Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

The wedding scene in Charlotte Bronte?s Jane Eyre where Mr Rochester?s mad first wife appears to declare that any subsequent marriage between Mr Rochester and anyone else would be illegal is perhaps the most famous and probably one of the keys scenes of the book. The scene is much parodied and discussed but had you ever wondered about the ma first Mrs Rochester.? We are given clues in the text of Charlotte Bronte but only the story is biased as it is completely Mt Rochester?s We turn to another book Wild Sargasso Sea by a Caribbean born author Jean Rhys to tell Bertha Rochester?s story from here childhood in Jamaica to her death in the fire at Thornfield Hall ...  Read the complete review

I would imagine that how you read this book will depend a great deal on whether or not you are familiar with Jane Eyre - and most people will be. The two books inform one another, as Wide Sargasso Sea is written back into the older text. Once you have read it, you will never see Jane in the same light. The brilliance of this text is that it draws forwards features of Jane Eyre that are otherwise easily overlooked - this is a story just visible thorugh the cracks in the older text, and it takes Rochester's statements about his first marriage and portrays something of what that must mean. (Ok, for anyone not familiar with Jane Eyre, its a story about a girl ...  Read the complete review