Wide Sargasso Sea is a novel that reframes Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre in a colonial context. Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole woman, is forced into an unhappy marriage with an unnamed English gentleman implied to be Mr. Rochester, Byronic love interest of Bronte's novel. Cosway is declared mad by her husband and kept as a virtual slave in his attic after the disintegration of their relationship. In the end her mental health is ruined by her husband's abuse and she takes her own life.
Since the late 20th century, critics have considered Wide Sargasso Sea as a postcolonial response to Jane Eyre . Rhys uses multiple voices (Antoinette's, Rochester's, and Grace Poole's) to tell the story, and deeply intertwines her novel's plot with that of Jane Eyre . In addition, Rhys makes a postcolonial argument when she ties Antoinette's husband's eventual rejection of Antoinette to her Creole heritage (a rejection shown to be critical to Antoinette's descent into madness). The novel was also considered a feminist work, as it dealt with unequal power between men and women, particularly in marriage. As works of postmodern and postcolonial literature have taken a greater place in university curricula, the novel has been taught to literature students more often in recent years.
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