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Wide Sargasso Sea is the story of Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress who grew up in the West Indies on a decaying plantation. When she comes of age she is married off to an Englishman, and he takes her away from the only place she has known--a house with a garden where "the paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched."
The novel is Rhys's answer to Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontė's book had long haunted her, mostly for the story it did not tell--that of the madwoman in the attic, Rochester's terrible secret. Antoinette is Rhys's imagining of that locked-up woman, who in the end burns up the house and herself. Wide Sargasso Sea follows her voyage into the dark, both from her point of view and Rochester's. It is a voyage charged with soul-destroying lust. "I watched her die many times," observes the new husband. "In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty."
Rhys struggled over the book, enduring rejections and revisions, wrestling to bring this ruined woman out of the ashes. The slim volume was finally published when she was 70 years old. The critical adulation that followed, she said, "has come too late." Jean Rhys died a few years later, but with Wide Sargasso Sea she left behind a great legacy, a work of strange, scary loveliness. There has not been a book like it before or since. Believe me, I've been searching. --Emily White
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Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 26410582-n
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. A gorgeous clothbound edition of Jean Rhys's great masterpiece of desire and madness in the CaribbeanJean Rhys's late masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea was inspired by Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s. Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent sensuality and beauty. After their marriage the rumours begin, poisoning her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is driven towards madness. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780241281901
Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 370425526
Book Description hardback. Condition: New. Language: ENG. Seller Inventory # 9780241281901
Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. BRAND NEW ** SUPER FAST SHIPPING FROM UK WAREHOUSE ** 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE. Seller Inventory # 9780241281901-GDR
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9780241281901
Book Description Hardback. Condition: New. New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days. Seller Inventory # B9780241281901
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Book Description Condition: New. Series: Penguin Clothbound Classics. Num Pages: 192 pages. BIC Classification: FA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 138 x 226 x 20. Weight in Grams: 304. . 2016. Hardcover. . . . . Seller Inventory # V9780241281901
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 192 pages. 7.87x5.28x0.79 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __0241281903