Reviews with content warning for Animal death - Wide Sargasso Sea

Wow, this book gets a lot of hate! I can sort of understand. Coming straight from <i>Jane Eyre</i> to this, there is certainly a stark contrast in the writing styles and ambience of the story, and at points I kept having to remind myself it was taking place in the early 19th century. However, the writing itself felt so unique - it's at its strongest when describing the luxuriant, tropical surroundings of Coulibri and Massacre.

Some common criticisms I see popping up in most negative reviews of this book is that it is confusing and makes no sense, and I have to say that this was not my personal experience with the book. I didn't think it was that difficult to follow along with the story, and while the flow of the book is definitely not typical, it works for a novel about two very lost characters. I don't think I could have asked for more from this book and it works excellently for what it is.

(Minor spoilers for Wide Sargasso Sea, spoilers for Jane Eyre)

One aspect I really loved was the call-back to the parrot at Coulibri. Just as the parrot had its wings clipped by Antoinette's stepfather, so did Antoinette have her wings clipped by Rochester - and both have the same fate, falling to their death surrounded by flames. The fire at Coulibri really affected me when I was reading the book and the fact that it was prophesising Antoinette's own fate made it all the more striking.

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ruffian23's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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clevermird's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

Oh boy...

Wide Sargasso Sea is the latest in my quest to read through the "great classics" of Western literary canon, and it's the first one I can truly say I didn't like.

I should start by getting the elephant in the room out of the way - this book is essentially published Jane Eyre fanfiction. Now, that's not inherently a bad thing. The story makes little secret of it and the premise was intriguing. Who was Rochester's mad wife really? What was her side of the story? Sadly, although it does deliver the promised tale, Wide Sargasso Sea fails to offer much to a reader that they couldn't already have figured out for themself.

Antoinette Cosway lives with her mother and disabled younger brother in the crumbling ruins of their family's estate. When slavery was abolished, the family was plunged into near-poverty and rejected both by the freed slaves (who were understandably resentful of their former masters) and the white community (who saw them as both morally deficient former slave owners and as social inferiors). As she grows, the constant feelings of outcast will weigh down her mind and combine with her husband's own problems and lead to madness, infidelity, and a disaster of marriage that threatens to destroy both of them.

I was really disappointed in this book. I found Antoinette to be irritatingly childish and helpless. I know that the lack of agency she has in her own life is kind of one of the points of the book, but for me it moved past that and into "good grief, woman, stop wringing your hands and do something". Her husband, meanwhile kept oscillating between "very reasonable" and "what on earth is wrong with you?" In the end, rather than a portrait of a woman kept down by a cold and unfeeling man, or a tragedy of two hopelessly mis-matched souls, I wound up almost feeling like they deserved each other.

The reason this book got more than two stars (instead of the 1.5 I would have given it otherwise) is the prose. It's beautiful, dreamy, almost stream-of-consciousness stuff that makes every line interesting to read on its own and really captures the almost fever-dream like nature of the story and the lush tropical setting. However, this proves as much a hindrance as a help, with major events often glossed over in favor of more mood setting. There were several important plot points that I was confused on because the writing style obfuscated them so much.

Overall, a book with a promising start and an enjoyable writing style that fails to offer much of substance or deliver on the promised narrative.

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mariebrunelm's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

I don't read a lot of classics. School has clearly put me off reading them, and I don't see why I would relate more to a book written a hundred years ago than one written ten years ago. Yet from time to time I'm intrigued, like with Wide Sargasso Sea, which retells the story of Bertha, Mr Rochester's first wife in Jane Eyre.

First of all, the introduction to this book was really well written and helped me make the most of my reading by highlighting a few important themes and setting the scene. It helped me because I have to admit I struggled a bit with the narration to begin with. It feels very much like a dream - I didn't always knew where or when I was, or what was happening. But there was a beauty to the language, and a life, that kept me going. Jean Rhys was from Dominica, and she drew from her culture elements of language which makes the whole prose sing, even though I didn't find it always easy to grasp. As a result, I felt a little detached from the story, but at the same time I felt how necessary it was. This is clearly about flawed and unreliable narrators (we get the story from a few different characters's points of view) trapped in a flawed and unsatisfying relationship.

Rep: white Creole main character.

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loxeletters's review against another edition

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reflective

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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kclark's review against another edition

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emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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malloryfitz's review against another edition

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2.0

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caribbeangirlreading's review against another edition

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challenging emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

You have most probably read the coming-of-age story about the second Mrs. Rochester, Jane Eyre. But have you ever stopped to think about the first Mrs. Rochester? Who was she? What is her story? And, more importantly, was she really mad? In the original 19th century classic, Bertha Mason, the mad woman in the attic, was just a plot device. In Wide Sargasso Sea, however, Jean Rhys gives her life in this short but powerful novella that acts as a prequel, and post-colonial response, to Jane Eyre.

Bertha Mason (nee Antoinette Cosway) was born in Jamaica to a British father and a Creole mother of French descent. The novel opens with Antoinette describing her childhood, and the social and political reality of Jamaica at the time – the racial violence following emancipation, the disgust bordering on hatred that the British-born society had toward whites born in the Caribbean, the trauma she endured as a child following her father’s death. We then meet the young man to whom Antoinette is married off. (We assume he is Mr. Rochester, but he is never named.) We see the demise of an arranged marriage that barely took flight, and the decline of Antoinette’s mental health. And in between, we are treated to descriptions of the lush tropical setting by an author, who unlike Mr. Rochester, loved the Caribbean.

For a book that is only 177 pages long, WSS packs quite a punch. It tackles, among other themes, post-colonialism and British Victorian attitudes towards women and mental illness. As soon as I finished WSS, I ran to re-read the passages in Jane Eyre in which Jane and Mr. Rochester describe Bertha Mason and I will never again look at Jane Eyre as a strictly coming-of-age Victorian feminist novel. There is so much I didn’t see that I now do, which is exactly what Jean Rhys wanted us to do.

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