![]() Rochester disliked Jamaica and although his wife was beautiful, he was not aware that she was Creole, and it displeased him, especially after marrying her and disposing of her generous dowry. His elder brother was to inherit the Rochester Estate, so his father arranged a marriage to a rich Jamaican heiress for Edward, his second son. Rochester narrates Part Two and is shown up as the shady, unscrupulous character he became in JE. ![]() In WSS Antoinette tells Rochester “there is always the other side, always”, and that is the story Rhys weaves in Part One which Antoinette narrates. Antoinette who was gagged, emprisoned, and abused in Jane Eyre, is given a voice and a life, a real life, in Wide Sargasso Sea a life Charlotte Bronte insinuated but never told. Rhys tells the formerly untold story of Bertha Antoinette Mason from her birth in Jamaica to her death at Thornfield Hall. Jean Rhys Rhys was born in Dominica, an island of the British West Indies to a Welsh doctor and a a third-generation Creole of Scots ancestry. ![]() ![]() ![]() Both novels are complimentary and it is their combined stories which have led to my “sequel” The Eyre Hall Trilogy. Although my main inspiration in writing The Eyre Hall Trilogy was Jane Eyre, its “prequel” Wide Sargasso Sea, written over a hundred years later by Jean Rhys, has been almost equally responsible. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |