Title: Wide Sargasso Sea
Author: Jean Rhys
Pages: 111
Finished: April 15, 2018
First Sentence: They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.
Summary: If you read Jane Eyre and wondered about the madwoman stuck in the attic, this is her story. This is the story of her growing up and marrying Rochester. Of her decent into madness.
Thoughts: I got a 4 on my English Literature AP test which meant I didn't have to take English 101 in college. Because I didn't have to take English 101, I missed reading this. But all my classmates raved about it. At least three girls on my dorm floor told me I HAD to read this book. I'd love it. So like a dutiful reader, I stuck it on my TBR list and then forgot it existed.
When it came time to choose a book for my 20th Century category on the Back to the Classics challenge, I figured this would be a great one, particularly as I was using Jane Eyre for my Rereading of a Favorite.
After reading it, my main thought is that I wish I'd read this when I was in college. I think I would have liked it better.
I wanted to like it. But really, I found I had a hard time keeping up with what was happening. Even after reading synopsis, I was shocked at what I had missed. I found myself rereading passages and not retaining the information. Perhaps this was just a bad month for me. I don't know.
From here on out, there will be spoilers. Read at your own risk.
I always thing reading books about madness with a 21st century perspective is very fascinating. Because what they call madness sounds like depression to me. And good lord does Antoinette have a situation ripe to succumb to depression. It's always hard to read a book where you realize things that I struggle with would have me labeled as mad.
Rochester was absolutely appalling in this novel. As much as I may not have liked him in the original novel, young Rochester was awful. He was brought up during British Imperialism. England was the best. Women were commodities. And here he was relegated to a British colony to marry a woman who wasn't even fully white like him. And let me tell you, my own husband has changed a ton in the ten years that I've known him... and he was never as bad as Rochester was. I can fully believe that Rochester was this horrific as a young, twenty-something year old man.
I confess I was confused at first that her name was Antoinette. Since we only know her as Bertha in Jane Eyre, I assumed that it was her name. To find out that, in Rhys' mind, Rochester gave her the name Bertha to torture her more was really chilling.
The book also brought to mind the short story The Yellow Wallpaper. I never got the sense that Antoinette was horribly mentally ill. But due to the lack of understanding or support for any sort of mental illness, what she had to endure just made it worse. Similar to the Yellow Wallpaper where the narrator is suffering from what is likely Postpartum Depression and is forced to do nothing and so descends to insanity. These stories are so chilling to me, and they make me so grateful that we've come so far in understanding mental illness. They also make me grateful that I have wonderful doctors who I trust.
This is a super rambling review that I'm going to end fairly abruptly. To sum up, I didn't particularly enjoy the book, but I did find it a very thought provoking piece of literature. I think that what Rhys wrote is a very plausible possibility of the before.
Read for the 20th Century novel in the Back to teh Classics Challenge.
When it came time to choose a book for my 20th Century category on the Back to the Classics challenge, I figured this would be a great one, particularly as I was using Jane Eyre for my Rereading of a Favorite.
After reading it, my main thought is that I wish I'd read this when I was in college. I think I would have liked it better.
I wanted to like it. But really, I found I had a hard time keeping up with what was happening. Even after reading synopsis, I was shocked at what I had missed. I found myself rereading passages and not retaining the information. Perhaps this was just a bad month for me. I don't know.
From here on out, there will be spoilers. Read at your own risk.
I always thing reading books about madness with a 21st century perspective is very fascinating. Because what they call madness sounds like depression to me. And good lord does Antoinette have a situation ripe to succumb to depression. It's always hard to read a book where you realize things that I struggle with would have me labeled as mad.
Rochester was absolutely appalling in this novel. As much as I may not have liked him in the original novel, young Rochester was awful. He was brought up during British Imperialism. England was the best. Women were commodities. And here he was relegated to a British colony to marry a woman who wasn't even fully white like him. And let me tell you, my own husband has changed a ton in the ten years that I've known him... and he was never as bad as Rochester was. I can fully believe that Rochester was this horrific as a young, twenty-something year old man.
I confess I was confused at first that her name was Antoinette. Since we only know her as Bertha in Jane Eyre, I assumed that it was her name. To find out that, in Rhys' mind, Rochester gave her the name Bertha to torture her more was really chilling.
The book also brought to mind the short story The Yellow Wallpaper. I never got the sense that Antoinette was horribly mentally ill. But due to the lack of understanding or support for any sort of mental illness, what she had to endure just made it worse. Similar to the Yellow Wallpaper where the narrator is suffering from what is likely Postpartum Depression and is forced to do nothing and so descends to insanity. These stories are so chilling to me, and they make me so grateful that we've come so far in understanding mental illness. They also make me grateful that I have wonderful doctors who I trust.
This is a super rambling review that I'm going to end fairly abruptly. To sum up, I didn't particularly enjoy the book, but I did find it a very thought provoking piece of literature. I think that what Rhys wrote is a very plausible possibility of the before.
Read for the 20th Century novel in the Back to teh Classics Challenge.
No comments:
Post a Comment