The story has at least one interesting name for a place and another for a character. 103) Much later she states, 'It was then that I saw her-the ghost. He has found out it was my mother's name.' (p. 29) Antoinette's husband calls her Bertha. Mason's son by his first marriage was at school in Barbados. 101) This reminds me of the song by Silly Wizard that goes, 'Golden, golden is her hair like the morning sun o'er fields of corn.' Though her husband isn't named, Antoinette's name and some of the others' names relate the story back to Jane Eyre.

Antoinette narrates, 'There are fields of corn like sugar-cane fields, but gold color and not so tall.' (p. Last year I read The Book Thief in which the Nazis burned books. The introduction mentions a short story by Rhys, 'The Day they Burned the Books' that was published in The London Magazine. There are only a few relatable references, though I'll describe a major one (actually multiple ones) later in the review. There was only one word that I did not know in the sentence 'Her hair was plaited.' (p. The writing is atmospheric, dark, often emotionally intense, sad, and hard to follow. Her father was a Welsh doctor, and her mother was a Creole-that is, a white West Indian.' According to the book's introduction, 'Jean Rhys was born Roseau, Dominica, one of the Windward Islands, and spent her childhood there. Slaves were freed in the British Empire in 1833 that isn't long before the book begins.

She is caught between the Europeans and the blacks on the islands. Antoinette is Creole meaning a Caucasian who is descended from longtime settlers of the Caribbean Islands.

Antoinette narrates the last part though some of it and part two are written in letters from other characters. Most of the second is narrated by her unnamed husband though it isn't hard to guess who he is from Jane Eyre. It has no chapters but is split into three parts. It is much darker than Jane Eyre and written in more modern language. The book is not a pastiche of Charlotte Brontë. It gives the backstory of Bertha Antoinette Cosway Mason, episodes of her childhood and young adulthood in the Caribbean Islands, primarily Jamaica, though Martinique and the Windward Islands are also mentioned. It is a prequel to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë that we discussed in July. For our discussion on Wednesday, August 12, 2015, the Classics Book Club selected Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

Wide sargasso sea bertha mason