Wide Sargasso Sea- Relevant to Jane Eyre?

Wide Sargasso Sea is a novel that follows a woman called Antoinette Cosway.
The novel really is a prequel to the very successful Jayne Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
Jane Eyre ends with a character called Mr. Rochester going to marry this woman Jayne. The wedding is stopped as it is revealed that Mr. Rochester had a secret wife by the name of Bertha Mason, unwilling to become a bigamist Mr. Rochester takes Jayne to Bertha.
In Jayne Eyre, Bertha Mason is portrayed as a mad woman, a psychopath.

The point of Wide Sargasso Sea was to put Bertha Mason in a different light, to make it clear to the audience that she was a normal person before Mr. Rochester. Although Wide Sargasso Sea doesn't name Mr. Rochester, we know it's him because of the link to Jayne Eyre.

The book focuses really on Antoinette Cosway's decent into madness, this is not a spoiler because we assume the reader has first read Jayne Eyre.

Antoinette Cosway marries Mr. Rochester and immediately there is heat between the both of them. The relationship consists of this only, we as the reader can tell there is nothing more. Mr. Rochester has a profound fascination with Antoinette all through the novel.'

Jean Rhys makes it known to the reader that Mr. Rochester and Antoinette are very much similar. They were both technically forced into the marriage; we don't read about the wedding, there is a clever time skip between the beginning in Coloubri in Jamaica, to after they are both married.

The novel actually focuses on Rochester's almost decent into madness. Throughout the novel it is almost like Rochester is telling HIMSELF that he is not mad. He treats Antoinette completely different when he finds out a scandalous truth about her mother. He begins to treat Antoinette like a dangerous animal that could attack any second. This drives Antoinette into isolationism and Rochester begins to call her Bertha.

In the end of the novel everything is left incredibly untidy almost, they move away to England and he... keeps her, again as if she were a dangerous animal. He calls his wife Bertha Mason, stripping her of her identity as Antoinette Cosway.

The book really is an incredible read, you don't even need to have read Jane Eyre to understand it. Jean Rhys has put in many links between Jane and Antoinette that if you have read them both, you will understand.

My rating: 7/10