Book Review: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Title:Wide Sargasso Sea
Author: Jean Rhys
First line: They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.
Review: My first read for 2016, and ohemgee, what a stunner.
This brief but sumptuous novel -- originally published in 1966, but reissued this year by Norton with a lovely introduction from Edwidge Danticat -- imagines the life of Bertha Mason, the "madwoman" from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.
Shifting viewpoints between Antoinette, as she prefers to be called, and a young Englishman we assume to be Rochester, we see a vivacious young woman pinned down by society, powerless and frustrated, pushed to her emotional limits. Is she mad? Rhys suggests she isn't, but her husband -- perhaps a little mad himself -- feels otherwise, and he has the power to punish her and declare her such.
I have to confess that Jane Eyre is not one of my favorites books, so I was predisposed to like Antoinette and hate Rochester. Yet Rhys managed to make Rochester sympathe…
Author: Jean Rhys
First line: They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.
Review: My first read for 2016, and ohemgee, what a stunner.
This brief but sumptuous novel -- originally published in 1966, but reissued this year by Norton with a lovely introduction from Edwidge Danticat -- imagines the life of Bertha Mason, the "madwoman" from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.
Shifting viewpoints between Antoinette, as she prefers to be called, and a young Englishman we assume to be Rochester, we see a vivacious young woman pinned down by society, powerless and frustrated, pushed to her emotional limits. Is she mad? Rhys suggests she isn't, but her husband -- perhaps a little mad himself -- feels otherwise, and he has the power to punish her and declare her such.
I have to confess that Jane Eyre is not one of my favorites books, so I was predisposed to like Antoinette and hate Rochester. Yet Rhys managed to make Rochester sympathe…