Comments on: "Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys

By: Jane Eyre and mental illness « Law and Conversation

Jane Eyre and mental illness « Law and Conversation — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 05:09:27 +0000

[...] both articles indicate, Jean Rhys wrote Bertha Rochester’s backstory in ”The Wide Sargasso Sea,” which won the Cheltenham Booker Prize in 2006 for the year 1966. Rhys’s sympathetic [...]

By: Laura McDonald

Laura McDonald — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:04:38 +0000

Hi Reem, thanks for your comments. Sensuality is definitely a large part of the novel. It's in the writing style, in the landscape, it hums through most of the dialog, particularly with Rochester. Perhaps he was intoxicated with it, and it drove him mad as well as Antoinette. Faced with the prospect of bringing such a sensual (read: amoral) creature back to England, he would rather lock her in the attic than expose her to society. As least that's the way I see it!

By: Reem

Reem — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:16:27 +0000

Thank you for posting your thoughts on the novel. I just want to ask about the aspect of sensuality. Do you think that in relevance to the setting it is used to describe the filthiness of Antoinette. I mean 'filthy' in the amoral and unworthy of Rochester sense. I don't understand the perception of sensuality in the novel: the wildlife is sexy, in the morning Antoinette is dull but at night she is sexy. That is essentially the bond between her and her husband...her sensuality dying in her way not his. Sorry i think it was more of a discussion starter and not a question.