Literary Fiction · DarkAntoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress in 1830s Jamaica, enters an arranged marriage with an Englishman
Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys
The story of the first Mrs. Rochester, set in the Caribbean before Jane Eyre
Antoinette Cosway is a Creole heiress from a planter family that has lost its wealth since abolition. The story begins in Jamaica shortly after the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 took effect in 1834, and she grows up there and enters an arranged marriage with an English gentleman, Mr. Rochester. Later parts are set in Dominica and England. The novel is told through several narrators and explores race, colonial history and the constraints placed on women in a patriarchal society. André Deutsch published it in October 1966.
More about this book
Who
Antoinette Cosway, Mr. Rochester, her nurse Christophine and Grace Poole.
World
Jamaica in the 1830s and 1840s, then Dominica and England.
What makes it different
It is a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, told from the perspective of Rochester's wife. It won the WH Smith Literary Award in 1967.
Feel
Hazy and haunting.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- Wide Sargasso SeaWikipedia