A classic story gets a new twist in Wide Sargasso Sea

At first I didn’t know what to make of Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. This story is a “prequel” to Bronte’s Jane Eyre, telling the backstory of Mr Rochester’s first wife, the insane woman in the attic in that famous novel. The book shows that all things are perhaps not what they seem, and every story has two sides.

Sea is separated into three parts, each told in the first person. The first section is the female protagonist’s, Antoinette’s, childhood. Her mother’s first husband has died, leaving them a lot of land in Jamaica but no money to back it up. The locals resent the family as former slave owners, but they are “rescued” by Mr Mason, who comes and marries the mother and restores their estate. However, one night the house is set afire by an angry mob. Antoinette’s brother dies, and her mother, already mentally unstable, goes insane.

The second part is told from the first person of a new gentleman. Though it never says his name, we learn later that it is Mr Rochester. He has come to marry Antoinette for money, and their marriage quickly falls apart. Antoinette slips quickly towards insanity, but we as readers find her to a be a sympathetic figure. Her husband sleeps with the help, she has no true friends, as most still carry animosity towards her family from years ago, and it seems there is no help or hope coming. Her husband has grown to despise her and has started inexplicably calling her Bertha, a name she hates. One night after a drunken arguement, the man announces he is leaving Jamaica and bringing his wife to England. Antoinette has always wanted to see England, but now just wants to stay at her home.

The third short section again switches to Antoinette’s view. She is totally insane now, and her narrative falls in and out of coherency. Her husband has locked her in an attic, and she refuses to believe this cell is the idyllic England she had envisioned. She doesn’t recognize Mr Mason or other visitors, and is convinced she has only been there for days, when in reality years have gone by. She escapes out of her room one day, and during a vision she sets fire to the building (obviously the same from Jane Eyre).

This book paints her as a tragic figure indeed. She obviously has mental disease in her family, but many factors outside of her control put her in that attic by Mr Rochester. The book is a little hard to get sometimes, much of it is told like a stereotypical creole story, with truth and present sometimes muddled with spirit and effervescence, to the point that you aren’t exactly sure what is actually happening. A good book though for sure, reminding you that the bad guy may not always be who you think.