Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

 

I was so excited about this book.  It had come highly recommended by my favorite podcaster, and it is linked to one of my favorites, Jane Eyre.  It was bound to make me feel smart!! It is a slim volume and in December I thought, hey, I'll add one more book to my 2022 reads with this one, it will be easy!

Think again.

This novel gives an imagined answer to the question of "Who IS the crazy lady in the attic of Mr. Rochester's house?"  (And, sorry, not sorry if you haven't read Jane Eyre yet because I can't really consider that a spoiler.)  Rhys provides a provocative background for the madwoman and explains how things came to be the way they are in Bronte's classic.  Very atmospheric, luscious in locale, and not very complimentary to Mr. R, this novel introduces us to Antoinette as a child and recounts her life on her family's plantation in Jamaica just after the Emancipation Act of 1833 freed all slaves.  Reactions are varied among both her already ostracized family and their former slaves, but the repercussions for Antionette are huge.

Fast forward to when a brooding Englishman with his own family troubles comes looking for salvation and societal status through a lucrative marriage, and this for me is where it all fell apart.  He is initially presented almost as a shadow character, but his appearance also causes the other fascinating characters in the book, particularly Christophine, to fade out.  I am sure that if I had an English Professor to lead me through all the symbolism, I would have appreciated it more.  But for me, the choppy sentences, the way the story jumps around leaving gaps in what is happening - it just confused me.  I did not like the idea that Mr. R was basically not a nice person even before he met his first wife, and I had no sympathy for him at all.  I had some for Antoinette, which is probably the whole point of this story - to skew the focus back to the most misunderstood character from Jane Eyre into one that you feel for.  She certainly has a hard life, a heavy legacy to bear, and when she is faced with a decision that could alter her life for the better, we wonder if she even has the ability to see the paths before her properly.  If she had made a different choice, then what??  But alas, England awaited, and her fate was sealed.

I do think the introduction by Edwidge Danticat (what a great name, sounds like a great investigator in a novel!) in my edition was very helpful.  She brings up good points about why Rhys wanted to write this novel and reveals that both Rhys and Danticat are island girls themselves, accounting for the colorful descriptions of the land and the deep understanding of the people of the time.  Most interestingly, Danticat says, Rhys asks this question:  What if Jane and Antoinette had become friends?  What would they have found mirrored in each other, if anything?  They are both supposed to be Rochester's salvation, but in different ways at the different stages of his life and experiences.  That question in itself was actually more interesting to me than Antoinette's past.

In retrospect, I was not so smart with this read. I have had several readerly friends say to me, "Oh!  Wasn't that a brilliant book?  I just loved it!"  And, I could not really agree, I could only say "meh".  It was wrong and unfair of me to pick this slim volume up with the idea that I would just blow through it like a beach read.  This is NOT a beach read, it is definitely a novel to sit with, to ponder over, to dissect even.  Kim Jackson, I am coming for your thesis!!!!  Maybe that will help me like (or at least understand) this one more, and then I should give it the benefit of a re-read when I will give it more time and analysis.  Live and learn!!!!!

Maybe I should title this as:

My Review, otherwise known as A Warning Against My Own Self-Importance in Reading A Book To Fill A Goal 

HA!