Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 postmodern novel by Dominican-British author Jean Rhys. Set in Jamaica in the 1830s–1840s, the novel is a postcolonial and feminist prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), detailing the background to Edward Rochester's marriage from the point of view of his wife Bertha Mason, Brontë's "madwoman in the attic", reimagined by Rhys as a Creole heiress named Antoinette Cosway. Antoinette's story is told from the time of her youth in Jamaica, to her unhappy marriage to an English gentleman, Mr. Rochester, who renames her Bertha, declares her mad, takes her to England, and isolates her from the rest of the world in his mansion.
Adaptations (1)
Wide Sargasso Sea was adapted into a 1993 film.
Wide Sargasso Sea1993 · film · 99 min · dir. John Duigan · IMDb ↗IMDb5.665%In the wake of Jamaican emancipation, French colonist Annette Cosway falls into poverty and marries racist Englishman Paul Mason. But when Annette's young son dies in a fire started by former slaves, Mason flees to England, leaving his grief-stricken wife and her Creole daughter Antoinette behind. Soon Antoinette learns she must marry to claim her inheritance and sets her sights on Rochester, an Englishman eerily similar to Mason.
