The first part of the novel, narrated by Antoinette herself, describes her childhood in 1830s Jamaica, just after the Emancipation Act has ended slavery across the British Empire. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys gives a voice to Bertha (or Antoinette Cosway, as she is known here). Jane Eyre only shows us one side of the story: Rochester’s. When Bertha’s own behaviour begins to worry Rochester, he brings her home to England and Thornfield Hall, where he has her imprisoned in an attic room under the care of a servant, Grace Poole. Rochester explains that he was unaware of the madness running in Bertha’s family and the fact that her mother was not dead, as he had first believed, but had actually been locked away in an asylum. In Jane Eyre, we learn that Rochester was sent by his father to Jamaica where he met the Mason family and married Bertha, a beautiful Creole heiress. Wide Sargasso Sea is the story of Mr Rochester’s first wife, Bertha, the ‘madwoman in the attic’.

I will assume that if you’re reading this post you’re already familiar with Jane Eyre, so consider this your spoiler warning! I don’t read this type of book very often as I prefer to keep my feelings for the originals intact, but this one, published in 1966, is now considered a classic in itself and I wanted to find out why.Īs I started writing this review it occurred to me that it would be impossible to discuss Wide Sargasso Sea in any meaningful way without giving away some of the secrets revealed in Jane Eyre and spoiling the Brontë novel for anyone who hasn’t read it yet. After finishing a re-read of Jane Eyre recently, I decided that my next read would have to be Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, a book inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel and which I’ve seen described both as a prequel and a reimagining.

Jean rhys novel