Wide Sargasso Sea
Still on the Shelf
This is another in my *Still On The Shelf* series, where I tell you, book by blessed book, why I periodically run a dust rag across them, pull them off the shelf, and open them up to read.
A lifetime of reading has left me with a sizable number of books. Throughout the years I’ve donated them for tax deductions and traded them for credit by the carload. But for all the trimming and weeding my collection has undergone these past decades, the ones remaining on the shelves are there for a reason: they’ve withstood the tests of time. Although I’m more inclined to pick up my Kindle these days, there are still plenty of books on my shelves, and Wide Sargasso Sea is one of them.
Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys
W. W. Norton & Company, Reissue edition 1992
What makes this book so good is what it implies rather than what it says.
Briefly, the story is a sort of long preface to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I didn’t know that when I began to read the book, so it was a delightful experience to come to the realization on my own. While it isn’t a requirement for you to have read Jane Eyre to enjoy Wide Sargasso Sea, it does add an extra dimension to your reading enjoyment.
If you’ve read Jane Eyre or saw any of the movie versions or the mini-series, you’ll remember that Jane, after all her gothic trials and tribulations, fell in love with and was going to marry Mr. Rochester. And do you remember her discovering his secret — the mad wife locked in the attic? Yes, well, Wide Sargasso Sea is the story of the first Mrs. Rochester. WSS shows how the crazy Antoinette became crazy (if that’s what she really was, and I seriously doubt it) and the power her husband (and any man, really) had over her (and every woman) as a moral right of the times.
The story takes place primarily in the West Indies, and not only does it address the social injustices to women but also exposes the injustices of colonialism and slavery and the chaotic consequences of its abolishment. There is much going on in this novel.
Rhys’s vision for WSS, a reverse piggy-back type of thing, is clever. I hesitate to call it a prequel. Without rewriting or undercutting a beloved classic, Rhys succeeded brilliantly in incorporating egalitarian notions into history. What Bronte was criticized for, Rhys takes to an even higher level. The brilliance of Wide Sargasso Sea is here, in the way Rhys reveals the intertwining of lives and how sometimes that intermingling can strangle a person as surely as the seaweed that floats in that dangerous part of the ocean.
As I wrote in my reviews of The Red Tent and One Thousand White Women:
The written account of the world’s history came to us through centuries of enforced feminine silence. While it’s no secret that women’s stories and their perspective of historical events were related by men — if told or written at all! — I don’t believe we realize the impact this lack of voice has had, and continues to have, on our lives today.
Part of the treatment, part of our therapy, certainly must include retelling history to include the equally important feminine view.
Jean Rhys joins in on the effort to apply the medicine that will cleanse our souls, give voice to those who have been silenced, and contribute to our healing.
Now . . . if we can only keep the hands of the current misogynists of both sexes in their own pants and out of the business of women and their health professionals.
There’s an outstanding movie version of Wide Sargasso Sea, and I highly recommend you see it. In fact, this story is so intriguing that I’d recommend you do both — read the book and see the movie. The book, of course, contains details not in the movie, and the movie presents magical imagery and tone, a beautiful sight. I don’t think it matters which you should do first — the reading or the seeing.
So, which is better — the book or the movie? In this rare case, I think it’s a toss-up.
And that’s why it’s still on the shelf.
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