Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Jean Rhys’s best-known novel, is a retelling that contemplates the life of Bertha Mason Rochester, a minor character in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre (1847). Rhys made a career out of writing novels and short stories that contemplated the lives of unconventional women. She wrote and published most of her fiction in the 1930s, then went out of print for several decades. The rise of feminist and postcolonial literary studies brought a renewed interest in Rhys’s work, and Wide Sargasso Sea has become a widely studied work of fiction. Other works by this author include Voyage in the Dark and Good Morning, Midnight.

Plot Summary

Wide Sargasso Sea is divided into three parts. Part One takes place in Jamaica during the 1830s shortly after Great Britain passed the Emancipation Act and ended slavery in its West Indian colonies. Antoinette Cosway, the protagonist, narrates this section and chronicles her early life on her family’s Coulibri Estate. Following the new law, the Cosways have freed their slaves, but the estate has fallen into disarray.