<![CDATA[Wide Sargasso Sea ]]>

false <![CDATA[Wide Sargasso Sea ]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170266061m/44597.jpg 44597 45 Although this books stands on its own, it is also a prequel to <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10210.Jane_Eyre">Jane Eyre</a>. In 1966 Jean Rhys reemerged after a long silence with a novel called Wide Sargasso Sea. Rhys had enjoyed minor literary success in the 1920s and '30s with a series of evocative novels featuring women protagonists adrift in Europe, verging on poverty, hoping to be saved by men. By the '40s, however, her work was out of fashion, too sad for a world at war. And Rhys herself was often too sad for the world--she was suicidal, alcoholic, troubled by a vast loneliness. She was also a great writer, despite her powerful self-destructive impulses. Wide Sargasso Sea is the story of Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress who grew up in the West Indies on a decaying plantation. When she comes of age she is married off to an Englishman, and he takes her away from the only place she has known--a house with a garden where "the paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched." The novel is Rhys's answer to Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë's book had long haunted her, mostly for the story it did not tell--that of the madwoman in the attic, Rochester's terrible secret. Antoinette is Rhys's imagining of that locked-up woman, who in the end burns up the house and herself. Wide Sargasso Sea follows her voyage into the dark, both from her point of view and Rochester's. It is a voyage charged with soul-destroying lust. "I watched her die many times," observes the new husband. "In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty." Rhys struggled over the book, enduring rejections and revisions, wrestling to bring this ruined woman out of the ashes. The slim volume was finally published when she was 70 years old. The critical adulation that followed, she said, "has come too late." Jean Rhys died a few years later, but with Wide Sargasso Sea she left behind a great legacy, a work of strange, scary loveliness. There has not been a book like it before or since. Believe me, I've been searching. --Emily White 142647 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea total:5656|5:1083|4:1892|3:1792|2:647|1:242| 5656 19895 7832 629 5 12 false false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1992 Sun Jan 06 07:25:31 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 30 15:44:56 -0800 2008 2
This isn't a book for high school students. Jean Rhys was relatively famous as an author in the nineteen-twenties. S...more...]]> 4 5 false false Mon Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2002 Tue May 29 11:28:01 -0700 2007 Tue May 29 11:28:01 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 6 false false Mon Feb 18 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 27 17:25:55 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 27 17:26:10 -0800 2008
Part I tells the story of Bertha's childhood in the West Indies from her own point of vi...more...]]> 5 4 false false Sat Dec 13 09:16:20 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 13 09:18:04 -0800 2008 5 2 false false Tue Jul 01 13:20:21 -0700 2008 Fri Jul 18 08:27:24 -0700 2008
Rhys is, was more than a talented storyteller, she had a very keen notion of in/justice and what kind of living narrative can drive a person to means and ends.

If wanti...more...]]> 5 4 false false Tue Sep 02 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Apr 19 10:50:01 -0700 2008 Tue Sep 02 11:05:18 -0700 2008 Jane Eyre, and because Wide Sargasso Sea is based on Jane Eyre, there are some spoilers for this book as well. However, I imagine that most readers, like me, know the basic premise of both books before they start reading. Thus, I am not hiding my review...more...]]> 4 2 false false Mon Jan 28 13:52:17 -0800 2008 Sat Mar 01 06:29:24 -0800 2008 more...]]> 2 5 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Nov 08 19:18:12 -0800 2007 Wed Jan 30 16:58:44 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 3 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue May 08 10:59:43 -0700 2007 Tue May 08 10:59:43 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 3 false false Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Fri Feb 09 08:24:21 -0800 2007 Fri Feb 09 09:37:44 -0800 2007
The book is pretty good in its own right: a beautiful sense of place, interesting narrative style, but it's the way it completely recasts Jane Eyre that makes ...more...]]> 4 2 false false Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 07 08:07:37 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 07 08:14:31 -0700 2008 At first I disliked this book intensely because it wasn't what I thought it was. I'd built up some sort of idea that the book was a close reworking of "Jane Eyre".
Well.
It isn't, and I was ticked (can you say immmature?) becau...more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Dec 14 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 03 16:54:26 -0800 2008 Sun Dec 14 07:23:28 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Sep 03 07:13:50 -0700 2008 Sun Sep 28 10:34:47 -0700 2008

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e o carte care merita citita...more...]]> 3 2 false true Fri Jul 04 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Jan 24 16:55:25 -0800 2008 Sat Jul 05 10:52:18 -0700 2008 Jane Eyre. Lame.)

I've been avoiding reading Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea for a few years now. (My MA Exam list put an end to that.) I was certain that it would meddle with Jane Eyre ...more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Feb 10 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 21 11:26:10 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 11 08:33:07 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Mar 24 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Mar 22 08:40:59 -0700 2008 Wed Apr 02 15:42:44 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Aug 28 15:35:14 -0700 2007 Tue Aug 28 15:49:40 -0700 2007
The idea of og giving the 'fury in the attic' a human face and her own sad story is brilliant...it was like watching a caribian flower slowly fading away...I loved the way it was written...and yet...more...]]> 2 4 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Oct 01 21:00:35 -0700 2008 Thu Oct 02 00:00:05 -0700 2008 1 Jane Eyre. Unfortunately, it seems she is destined to remain a cipher, since I failed to find much to her in this book either. Her past is fleshed out more, but she herself remains inaccessi...more...]]> 2 1 false false Mon Mar 23 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 23 06:58:14 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 23 07:13:32 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false true Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Feb 17 20:20:14 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 17 21:28:31 -0800 2009
Jean Rhys, the author, was born to a white father and creole mother in Dominica and thus, I think had every right to attempt th...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=44597