant voices are joined by those normally suppressed
or silenced.

The novels' endings

The ending of Wide Sargasso Sea was the place where Jean Rhys was faced with the sharpest
dilemma around similarity or difference. Was there a way in which she could avoid giving Antoinette the
same fate as Bertha, dying as she burns down Rochester's house? Readers should consider the final sections
of the novel:

In a sense Antoinette burns the house down twice, first in her dream and then setting off to do it for real,
although it is not explicitly mentioned.

Tone of voice
How should her tone of voice be interpreted? Is she resigned to the fate set for her by Charlotte Brontë, or
is there something new and different?

The critic Judie Newman thinks that Jean Rhys managed to evade the dominance of Jane Eyre through
this double burning.
Antoinette sets off with her candle and the text leaves it open as to what happens.

The ending of Wide Sargasso Sea

The ending of Wide Sargasso Sea was the place where Jean Rhys was faced with the distinct
dilemma around the issues of similarity or difference.
She had to find a way to keep together both sides of the coin, which might appear as an unsolvable paradox.
Since she clearly abhorred the idea of giving Antoinette the same fate as Bertha, dying as she burned down
Rochester's house, Rhys used another type of device. It is in the final sections of the novel that her Antoinette
burns the house down twice. Antoinette sets off with her candle and the text leaves it open in regard to as to
what is going to happen next. She does it first in her dream and then setting off to do it for real, although it
is not explicitly mentioned. In doing so, she tried to argue that everything is constantly and instantaneously
reversible and ambiguous.

A web of ‘-quels’
Such an open ending leaves space for yet another work, or more of them, which could create a web of ‘-
quels’. In this way both the original and its follow-up keep the interest of such topics for a longer period of
time.
Eileen Williams-Wanquet (2007)
“[the] dichotomous either/or structure upholding patriarchy being replaced by a simultaneous both/and
structure as limits are abolished, dissolving the oxymoronic structure. Everything is also at the same time
its opposite.
As Antoinette says: “There is always the other side, always.” (WSS, 81).

More recent adaptations

Film version
Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1993 film adaptation of Jean Rhys's 1966 novel of the same name, directed by John
Duigan.
TV version (2006)
Wide Sargasso Sea is a British television adaptation having been produced by Kudos Film &
Television for BBC Wales.
It was aired as the one-off 90-minute drama, first broadcast on digital television channel BBC Four on 9
October 2006.
It was repeated on BBC One on Sunday, 22 October 2006, the week following the conclusion of BBC One's
adaptation of Jane Eyre, to which Wide Sargasso Sea is a prequel.

Postscript: ‘Postquel’

In 2003 Polly Teale wrote an adaption of the novel as a play After Mrs. Rochester, which was first presented
in the same year in London by the Shared Experience theatre company.
This dramatisation revolved around Rhysʼs turbulent relationship with her daughter. It vacillated between
her life and fiction with the writer permanently accompanied by her most famous character, Bertha Mason,
appearing on stage throughout the play as Jeanʼs alter ego.
‘Postquel’
It came after Teale's earlier adaptation for stage of Jane Eyre (1997) and before the third part in the trilogy
of Brontë (2005).
One can label such an endeavour as 'postquel,' since it has blended novel and drama, as well as having been
written within controversial postmodernist and postcolonial tendencies in the more recent literary
production in English.