WIDE SARGASSO SEA JEAN RHYS

WIDE SARGASSO SEA JEAN RHYS

THE WRITER

Jean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1890. Her mother, Minna Williams, was a third-generation Dominican Creole of Scottish ancestry and her father, William Rees Williams, a Welsh doctor.
Rhys was educated at a convent school and moved to England when she was 16 to live with an aunt. She attended a school for girls where she was mocked because of her accent and outsider status and spent two terms at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London in 1909. The instructors at RADA despaired of Rhys´ strong West Indian accent and advised her father to take her away. However, she refused to return to the Caribbean, as her parents wished, and survived as a chorus girl, adopting the names Vivienne, Emma or Ella Gray.
After her father died in 1910, Rhys drifted into the demimonde and eventually became the mistress of a wealthy, unmarried stockbroker. He broke off their affair after two years, though he continued to be an occasional source of financial help. Distraught both by the end of the affair and by the experience of a near-fatal abortion, Rhys began writing an account which later became the basis of her novel Voyage in the Dark.
In 1919 Rhys married the French-Dutch journalist, spy and songwriter Willem Johan Marie (Jean) Lenglet and lived in London, Paris and Vienna. In 1924 she met English writer Ford Madox Ford, who praised her "singular instinct for form" and encouraged and supported her to write. At that time her husband was in jail, leaving her virtually destitute. Rhys moved in with Ford and began an affair with him. Rhys finally divorced her husband in 1933 and later married an editor, Leslie Tilden-Smith and moved to Devon, England.
Voyage in the Dark was published in 1934, and Good Morning, Midnight, in 1939.
In the 1940s, Rhys ´disappeared´ and was widely believed to have died. In the 1960s she was traced to a small village in Devon, and found to be living in great penury with her third husband, and writing what would later become her most famous novel, Wide Sargasso Sea.
In a brief interview shortly before her death, Rhys questioned whether any novelist, not least herself, could ever be happy for any length of time. She said that: "If I could choose I would rather be happy than write ... If I could live my life all over again, and choose ... ¨
Rhys died in Exeter, England on May 14, 1979 before completing her autobiography. In 1979, the incomplete text appeared posthumously under the title Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography.
WIDE SARGASSO SEA
The novel can be read as an ironic prequel to Charlotte Brönte´s classic 1847 novel Jane Eyre, recounting the story of the first Mrs. Rochester, Antoinette (Bertha) Mason, a white Creole heiress. Rhys takes the disparaged minor character and makes her the protagonist, telling a story that stands alone but which also works as a reframing of Jane Eyre.
The opening of the novel is set a short while after the 1834 emancipation of the slaves in Jamaica. The protagonist Antoinette conveys the story of her life from childhood to her arranged marriage to an unnamed Englishman. As the novel and their relationship develops, Antoinette, whom he renames Bertha, descends into madness.
The novel is split into three parts. Part One takes place in Coulibri, Jamaica and is narrated by Antoinette. She describes her childhood experiences such as her mother's mental instability and her learning disabled brother's tragic death, which foreshadow later developments in the novel.
Part Two alternates between the points of view of her husband and of Antoinette following their marriage and is set in Granbois, Dominica.
The shortest part, Part Three, is once again from the perspective of Antoinette, now known as Bertha, as she lives in the Rochester mansion, which she calls the "Great House".
Wide Sargasso Sea is usually taught as a postmodern and postcolonial response to Jane Eyre. Rhys uses multiple voices (Antoinette's, her husband's and Grace Poole's) to tell the story.

QUESTIONS TO ASK WHILE READING

How does Antoinette Cosway become Bertha, the madwoman in the attic?
How does the novel deal with postcolonial themes of displacement, exile and discrimination? Who or what does ´Bertha´ represent?
Rhys demonstrates that we all have different realities, depending on viewpoint and experience. Are there are other minor characters in fiction who you would like to see given a voice?