Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Bleak, spare, and haunting, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) portrays a girl out of step with her country, sold into marriage.
Antoinette Cosway lives in Jamaica. It’s the island of her birth, the only place she’s ever known. But it’s rough. Being poor, she’s despised by the English; being pale, she’s despised by her countrymen.
“I never looked at any strange negro. They hated us. They called us white cockroaches. Let sleeping dogs lie. One day a little girl followed me singing, ‘Go away white cockroach, go away, go away.’ I walked fast, but she walked faster. ‘White cockroach, go away, go away. Nobody wants you. Go away.’” (8)
Overlooked by her mother, tormented by the other children, Antoinette grows up in a world without happiness. Her dearest wishes: peace, protection, and happiness. But this is not her lot. The neighbours set her house on fire, igniting a chain of events which take Antoinette far from home, cast into the care of a man who doesn’t love her.
And the man? None other than Mr. Rochester from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. This is the story of Bertha Mason - Bronte’s mad woman in the attic.
It’s terribly sad. There’s a line at the beginning when the little girl is exploring the land. When she’s cut by razor glass, she comforts herself that it’s better than people. When she’s frightened by a snake: it’s better than people.
‘It was a song about a white cockroach. That’s me. … And I’ve heard English women call us white niggers. So between you I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.’ (76)
There’s a sadness beyond the story as well. Jean Rhys lived her plots, and the sense of this woman without home, without happiness, without peace and protection is the ghost beneath the prose.
There’s much ado about madness here too, reflected in the disorienting narrative. There are sharp shifts in point of view, and it’s hard to get a grip on the passage of time. Wide Sargasso Sea is bewildering, elegant, and engrossing, and calls for a second reading.
