Author by Jean Rhys
Genre : Fiction
Publisher : Norton
ISBN : 0393352560
Type : PDF & Epub
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This "tour de force" (New York Times Book Review) celebrates its 50th anniversary.
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This "tour de force" (New York Times Book Review) celebrates its 50th anniversary.
Antoinette Cosway is a Creole heiress living in Jamaica, who meets and marries a young Englishman, Mr Rochester. Taken from the vibrant, sensual Caribbean landscape to England, Antoinette finds herself the centre of disturbing rumours which gradually posion her husband's mind against her.
This book revisits Jean Rhys’s ground-breaking 1966 novel to explore its cultural and artistic influence in the areas of not only literature and literary criticism, but fashion design, visual art, and the theatre as well. Building on symposia that were held in London and New York in 2016 in honour of the novel’s half-century, this collection demonstrates just how timely Rhys’s insights into colonial history, sexual relations, and aesthetics continue to be. The chapters include an extensive interview with novelist Caryl Phillips, who in 2018 published a novel about Rhys’s life, an account of how Wide Sargasso Sea can be read through the lens of the #MeToo Movement, a clothing line inspired by the novel, and new critical directions. As both a celebration and scholarly evaluation, the collection shows how enduring Rhys’s novel is in its continuing literary influence and social commentary.
Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,00, University of Koblenz-Landau (Anglistik), course: Colonial and Postcolonial Literatures, language: English, abstract: Wide Sargasso Sea is one of the best-known literary postcolonial replies to the writing of Charlotte Bronte and a brilliant deconstruction of what is known as the author's "worlding" in Jane Eyre. The novel written by Jean Rhys tells the story of Jane Eyre's protagonist, Edward Rochester. The plot takes place in West Indies where Rochester met his first wife, Bertha Antoinette Mason. Wide Sargasso Sea influences the common reading and understanding of the matrix novel, as it rewrites crucial parts of Jane Eyre. The heroine in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette Cosway, is created out of demonic and bestialic Bertha Mason from Jane Eyre. Rhys's great achievement in her re-writing of the Bronte's text is her creation of a double to the madwoman from Jane Eyre. The heroine of Wide Sargasso Sea, the beautiful Antoinette Cosway, heiress of the post-emancipation fortune is created out of the demonc and bestialic Bertha Mason. The author transforms the first Mrs Rochester into an individual figure whose madness is caused by imperialistic and patriarchal oppression The vision of Bertha/Antoinette as an insane offspring from a family plagued by madness is no longer plausible to the reader. In this essay I would like to focus the factors which led to the madness of the protagonist. Although Bertha Mason and Jane Eyre seem to be enemies and contradictory characters in the Victorian novel, many critics find several similarities between the two heroines, their life and finally between Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea. Seeing Jane Eyre and Antoinette Cosway as sisters and doubles is very popular with some critics who dealt with the works of Charlotte Bronte and Jean Rhys. Nevertheless, I would like to focus in this essay on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's criticism on viewing and interpreting the two heroines. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her essay "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism" values also Jean Rhys for telling the story of Bertha Mason through the Creole perspective, but she criticises the author for marginalising the native inhabitants of West Indies.
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 'Rhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th Century and turned it inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th Century' Michele Roberts Jean Rhys's masterpiece tells the story of Jane Eyre's 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester. Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness, and her husband into the arms of another novel's heroine. This classic study of betrayal, a seminal work of postcolonial literature, is Jean Rhys's brief, beautiful masterpiece. Edited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith
One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World' Jean Rhys's spell-binding novel Wide Sargasso Sea, inspired by Jane Eyre and winner the Royal Society of Literature Award is beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range. 'There is no looking glass here and I don't know what I am like now... Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?' If Antoinette Cosway, a spirited Creole heiress, could have foreseen the terrible future that awaited her, she would not have married the young Englishman. Initially drawn to her beauty and sensuality, he becomes increasingly frustrated by his inability to reach into her soul. He forces Antoinette to conform to his rigid Victorian ideals, unaware that in taking away her identity he is destroying a part of himself as well as pushing her towards madness. Set against the lush backdrop of 1830s Jamaica, Jean Rhys's powerful, haunting masterpiece was inspired by her fascination with the first Mrs Rochester, the mad wife in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. 'Compelling, painful and exquisite' Guardian 'Brilliant. A tale of dislocation and dispossession, which Rhys writes with a kind of romantic cynicism, desperate and pungent' The Times 'Rhys turns a menacing cipher into a grieving, plausible young woman, and one whose story says whole worlds about global mixtures, about the misunderstandings between the colonized, the colonizers and the people who can't easily say which they are' Time Jean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1890, the daughter of a Welsh doctor and a white Creole mother, and came to England when she was sixteen. Her first book, a collection of stories called The Left Bank, was published in 1927. This was followed by Quartet (originally Postures, 1928), After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930), Voyage in the Dark (1934) and Good Morning, Midnight (1939). None of these books was particularly successful and with the outbreak of war they went out of print. Jean Rhys dropped from sight until nearly twenty years later she was discovered living reclusively in Cornwall. During those years she had accumulated the stories collected in Tigers are Better-Looking. In 1966 she made a sensational reappearance with Wide Sargasso Sea, which won the Royal Society of Literature Award and the W. H. Smith Award. Her final collection of stories, Sleep It Off Lady, appeared in 1976 and Smile Please, her unfinished autobiography, was published posthumously in 1979. Jean Rhys died in 1979.
Unlock the more straightforward side of Wide Sargasso Sea with this concise and insightful summary and analysis! This engaging summary presents an analysis of Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which was inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and tells the story of the most frequently overlooked character in that novel: Bertha Mason, the infamous “madwoman in the attic”. Rhys’s novel takes the reader back to Bertha’s childhood in the Caribbean, when she was known by the name Antoinette Cosway, and explores how her status as an outcast, her unhappy marriage and the pernicious influence of rumour and slander eventually transform her from a quiet child into the deranged character from Brontë’s novel. Wide Sargasso Sea was the last novel published by Jean Rhys prior to her death in 1979, and is generally considered her masterpiece. It was also partially influenced by Rhys’s own childhood in the Caribbean. Find out everything you need to know about Wide Sargasso Sea in a fraction of the time! This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you: •A complete plot summary •Character studies •Key themes and symbols •Questions for further reflection Why choose BrightSummaries.com? Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you on your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!
Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1.0, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, course: The Victorian Afterlife, 12 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Bertha Mason in Charlotte Bront 's Jane Eyre is a character without history or personality. She is depicted as a mere beast, bent on destroying her husband. The reader knows -and dreads- her from both Jane's and Rochester's perspective. Rochester claims that Bertha's lunacy was the sole trigger for the disaster that followed, but the narration reveals hints that suggest other factors may have contributed to the destruction of their marriage. Jean Rhys proposed a past for Bertha and her husband. Her novel Wide Sargasso Sea creates a life for Bertha, on the background of which her madness is neither surprising nor inevitable. Whereas there is no doubt that she does become insane at the end of Rhys's novel, the reason for this is not her evil nature but a destructive relationship along with her transportation away from everything she ever knew into the cold of England. Wide Sargasso Sea is more than a prequel to a famous Victorian novel. It speaks out not only for Bertha but for all the other West Indian women who found themselves in similar situations.
Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Comparative Literature, grade: 2,7, University of Constance, course: British and American Studies, language: English, abstract: This work focuses on the question of identity in the novel "Wide Sargasso Sea". Antoinette, the female protagonist of Jean Rhys’ novel "Wide Sargasso Sea", is struggling with those questions of her identity all her life. As a Creole girl, who lives in Jamaica during post-colonialism, she finds herself caught between two identities not knowing where she belongs. On the one hand, there is the black community which she knows and grows up with, on the other hand the white community which her mother tries to be a part of and forces Antoinette to fit into as well. This life between two contrasting cultures forces Antoinette into a situation of confusion and doubt which makes her question not only where she belongs but if she belongs at all. It drives her into a crisis which she is not able to escape. Jean Rhys published her novel in 1966. "Wide Sargasso Sea" tells the story of Antoinette Cosway who is also, known under the name of Bertha, a character of Charlotte Brontë's novel "Jane Eyre". In "Wide Sargasso Sea" Rhys is giving Bertha/ Antoinette a story and a reason why she became mad in the first place. The story starts in her childhood and moves on to the marriage to Mr. Rochester. The last part is set when she is already imprisoned by her husband and is setting the house on fire which accords with the story told in "Jane Eyre". For the background of the novel it is important to know that Rhys herself grew up in a situation like Antoinette’s. She as well had troubles with identifying herself when she grew up. So Rhys shares part of Antoinette’s history which is probably why she was that interested in telling her story which is completely uncared-for by Brontë.
Essay from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Comparative Literature, grade: Distinction, The Open University, course: M.A. English, language: English, abstract: This essay interrogates the way in which Jean Rhys utilises a backdrop of potent gothic mechanisms and echoes the stricken anarchy of post emancipation colonial rule in 'Wide Sargasso Sea' to enhance the audience’s reading and to enable her protagonist to hold a slanted mirror to the world of 'Jane Eyre'. Rhys utilises a backdrop of potent gothic mechanisms and echoes the stricken anarchy of post emancipation colonial rule in her writing to enhance the audience’s reading and to enable her protagonist to hold a slanted mirror to the world of 'Jane Eyre'. At first, it seems incongruous that the vibrant, post colonialist backdrop of 'Wide Sargasso Sea', soaked by the ‘brazen sun’ (1) should be so richly entangled with the shadowy landscapes of the European gothic. 'Jane Eyre' is punctuated by claustrophobic English imagery to add an atmospheric sense of terror, particularly noticeable in Brontë’s description of the violent Thornfield countryside, where the landscape seems animated by some nameless, feral horror; the beck is ‘a torrent, turbid and curbless: it tore asunder the wood, and sent a raving sound through the air, often thickened with wild rain or whirling sleet; and for the forest on its banks, that showed only ranks of skeleton.’ (p.64)