fmb_rmn's review against another edition
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Rhys took the most interesting part of the most boring and made it truly mean something beyond a plot device. Antionette's journeyto becoming Bertha (if you could ever say that she did) brings so much dimension to the 'hyena' Jane describes. It makes her human again.
koyasten's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
never_sam's review against another edition
dark
emotional
fast-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? It's complicated
4.5
phoebeflesch's review against another edition
mysterious
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? It's complicated
3.25
roxanamalinachirila's review against another edition
5.0
A few years ago, when I decided to write about fanfiction for my M.A. dissertation, I started noticing that most discussions regarding the validity of the genre tended to mention the same few books - one of them was "Wide Sargasso Sea", describing the life of the mad woman in the attic from Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre". Bertha Mason had been brought back from Jamaica by the young Mr. Rochester, who'd been tricked into marrying her without knowing insanity ran in her family, and who soon saw her descend into madness and locked her away, to ignore her as much as he could.
I filed away the information, but I never got around to buying the book until a few days ago. It turned out to be a much more haunting story than I'd expected. It clawed its way into my mind and won't leave it.
...this will contain spoilers.
Young Antoinette grows up after the abolition in Jamaica. The whites lost their slaves, the blacks lost their work, and the economy crashed. Her family feels the brunt of this, as the estate falls into poverty and dereliction, and while Antoinette is too young to understand what is lost, her situation is painfully clear in her daily life. Her mother spends most of her time alone, rejecting Antoinette and losing some of her mental health, her little brother was never well, and Antoinette grows up alone, friendless and wild.
I think her wildness stuck to me more than anything - Antoinette isn't a strong woman, nor a weak woman. She isn't innocent, or simple, but she is unaware of many things in the world. She doesn't hide her emotions much, nor does she know that she must navigate the world through feminine wiles, or careful social maneuvering. She's honest and never quite like anyone else.
And this sense of isolation is clearest when her nurse, the black voodoo lady Christophine, tries to find her a friend in a black girl her age, Tia. But Tia turns against Antoinette as well, summing up the issue of why Antoinette and her family are despised - "Old time white people nothing but white nigger now, and black nigger better than white nigger."
In order to save them from poverty, Antoinette's mother marries Mr. Mason, who restores the house to its former glory, but fails to heed his wife's fears when she says the black community hates them more than ever. In a purely colonialist way, he fails to see the black community as anything other than children and to acknowledge the danger it poses until the house is burned down and Antoinette's brother and her mother's parrot die in the flames. Antoinette's mother experiences the loss so deeply that Mason recoils from her and can no longer deal with her and commits her to the care of an abusive couple, where she grows insane.
A few years later, Antoinette is Mason's heiress and she's married to a nameless Englishman who is the younger son in a noble family - meaning he won't inherit much. Their wedding is arranged without them knowing much of each other, and he lives with the bitterness of having been tricked into this marriage, seeing liars and people wanting to shackle him everywhere, including in Antoinette. He mistakes her strong reactions with fake reactions and keeps waiting for her to have a real emotion - a real, subdued, British emotion.
"Everything is too much," he says, "[...]Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near." And, perhaps, Antoinette herself is too much.
He never understands her because he looks for the wicked, vile undertone in her. "Her pleading expression annoys me. I have not bought her, she has bought me, or so she thinks." He asks about her, but doesn't listen to the answers. He asks about her mother, and goes all around the house, fetching things, as she replies. She shares herself with him, and he tosses her away. At the same time, she never understands him because she never asks what's in his heart, nor does she understand what's hidden between the lines, nor the suppressed, cold emotions he's been taught to display.
He promises her safety, trust, and happiness, making her fall in love with him and give her all to him, but fails to keep that promise, convinced she's part of a ploy to trick him. When her old nurse, Christophine, tries to explain to him that he's breaking her, he doesn't relent. He breaks her until the end - and never lets her go, because that would be to forsake her.
But why does she break? I think her wildness is the reason - she can take passionate hatred, and terrible things, but she cannot take his civilized refusals to believe her side of the story, to trust her, to feel something for her. She wants to win him through direct ways, by praising him, and pleading him, and making love to him, but he refuses her. Christophine suggests an approach, worthy of a free, independent, social-savvy woman, but Antoinette refuses her and tries her way.
The novel is filled with poetic language and colorful descriptions of Jamaica - and Antoinette's style is hard to decipher until the end, while Rochester's makes him hard to understand as well. It's almost a dream-like, nightmarish book, with its strange ways of moving back and forth through time, referencing the future and the past together in visions and memories.
I filed away the information, but I never got around to buying the book until a few days ago. It turned out to be a much more haunting story than I'd expected. It clawed its way into my mind and won't leave it.
...this will contain spoilers.
Young Antoinette grows up after the abolition in Jamaica. The whites lost their slaves, the blacks lost their work, and the economy crashed. Her family feels the brunt of this, as the estate falls into poverty and dereliction, and while Antoinette is too young to understand what is lost, her situation is painfully clear in her daily life. Her mother spends most of her time alone, rejecting Antoinette and losing some of her mental health, her little brother was never well, and Antoinette grows up alone, friendless and wild.
I think her wildness stuck to me more than anything - Antoinette isn't a strong woman, nor a weak woman. She isn't innocent, or simple, but she is unaware of many things in the world. She doesn't hide her emotions much, nor does she know that she must navigate the world through feminine wiles, or careful social maneuvering. She's honest and never quite like anyone else.
And this sense of isolation is clearest when her nurse, the black voodoo lady Christophine, tries to find her a friend in a black girl her age, Tia. But Tia turns against Antoinette as well, summing up the issue of why Antoinette and her family are despised - "Old time white people nothing but white nigger now, and black nigger better than white nigger."
In order to save them from poverty, Antoinette's mother marries Mr. Mason, who restores the house to its former glory, but fails to heed his wife's fears when she says the black community hates them more than ever. In a purely colonialist way, he fails to see the black community as anything other than children and to acknowledge the danger it poses until the house is burned down and Antoinette's brother and her mother's parrot die in the flames. Antoinette's mother experiences the loss so deeply that Mason recoils from her and can no longer deal with her and commits her to the care of an abusive couple, where she grows insane.
A few years later, Antoinette is Mason's heiress and she's married to a nameless Englishman who is the younger son in a noble family - meaning he won't inherit much. Their wedding is arranged without them knowing much of each other, and he lives with the bitterness of having been tricked into this marriage, seeing liars and people wanting to shackle him everywhere, including in Antoinette. He mistakes her strong reactions with fake reactions and keeps waiting for her to have a real emotion - a real, subdued, British emotion.
"Everything is too much," he says, "[...]Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near." And, perhaps, Antoinette herself is too much.
He never understands her because he looks for the wicked, vile undertone in her. "Her pleading expression annoys me. I have not bought her, she has bought me, or so she thinks." He asks about her, but doesn't listen to the answers. He asks about her mother, and goes all around the house, fetching things, as she replies. She shares herself with him, and he tosses her away. At the same time, she never understands him because she never asks what's in his heart, nor does she understand what's hidden between the lines, nor the suppressed, cold emotions he's been taught to display.
He promises her safety, trust, and happiness, making her fall in love with him and give her all to him, but fails to keep that promise, convinced she's part of a ploy to trick him. When her old nurse, Christophine, tries to explain to him that he's breaking her, he doesn't relent. He breaks her until the end - and never lets her go, because that would be to forsake her.
But why does she break? I think her wildness is the reason - she can take passionate hatred, and terrible things, but she cannot take his civilized refusals to believe her side of the story, to trust her, to feel something for her. She wants to win him through direct ways, by praising him, and pleading him, and making love to him, but he refuses her. Christophine suggests an approach, worthy of a free, independent, social-savvy woman, but Antoinette refuses her and tries her way.
The novel is filled with poetic language and colorful descriptions of Jamaica - and Antoinette's style is hard to decipher until the end, while Rochester's makes him hard to understand as well. It's almost a dream-like, nightmarish book, with its strange ways of moving back and forth through time, referencing the future and the past together in visions and memories.
booklvrkat's review against another edition
5.0
So, on December 31st, Oprahs Book Club challenged bookworms to “shake up our reading list by exploring a beloved bestseller or a well-kept secret from the year you came into the world”. I was ready for the shake up, but I was very unprepared for this story. It is almost lyrical in the telling. And I must admit, I did not understand it, so a friend recommended I get a Spark note for some insight. WOW, just WOW. There is so much symbolism that I did not see and failed to reach deeper within my reading to discover it. I will admit I have never read Jane Eyre, but I am going to add it to my TBR because now I am very interested to see where Wide Sargasso Sea fits in.
There are several amazing reviews already written about our MC, and I cannot say more or better.
There are several amazing reviews already written about our MC, and I cannot say more or better.
ilybinaya's review against another edition
3.0
It was more of a standalone piece when solely looking into the lines of this book. It was purely about colonialism, racism, and perhaps even about feminism in the early days, being shaded as madness. But the whole thing is flat, and the language is just so, making the narrative seemingly so bland and lack of colour in the sense which not much sentiment could be aroused, as so did the independency of women simmered down under the light of the societal background. This makes the book completely unpalpable to me.
richardpierce's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting. Very modern style for when it was written. It puts a very different perspective on Jane Eyre. Definitely worth reading whether or not you've already read Jane Eyre.
rosie_06's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5