Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

I had just watch PBS Wide Sargasso Sea and behold when I opened the internet, The New Yorker had a piece on Jean Rhys. 

Wide Sargasso Sea (1967) was Rhys’s final book, the one that made her famous late—“too late,” she said. Set in the early nineteenth century, Wide Sargasso Sea was Rhys’s great historical vendetta, in which she furnished a life for the West Indian “madwoman” Charlotte Brontë dismissed to Rochester’s attic in Jane Eyre. I began where Rhys ended, reading her last novel at sixteen in an English class at Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge, England, a few doors away from the Perse School for Girls, the posh private school Rhys had attended on moving to England from Dominica in 1907. Jean and I went to school on the same street a hundred years apart, sixteen-year-old sisters in the same place at a different time. Cambridge had changed, but Jean stayed with me. Neither of us liked school, and we both knew what it was like to be derided by a Perse girl; Jean for her Creole accent, and I for being a Hills Road student (in keeping with informal tradition, our schools maintain an absurd rivalry).  

The Wide Sargasso Sea (Trailer) from EpicFilmsGlobal on Vimeo.

Literary Career from her biography on FREE BOOK SUMMARY. 

The first book of her narratives “Left Bank” was released in 1927 under a pseudonym. This was followed by the others “Poza” (1928), “After the departure of Mr. Mackenzie” (1931), “Voyage in the Dark” (1934) and “Good Morning, Midnight” (1939). Scientist Francis Wyndham, who was instrumental in bringing Rhys back to the writing circle in the second half of the twentieth century, said that all these plots are autobiographical in their nature and relate essentially to one woman, only in different life stages. Later, the author confirmed his assumption, saying: “I wrote only about myself.” 

The litterateur tried to portray the manners of a deeply patriarchal community and the place of a woman among the rough reality. However, her stories were met with very moderate reviews, Jean Rhys completely vanished from the public arena in 1939, having declared herself only in 1957 with the novel “The Wide Sargasso Sea,” which was awarded the W.H. Smith. 

This work is called a fiction masterpiece, on the pages of which unusual prose and sensual female characters organically intertwine. Some critics draw a parallel with the crazy Jane Eyre. The plot revolves around the young heroine Antoinette, who agrees to marry an unloved man, Mr. Rochester. Jean sharply describes the hatred and distortion in the perception of sexual relations caused by the unacceptability of own position. The protagonist literally banishes from herself the feminine qualities in order to survive in a cruel world. 

In 1958, Rhys was re-enrolled in the ranks of the great writers, after the film screening of the novel “Good morning, Midnight.” The narrative describes the Paris of the 1930s where an unknown woman learns indifference to comfort and love. She was able to avoid personal drama and deliberately settled in a cheap hotel to achieve independence. The girl does not believe in good and does not expect anything from men. 

Another outstanding piece is the “Voyage in the Dark.” Heroine Anna Morgan after the death of her dad relocated to England. Like the author, she moonlights a model of free artists. But the girl constantly feels the coldness and grayness of the local climate, which moves her from innocence to the harsh sooth. There is no free charity in the world since everything has its price. Children’s illusions are pushed aside by cruelty and indifference. Before us is a portrait of a hypocritical society, able to expel and destroy any person.