Reviews with content warning for Racial slurs - Wide Sargasso Sea

I really wanted to love this book. It was recommended to me at school but I hadn't read Jane Eyre at the time and wasn't really up for it. Once I had read Jane Eyre and realised what an amazing book it is I was really excited to give this book a go. I am glad I read it but I'm not going to recommend it to others.

The whole book felt very dream like and it was hard to keep up with what was happening when, what was true and what was madness. I appreciate this is probably the point, a fair amount of the book is from Antoinette's perspective and you have to question what is real, but I actually found Mr Rochester's part more the more confusing of the two perspectives.

My main take aways from this book are 1) that I came to really hate Mr Rochester for being such an awful person who was so easily swayed by gossip and racism, to the point I had to disconnect him from Jane's love because there is no way she could love such an awful man. 2) it is really hard as a modern reader to read anything from the perspective of a white ex-slave owner, even when a more modern writer is trying to show how awful those attitudes were. It makes it hard to love a character who uses the N word and believes that black people are fundamentally lesser to white people, even when this is historically appropriate for a person with this background in this time period.

Overall it is an interesting book, but I enjoyed Part 1 much better than the rest.

Content Warnings

cyberhavok's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Content Warnings

tinyjude's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes

3.75

I was eagerly waiting the moment I could read this classical rendition of a forgotten and mistreated character such as Antoinetta/Bertha from Jane Eyre, as I loved the original book back then, when I first picked it up.

In some senses, it does a great job at giving depth both to Bertha's character and background, and Mr. Rochester's feelings about her (which I did not expect to find here), as well as the racial complexities in Jamaica after the end of "legal slave ownership" (we know it was still being enacted nonetheless), colourism, women's autonomy and the treatment of (women's) madness and how these poor women are driven into these unstable mental states by their environments, and mostly their husbands.

But it was also confusing in a lot of instances and felt short when depicting more the nuance of the black characters' feelings towards their previous slave owners. I wish we had focused more on them in general, than the white Creole perspective, but I understand Rhys' background and how that shaped this re-imagining of Bertha's story. Still, I think it should be an essential read after Jane Eyre because it adds more depth to her character and a more complex post-colonial context than the original book did.

Content Warnings

booksillremember's review

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dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Infuriating and captivating at the same time.

Content Warnings

sarasreading's review

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challenging dark mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Read this in two quick sittings. The atmosphere was gorgeous and haunting, which I enjoyed. So much of what was happening was purposefully confusing, so it was a little hard to follow at times. Also I'm quite ill, so that might be partly me.

This prequel take on colonialism and feminism was definitely interesting, and packed a lot into a short book. There were so many metaphors and details that held deeper meaning. It's a little rough to read though, as there is a lot of racism, racial slurs, violence and powerlessness. An interesting and eerie take on the story of Bertha.

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