Wide Sargasso Sea
Tags: insanity

Plot synopsis:
The novel opens a short while after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 ended slavery in the British Empire on 1 August 1834. The protagonist Antoinette relates the story of her life from childhood to her arranged marriage to an unnamed Englishman (implied as Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre). As their marriage progresses, Antoinette, whom he renames "Bertha" and confines to a locked room, descends into madness, in part from despair at being torn from her island home in the Caribbean and subjected to an alien culture and climate.
The novel is split into three parts:
Part One takes place in Coulibri, Jamaica, and is narrated by Antoinette as a child. Since the abolition of slavery her family has become very poor, Antoinette's mother Annette must remarry to a wealthy Englishman Mr. Mason. Angry at the returning prosperity of their oppressors, freed slaves living in Coulibri burn down Anette's house killing Antoinette's younger brother who is mentally disabled. As Anette had been struggling with her mental health up until this point, the grief of losing her son drives her to worsen. Mr. Mason sends her to live with a couple who torment her until her death and Antoinette does not see her again.
Part Two alternates between the points of view of her husband and of Antoinette during their "honeymoon" excursion to Granbois, Dominica. Likely catalysts for Antoinette's downfall are the mutual suspicions that develop between the aforementioned couple, and the machinations of Daniel, who claims he is Antoinette's (illegitimate) brother; he impugns Antoinette's reputation and mental state and demands hush money. Antoinette's old nurse Christophine openly distrusts the Englishman. His apparent belief in the destructive accounts about Antoinette aggravate the situation; Rochester becomes visibly unfaithful to her and emotionally abuses her. He begins to call her Bertha rather than her real name and flaunts his affairs in front of her to cause her pain. Antoinette's increased sense of paranoia and the bitter disappointment of her failing marriage unbalance her already precarious mental and emotional state. She flees to Christophine's house, her former servant and the woman who raised her. Christophine uses obeah to try to ease Antoinette's pain, however, foreseeing danger in this reverts to alcohol to calm her distraught friend. Antoinette returns home in a drunken rage and Christophine confronts her husband. The Mr. Rochester figure does not accept Christophine's suggestions of help for his wife and decides to take her back to England.
Part Three is the shortest part of the novel; it is from the perspective of Antoinette, renamed by her husband as Bertha. She is largely confined to "the attic" of Thornfield Hall, the Rochester mansion she calls the "Great House." The story traces her relationship with Grace, the servant who is tasked with guarding her, as well as her disintegrating life with the Englishman, as he hides her from the world. He makes empty promises to come to her more but sees less of her. He ventures away to pursue relationships with other women—and eventually with the young governess, Jane Eyre. It is clear that Antoinette is not of sound mind and has little understanding of how much time she has been confined to her attic internment. She fixates on options of freedom including her Stepbrother Richard Mason who, however, will not interfere with her husband, so she attacks him with a stolen knife. Expressing her thoughts in stream of consciousness, Antoinette dreams of flames engulfing the house and her freedom from the life she has there, she believes it is her destiny to fulfill the vision. Waking from her dream she escapes her room, sets the fire, and takes her own life by jumping from the roof.

Review: Astonishingly Powerful.
Having always been an avid lover of Jane Eyre, picking it apart in Eng. Lit.
A-level was a painful and disillusioning experience, as Charlotte Bronte's startling racism is exposed, and you realise just how annoying Jane really is.
The BBC 1 adaptation of the book has helped restore my love of the story, but THIS drama was truly inspiring.
The doomed love affair was splendidly crafted.
Edward Rochester, young, moody, disregarded by his family is coerced into marrying Antoinette Cosway-Mason, a beautiful, innocent girl of creole descent.
After the initial passion, whispers of Antoinette's heritage, her promiscuity, and rumours of her mad murderous mother come to drive Rochester away from his wife.
When he finds her beating a servant (who previously was abusing her mistress' non-white, non-black background), Rochester starts to believe in her hereditary madness, and becomes repulsed with the islands, their exotic honeymoon home and his ethnic wife.
Rochester here seemed more moody than his older, chattering counterpart, but you have to remind yourself that this is the young man as he was, and it was refreshing to hear his perspective as well.
'Bertha's character by Rebecca Hall was sublime: shown with such sincerity, passion; complete, even down to the nuances of the regionally-indefinable accent.
There are so many moving lines in this short drama.
The scene where she yells 'My name is ANTOINETTE!' was gut-wrenching.
When Antoinette reveals her mother's true story, we believe the rift is healed, and trust restored.
Yet the unwise use of a love potion convinces him again of her betrayal, and his lust and vengeance lead to a powerful scene where Antoinette slumps against the door of her bedroom wherein her husband is -literally- banging the maid.Marvellous to watch, the loose camera-work and exotic locations bring together a flavour of mystery and mysticism, enhanced by the delicate melodies weaving in and out of the scenes, and the exotic, pulsating drum rhythms - I'd watch it again just to hear the soundtrack.
All in all, it ends in tragedy for both; she driven mad by hatred for him, and he overcome by regret when he realises that it was his fault.
We know he cared about her - it was clear in Jane Eyre; yet here it seems that it was just not enough.
Mrs Rochester the First: in my opinion, infinitely better..
Gripping version of this tale.
Excellently filmed in Jamaica this adaptation gripped me throughout not least because Rebecca Hall who plays Antoinette is so beautiful and caries off her part as a mixed race fairly wealthy Jamaican lady who is being used by the man she marries because she will provide him a solution to his money problems.This really is multi-layered, moving, gripping, the scenery and music add to the drama and we really see each character come to life on the screen.
The racism of white visitors and settlers in Jamaica's early days is not overlooked and neither is the immorality and it's double standards that existed among the so called better classes.This version contains a fair amount of nudity and fairly graphic sex scenes but it all seems very necessary to show the good and evil side of the characters..
Wonderful and evocative.
Jane Eyre is currently on UK TV and it was good to see this prequel, even though it was written by another, more contemporary, writer.
It managed to convey the sense of mid 1800s Jamaica wonderfully and the imagery was just superb.
Both leads were excellent and the sex scenes , while maybe not suitable for under 12s, were portrayed sympathetically and were quite erotic in placesThoroughly recommendedand Rafe Spall has the sexiest lips ever!!!!!I have never seen him in anything before but I was fascinated by his acting ability.
He managed to dominate the screen whatever scene he was in.
Rebecca Hall was also good as the doomed Antoinette.
Best drama of the year!.
Thought-provoking, multi-layered, moving, gripping, with wonderful scenery and music, and outstanding performances from Rafe Spall (son of Timothy Spall) and especially Rebecca Hall (daughter of Peter Hall, previously seen in The Camomile Lawn).
It deserves all the BAFTAs going!
Hopefully it will be released on DVD before long.Based on the classic book by Jean Rhys, who was herself a Creole, written in 1966 - apparently one of the 'best 100 books ever' on Time's listings.
It's an illuminating prequel to Jane Eyre, and a story which in my opinion is actually better than Bronte's classic.And I'm writing this as someone who can't stand Jane Eyre and wouldn't normally dream of watching this kind of film!.
Beautiful but hasty & oddly portrayed.
Running 1:24, about 15 minutes shorter than the 1993 film, this one cut out much more of the plot, apparently by design as much as necessity.
We never see Antoinette's traumatic childhood experiences or her convent-school education; she mentions them briefly later.After a lead-in scene previewing her time at Thornfield, the movie begins with Antoinette meeting Rochester for the first time.
Some of its main drawbacks are immediately apparent.
Antoinette, despite her West Indies upbringing, is portrayed as speaking with a native English accent (with occasional hints of Scots); she also comes across as more cheery and self-assured than in the book.
Meanwhile, Rochester's brusque, rapid mumbling is often hard to understand.This production focuses almost exclusively on the one main relationship, with far less effort devoted to adding island "flavor" or other atmospheric components.
Scenes of Antoinette and Rochester dominate the screenplay: their excitement at meeting and marrying each other, their passionate physical encounters, their later conflicts as Rochester grows uncertain about her background and his situation.
We see a bit less of the scheming Christophine and the seductive Amelie and only the tiniest evidence of other servants.
Daniel Cosway, bearer of secrets about Antoinette's past, appears suddenly, rather than making himself known to Rochester through letters.
It all feels a bit rushed.Labeled NR (Not Rated), the film contains a few bits of female frontal nudity, some naked bodies placed strategically so nothing much shows, and lots of shadowy groping and panting.This film features some beautiful scenery and nice production values (film angles, lighting, costumes, etc.).
Due to its questionable portrayals and abbreviated plot lines, though, I wouldn't recommend it as highly as the 1993 version..
EXCERPT > jungle fever.
To understand why Rebecca excites me, you can look my posts about Crystal Klein (#39) and Laure Sinclair (#43), Ashley Smith (#76), Jade Nile (#92).
All those babes are like Nomi Malone from « Showgirls », they are all look alike of the same girl i worked with for 3 years.
That's when beauty is really a divine mix and is out of words : maybe taken together those 5 babes seems different, but for me, they all have a distinct feature I liked in my past coworker.
With Rebecca, i would say her pout, her stance and her big smile !
It was luck that lead me to meet her : i have got a free movie ticket : i went to see « Frost vs Nixon » and Bam !
I'm sure also that Rebecca being British helped also because she has this distinct class of bearing that breaths education and politeness and for whatever reasons, i feel also very Anglo- Saxon in spite of being french !
In « VCB », « IR3 », she was definitely a great addition and delivered always great work !
Now, this Caribbean movie is so far the best she has done for me !
First good thing here is that the movie is ultra fast : 80 minutes !
Sure, as a novel adaptation, a lot has been cut but the essential is here and the pace is straight to the point : Rebecca plays with grace all her phases : the candid, the happy, the wounded and at last, the lunatic !
Her partner is also excellent because right from the start, he plays the fragile, anxious one So in this humid jungle and lonely mansion, they are easy preys and fall to their doom.And her excerpt is really good: missionary style, grasping her lover and climaxing, very very hot!!.
Unsettling and gripping: the story of the first Mrs Rochester  and the other Mr Rochester.
Like other 'dominant' cultures, or ex-imperial cultures, some fair play  that British favourite  is more fair than others.
That 'Jane Eyre' is practically a part of our national identity is an example of not so fair play.
Jean Rhys, who wrote "Wide Sargasso Sea", certainly thought so: it's clear historically that she brooded and brooded on how she might tell a different story; how she might address the imbalance of the unfair representation of Creole people as shown in 'Jane Eyre'.Rhys takes a story which the British might be said to have taken to their hearts, and turns you around and around it, and re-presents it to you, stripped of its familiar historical and cultural associations, rendered uneasy, disturbing even, by the lack of a secure, firm, knowledgeable base from which to view the new circumstances.
Edward Rochester the hero, the charming and dangerous man, the verbose, quick-witted soul-mate of poor, plain Jane Eyre: take him out of his moral context, Victorian Britain; take away his supports: his house, his past, his father; put him in a place where only lately has the abomination called slavery come to a formal end; where plants threaten to engulf you, where beauty is intoxicating, and where one's reputation swims in the hot breeze; and you create a different man.In laying bare the horror that lies underneath a great Gothic romance story, Rhys was stripping our eyes of its assorted veils.
It seems to me that in this world she creates, Rochester is Britain; and Antoinette is the West Indies: beautiful, exotic, other, misunderstood, abused, damaged, robbed, abandoned by the curiosity, idleness, greed and arrogance of a people who thought themselves superior.More fool me: I haven't read the book; so I have no idea how faithful or otherwise this adaptation is to it.
It looked good; it kept you watching; it was well cast.
Most importantly, it brings this unique perspective to vibrant life.
"Wide Sargasso Sea" serves to remind me that Antoinette's story, her background, her upbringing, her life and what happens to her, is just as much a part of my British 'heritage' as the wild moorland and English gentleman's world of Edward Rochester in 'Jane Eyre'.
What Antoinette becomes is monstrous.
Slavery was monstrous, and the wholesale rape of the Caribbean for the profit of the very few was equally monstrous.
But handsome Rochester is monstrous too: the callous appetites of the society of which he is part help make him so.This certainly makes for uneasy viewing; the altered angle is deeply unsettling, and uncovers some decidedly unpleasant truths about the attitudes of Victorian men  or of white people you might say.
You won't forget this version of events: it alters forever the place Mr Rochester occupies in literary, romantic and even social history.
But most importantly, it tells HER story.
Jane Eyre was poor, plain and little.
Antoinette was rich, beautiful, and tall.
But both were victims of other people's appetites and greed.
This drama showed this expertly..
Interesting and complicated.
Having just finished watching Jane Eyre on the Beeb, I wasn't sure how I would take to Wide Sagasso Sea. Antoinette (or Bertha) is pitied and feared and only seen once after the 'non' wedding in Jane Eyre.
This relatively short story gives us an idea of a possible life for Rochester and his first wife in Jamaica where they married, and suggests to us reasons for how she ended up where she did in Jane Eyre.
But it is hard to equate the Rochester in Jane Eyre and this younger version, and some fans of the book may not be able to take the cruel attitude shown by Edward to his wife.
However, it is not that dissimilar to some of the characteristics seen in the original Bronte novel.
The acting was superb and the idea of the 'prequal' well conceived by the original author..
Good, but not as good as Jane Eyre.
This adaptation of Jean Rhys's book is very lively, colourful and full of excellent acting.
It tells the story of Edward Rochester, before he meets Jane Eyre.
He is in the Caribbean, where he falls in love with and gets married to the beautiful young Antoinette.
But he discovers the dark secret of her past, and slowly becomes wary of her emotions.
The part of Rochester was very well acted by Rafe Spall, though not as well as Toby Stephens in the recent BBC dramatisation of Jane Eyre.
Thought some parts didn't seem completely true to Bronte's Jane Eyre, the outline of the "woman in the attic" story is here and proves a useful prologue to the main story.