NovellaContemporary · 1966Study guide · no full textSteady

Wide Sargasso Sea

A prequel that changes the book it answers. Rhys writes the Caribbean as heat, money and resentment, and makes madness look like a decision other people made for her.

Empire Gender Identity Madness

Study guide

This work is still in copyright, so there is no full text on the page. What you get instead: the context, the cast, the ideas and the themes — enough to read it well, and to know exactly what to watch for in the first thirty pages.

The cast, in the Character Atlas →Literary devices →Where it sits in time →

Go deeper

Identity — how other works handle it →Madness — how other works handle it →

The castFull atlas →

Antoinette Cosway

Creole heiress, alone in the world

Wide Sargasso Sea · Jean Rhys

Wants: To be wanted without being bought, and to keep the island she belongs to.
Undone by: She loves where the transaction is, before the terms are clear.

Christophine

Servant, and the island's authority

Wide Sargasso Sea · Jean Rhys

Wants: To keep the child she raised from being destroyed by people who know nothing.
Undone by: She is not heeded in the one moment when it matters.

Now read the first page with all of this in mind.

The notes here are the map; the book is the journey.

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