num_pages: 156
description: 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.
language: English
title: Wide Sargasso Sea
titlecomplete: Wide Sargasso Sea
characters: Pierre Cosway, Antoinette Cosway, Annette Cosway, Christophine, Aunt Cora, Richard Mason, Mr Mason, Grace Poole, Edward Rochester, Godfrey, Tia
genres: Fiction, Historical, School, Literature, Classics, Feminism, Novels, Historical Fiction, 20th Century, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 88525
awards: awardedAt: -94665600000
name: WH Smith Literary Award, awardedAt: -126201600000
name: W.H. Heinemann Award
publisher: Penguin Books Ltd