Knowra Wide Sargasso Sea Wide Sargasso Sea A 1966 novel by Jean Rhys that reimagines Bertha Mason’s life before her imprisonment in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, centering Caribbean colonialism, race, and identity.
Jane Eyre : A 1847 novel by Charlotte Brontë about an orphan who becomes governess at Thornfield Hall. Rhys rewrites the history Jane Eyre leaves behind its imprisoned wife.
Jean Rhys : A Dominican-born British novelist whose works often portray displacement, gender, and colonial legacies. Her life in the Caribbean and Europe informed the novel’s divided cultural world.
Christophine : A Martinican servant and healer who lives with Antoinette and speaks against her husband’s control. Her resistance offers a counterpoint to Antoinette’s dependence and Rochester’s authority.
Literary adaptation : The transformation of a literary work into a new version, medium, or cultural context. Rhys adapts Jane Eyre by expanding a marginal character’s history into a separate novel.
Unreliable narrator : A narrator whose account cannot be accepted as fully accurate or complete. Conflicting perspectives make Antoinette’s identity and history contested.
Charlotte Brontë : An English novelist best known for Jane Eyre, published in 1847. Her depiction of Bertha supplied the character Rhys recast as Antoinette.
Annette Cosway : Antoinette’s mother, a French Creole woman whose second marriage and isolation precede her breakdown. Her fate foreshadows the vulnerability Antoinette faces within colonial and patriarchal structures.
Feminist literary criticism : The study of literature through questions of gender, power, and the representation of women. The novel challenges how Jane Eyre confines a woman’s story to madness and obstruction.
Postcolonial literature : Writing that examines the cultural, political, and social legacies of colonialism. The novel challenges the imperial viewpoint embedded in its Victorian source.
Victorian literature : Literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria, from 1837 to 1901. Rhys revises the conventions and imperial assumptions of Jane Eyre’s literary era.
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