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Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys, 1966
W.W. Norton & Company
189 pp.

In Brief
A sensual and protected young woman, Antoinette Cosway grows up in the lush, natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold into marriage to the coldhearted and prideful Rochester, who succumbs to his need for money and his lust. Yet he will make her pay for her ancestors' sins of slaveholding, excessive drinking, and nihilistic despair by enslaving her as a prisoner in his black British home. (From the publisher.)

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About the Author

• Birth—August 24, 1890
• Where—Dominica (Caribbean)
• Death—May 14, 1979
• Where—Devonshire, England, UK
• Education—Perse School for Girls, England, UK


Jean Rhys was the author of five novels, including Wide Sargasso Sea. The heroines of her novels all have different names-Marya, Julia, Anna, Sasha and Antoinette-but they all share biographical details with their author, and they are all like her in some way: passionate, lonely, despairing, difficult, brilliant, manipulated and manipulating in turn. Her heroines grow directly out of her life, following her from one difficult situation to the next.

Born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams on the island of Dominica in 1890, Jean Rhys took on many different names during her lifetime-stage names, pen names, married names. "Names are important," she writes in Wide Sargasso Sea. Her father, a doctor, was Welsh. Her mother was from a Scottish family that had lived on Dominica for generations-the family had owned slaves before the liberation in 1834. Rhys had a difficult childhood, but one filled with the beauty of the island. She left for England at seventeen, bound, she hoped, for a stage career.

Rhys began by studying at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, which she left to join the chorus of a popular musical, Our Miss Gibbs. Now calling herself variously Vivien, Emma, and Ella Gray, Rhys toured with the traveling production for three seasons. The heroine of Rhys's third novel, Voyage in the Dark, also toured with the chorus of a traveling show. Rhys met Lancelot Grey Hugh Smith during her years as a chorus girl. He was her first lover. The relationship lasted only eighteen months, but was in many ways her most lasting affair, and she wrote and rewrote its history in her short stories and in Voyage in the Dark.

Rhys stayed in London throughout World War I. After the armistice, she went to Paris to join (and marry) Jean Lenglet, a Dutch journalist. The Lenglets drifted around Europe together. Around this time, Ford Madox Ford took an interest in Rhys's writings, and pieces of hers began to appear in his magazine, the Transatlantic Review. Jean Lenglet was imprisoned for "offending against currency regulations," and Jean Rhys moved in with Ford Madox Ford and his lover, Stella. Rhys and Ford had an affair that finished her marriage and his relationship with Stella-the turmoil and its demise became the subject of Quartet.

After the breakup of these relationships, Rhys went through a difficult time, including the death of her mother. These events became Julia's story in After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie. Rhys then married Leslie Tilden Smith. Although these were Rhys's most productive writing years, they were also a bitter time of recrimination, insecurity, guilt, alcoholism, and violence. The bitterness of this characterizes Sasha in the last of these novels, Good Morning, Midnight, published in 1939. Leslie Tilden Smith died in 1945.

After the fourth novel, which, like its predecessors, met with critical acclaim but no popular success, Rhys disappeared. Many thought she had died. A radio company wished to make a radio program of Good Morning, Midnight and advertised for information in connection with Jean Rhys. She herself answered the ad. Francis Wyndham contacted her, suggesting that she write a book for the publishing house with which he was affiliated. Ever a perfectionist, Rhys took seven years to complete her beautiful novel Wide Sargasso Sea. It had been twenty-seven years since the publication of her last novel.

Wide Sargasso Sea was based largely on Rhys's childhood experiences in Dominica. Although she set the novel in Jamaica, much of the landscape and many of the people described were taken from her memory. Old Mr. Cosway, like Rhys's great-grandfather, owned slaves. Rhys's own mother, like Antoinette Cosway, married a man who came from off the island and did not quite understand its politics. Rhys's father, like Mr. Rochester, was an unlucky second son, exiled from his home in part because of a difficult relationship with his father. Rhys herself, like Antoinette, left a childhood paradise, albeit a treacherous one, for the cold, damp, cheerlessness of England.

Wide Sargasso Sea belatedly made Rhys's reputation. Rhys won the Royal Society of Literature Award and the W. H. Smith Award and was financially secure for the last thirteen years of her life. She enjoyed the praise and recognition, although she said it came "too late." In part because of Rhys's tendency to fictionalize her history, and in part because she was obscure for much of her life, there continues to be a great deal of confusion about her history. Hoping to set the record straight, Rhys began a series of autobiographical sketches, later published under the name Smile Please, but she died before she could complete them. Jean Rhys died in 1979 at the age of eighty-seven in Devonshire, England. (From the W.W. Norton publishers.)

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Critics Say. . .
The novel is a triumph of atmosphere-of what one is tempted to call Caribbean Gothic atmosphere. . . . It has an almost hallucinatory quality.
New York Times


Working a stylistic range from moody introspection to formal elegance, Miss Rhys has us traveling under Antoinette's skin. It is an eerie and memorable trip.
The Nation

The Readers Say. . .
(Ocassionally, when there are few professional reviews, we include helpful ones from Barnes & Noble customers.)


A great book that gives in depth view into the mind of Bertha, the first Mrs. Rochester. 'Wide Sargasso Sea' is a not only a brilliant deconstruction of Charlotte Bront’s legacy, but is also a damning history of colonialism in the West Indies. This novel addresses the issue of race and culture, but it also addresses the inner thought processes of a woman confronted with cultural chaos between the Creole, Jamaican, and British in the Caribbean. Told from different points of view, the text is a tapestry weaving Bertha's story with Edward Rochester's early life. Like the seaweed the book is named for, the structure floats in and out of artistic consciousness as though on a sea of many unwritten stories. Although some might argue that 'Wide Sargasso Sea,' detracts from 'Jane Eyre,' I feel that Jean Rhys gives us a fuller understanding about the cultural historiography that produces 'great literature.' As a champion for the silenced voices, Charlotte Bront herself was all too aware of societies' injustices. While today, 'Jane Eyre' is generally accepted as a tract on social class, feminism, and conscious production of art, 150 years ago, Bront was lambasted by contemporary critics as unchristian, seditious and a poor writer. I can not help but think Bront, as social critic, would have cheered the publication of 'Wide Sargasso Sea.' A wonderful book for anyone studying Latin America or the Caribbean.
jenny inniss, a reviewer, 01/18/2007


Tragic Masterpiece: This is an enlightening version of the 'mad woman' locked up in Mr. Rochester's mansion in England. Despite having a strong mentor in her nanny, Antoinette Cosway doesn't know how to save herself. Society isn't set up to give women of her generation much power or independence. She didn't have much of a father or mother figure, and only Christophene seems willing to truly protect her. In Rhys' eloquent style of writing, we are smoothly transported into the atmosphere of Jamaica after the 1830's. Though Antoinette is clearly a victim, I found Christophene's character refreshing and empowered. She's a former slave who is feared because of her knowledge of 'Obeah'. She isn't afraid to stand up to Antoinette's white husband, and comes close to helping the young woman gain freedom from him. This is a tragic masterpiece that will be loved for years to come. Chrissy K. McVay author of 'Souls of the North Wind, '01/17/2006

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Book Club Discussion Questions
Jean Rhys achieved literary fame with her acclaimed novel Wide Sargasso Sea. The novel is a moving and beautiful account of the life of Antoinette Cosway, the fictional character who becomes the madwoman in the attic in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.

Jean Rhys draws on her childhood memories of the Caribbean to create the magical, dangerous landscape of Wide Sargasso Sea, bringing to life a character who has haunted fiction readers for more than a century.

1. As a child, Antoinette Cosway wonders why the nuns at the convent do not pray for happiness. When Antoinette and Mr. Rochester arrive at their house after their wedding and journey, they drink a toast with two tumblers of rum punch. Antoinette says, "to happiness." Why does happiness elude her? When is she happy and what happens to those moments of happiness?

2. Antoinette's childhood is heavily overcast by threat. What are the threats from outside her household? What are the threats from within? To whom and to what does she turn for protection?

3. What is the racial situation as Antoinette is growing up? What does it mean that she gets called "white cockroach" and "white nigger?" How well do Antoinette and her mother understand the mindset of recently liberated slaves? What about the outsiders like Mr. Mason and Mr. Rochester?

4. How does Antoinette's experience of her mother's rejection shape her life? Is Antoinette like her mother? Could she have escaped her inherited madness? At what point is it too late? Is she really mad?

5. Sandi, Antoinette's cousin who is black, makes an appearance in each of the three sections of the novel. Were you surprised by Antoinette and Sandi's last scene together? What are the barriers that keep these two characters apart? In your opinion, could these barriers have been surmounted?

6. Mr. Rochester seems to marry Antoinette for money, or perhaps for lust, or perhaps for power. Mr. Rochester makes love to Antoinette in part to gain power over her. Antoinettte persuades Christophine to use the power of her obeah to entice Mr. Rochester to her bed. Amelie has sex with Mr. Rochester for her own purposes, and Mr. Rochester sleeps with Amelie for his. What are the relationships between money, lust, sex, and power in the novel?

7. Perspective switches two times in the novel. What is the effect of reading the same story from different people's points of view? Which narrative voice do you trust more? Why?

8. For Antoinette, England is a dream; for Mr. Rochester, the Caribbean is a dream. How do these perceptions keep them from understanding each other? Do they want to understand each other? How does it protect each of them to remain distant?

9. Many of the characters are mad and many are drunk. How do madness and drunkenness serve the characters? Do they give the characters freedom? protection? the ability to see the truth? the ability to hide from it?

10. Whose account of Christophine seems closest to the truth to you? How does her obeah work or not work under these circumstances? How good is her advice? Can Antoinette follow it?

11. Language plays an important role in the novel. Mr. Rochester cannot understand patois. Does this give his "servants" power over him?

12. Mr. Rochester starts to call Antoinette "Bertha," instead of her real name. "Names are important," she says toward the end of the novel. Does changing her name separate her from her family and her home?

13. In Jane Eyre the madwoman in the attic is a very unsympathetic character, an obstacle that stands in the way of the union of Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë portrays Mr. Rochester as a man with a dark past who nevertheless is not to blame for the burden with which he is saddled. Wide Sargasso Sea obviously sees this situation from a different angle. What are some of the factors that might have led to the difference between Charlotte Brontë's version and that of Jean Rhys?

14. Wide Sargasso Sea has two fires-one in the first section and one in the last. How are these fires related? Who dies, who goes crazy, who is set free? Is there a parallel between the parrot in the first fire and Antoinette in the second?
(Questions issued by publisher.)