Reviews tagging 'Infidelity'

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

12 reviews

aleskahhh's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A revolutionary re-imagined prequel to Jane Eyre. 
I'll be honest, the start frightened me, I hated the middle... but the ending was the most satisfyingly thing I have ever read. I read this as an introduction to post-colonial lit but it was intense. It introduces you to a very troubled protagonist, makes you watch her suffer at the hands of a horrible husband and yet somehow she is still able to hold onto who she is. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Infidelity, Forced institutionalization, Sexual content, Racial slurs, Mental illness, Toxic relationship, Racism, and Gaslighting

awebofstories's review against another edition

emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Infidelity and Mental illness

Minor: Child death

edwardian_girl_next_door's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Xenophobia, Alcohol, Toxic relationship, Colonisation, Mental illness, Slavery, Classism, and Confinement

Moderate: Infidelity, Violence, Animal death, and Physical abuse

Minor: Gaslighting

authorjuliankennedy's review against another edition

reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Racial slurs, and Racism

Moderate: Mental illness, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, and Grief

Minor: Infidelity and Death of parent

morenowagain's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Infidelity, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Slavery, Racism, Colonisation, Racial slurs, and Confinement

c_dmckinney's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

This book is a prequel to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It is an exploration and fleshing out of Rochester's first wife before he changed her name and condemned her to the attic for "madness". 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Abandonment, Grief, Xenophobia, Toxic relationship, Sexism, Racism, Misogyny, Mental illness, Infidelity, Confinement, Colonisation, Chronic illness, Racial slurs, Gaslighting, Emotional abuse, Drug use, Domestic abuse, and Classism

minariffo's review against another edition

challenging dark sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Dementia, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Misogyny, Sexual content, and Sexual violence

autumn_oddity's review

dark emotional sad medium-paced

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

4.0

I recentl  read Jane Eyre so had to follow up and read this. I enjoyed this a bit more than Jane Eyre, purely because it was a bit faster in pace and I enjoyed having the narration being split between Antoinette and Rochester. The story was sad from the start though knowing the fate that befalls Antoinette in Jane Eyre. But I thought it gave good insight into the demise of white aristocracy within Jamaica after  the Emancipatuin act of 1833.  

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Racial slurs, Mental illness, and Misogyny

Minor: Alcoholism, Emotional abuse, and Infidelity

malloryfitz's review against another edition

2.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism and Racial slurs

Moderate: Alcohol, Colonisation, Confinement, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Animal death, Child death, and Infidelity

caribbeangirlreading's review against another edition

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. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Mental illness, Misogyny, and Racism

Moderate: Child death, Death, Forced institutionalization, and Suicide

Minor: Colonisation, Infidelity, and Sexual content