Jean Rhys has written a prequel to Jane Eyre.
Much of the population, at this point i expect, would like to question why. I certainly did!
After slogging through the door wedge that is Jane Eyre i had no particular wish to revisit the dank and dismal world of Bronte's Victorian England! But Rhys has indeed found a most interesting story, perspective, setting and character. She has delved into the past of Bertha Mason, the mad woman in the attic. In Jane Eyre Bertha is integral to the plot! But as a character she is unexplored. We see Rochesters view of his mad wife and the rest is assumption. However, this is a new century and we appear to be a curious bunch and we demand to know just what it was that caused Bertha to be dragged down the rabbit hole and just what stopped her from climbing out.
Rhys chooses not to follow and model Bronte's style in the book. A post modern writing style for a novel on post colonialism, Rhys uses the setting of the caribbean to her advantage. The narrators seem constantly to be at war, constantly confused with their own state of affairs. Rhys' description of Antoinette's (Bertha's) homeland is just as sporadic and wild. The imagery oxymoronic and somewhat unreal. The unnamed Rochester even comments on how jamaica is as a dream. But this dream is spiked with the poison of derranged nightmares in a rather matter of fact way. A flower is wonderously gorgeous with the scent of death, in the same way one might embellish the same sentence by saying that a bee happened to be perched on it.
This style really does fit the story like a glove to a hand. i think it emphasises the plot, which is of course centred around the supposed madness of Bertha Mason. She lives in a multicoloured, multisensual world where everything is at an extreme! And Rhys writes up to the standards of her overwhelming setting with a fast paced narrative that you need to be wide awake for. A whirling world of race, religion, status, power and control manipulates the events of Antoinettes life until she has lost her most important sense; that of who she is!
Wide Sargasso Sea, depite being a prequel to Jane Eyre is really nothing like the old classic. Instead, the two books are as different as the main characters; plain jane eyre vs the passions of Antoinette. The major advantage of Wide Sargasso Sea is that it brings a full real world. There are no cliches, no melodrama needed as instead we have real people with their own quirks, intrigues, faults and prejudices against a background of the awareness of a patriachal society, racism and politics. For me, it brings Wide Sargasso Sea alive and out of the realms of a story.
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6 comments:
A good read. You certainly sell the book well. I'm not sure that I fully understand what you mean when you say WSS has real characters. Do you mean there is realism in the novel? Do they become real in our minds? are they real on the page? In a modernist novel? Do the two go together? what do you think?
The characters seem real as they are 3D characters, there are good characters or bad characters, each character has parts in their personality which are positive and other sides which are flaws. Instead of having selfless ascetism (like many of the characters in Jane Eyre) which i feel are unrealistic takes on the characteristics of most people, the characters are full, real, with many facets and reasons behind those facets.
I agree that the characters in WSS are more believable in that they do have pretty major flaws, but I wouldn't say that Jane is totally unbelievable- I think the way in which she behaves is pretty normal sometimes, just exaggerated upon, perhaps to make the read more interesting/exciting?
i never thought that Jane was exaggerated to make her more interesting...i always thought that that was Bronte showing that Jane was suppressing her true character as there is such a divide between how Jane thinks and the action that she then takes.
wow! You make the book sound really interesting! I like your ideas about the contrast and confusion, not only between WSS and Jane Eyre, but also within the book itself. You say that Antoinette does not know who she truely is, do you think this is what drove her mad? I also liked your comment about going down the rabbit hole, although it reminded me scarily of TOK...
you should write it in your TOK diary elle!
Personally i don't think she is mad... i think thats Jean Rhys' whole point... its all about your perspective on whether she was mad...if you only read Rochesters part you could think she was mad...but with the whole book you realise that there are always two sides to a story and that she may have been disturbed but she never behaved insanely, i think.
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