Wide Sargasso Sea

This is the story of “Bertha”, Rochester's wife in [b:Jane Eyre 10210 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1557343311l/10210.SY75.jpg 2977639]. It helps to have read Jane Eyre first.This is painful. Horribly painful. I have to say that I didn't like Rochester much in Jane Eyre. Now I hate him. I feel sort of bad for Jane, but I believe she is good enough to stand up to that POS.

It was more of a standalone piece when solely looking into the lines of this book. It was purely about colonialism, racism, and perhaps even about feminism in the early days, being shaded as madness. But the whole thing is flat, and the language is just so, making the narrative seemingly so bland and lack of colour in the sense which not much sentiment could be aroused, as so did the independency of women simmered down under the light of the societal background. This makes the book completely unpalpable to me.

Jeg skjønner når jeg leser det at det er viktig og leseverdig litteratur, men noen ganger står leseren i veien for litteraturen, noe som er tilfelle denne gangen. Uansett: En Goodreads-stjerne sier ikke noe om boken, bare om dens møte med meg som sitter på den andre siden, og denne gangen var møtet bare helt greit.

I don't really know what to make of this novel, it certainly wasn't what I expected. The novel is extremely disjointed and there isn't much character development. The motivations of the characters aren't explained very well and I don't know whether if I gave it a re-read and took some more time to consider it, I would comprehend the novels structure and content better. I liked the exploration of Jamaican culture and race in the 1830s. I also liked the exploration of madness and the potential hereditary link of mental illness in the Antionettes. I was fascinated by the exploration of religion and voodoo within this novel. However this story has left me rather conflicted and puzzled. I had to re-read many passages to understand which character voice was coming through. The novel doesn't overtly present itself and as a reader, a lot of reflective musing is required to get the most out of this small but deeply layered story. Unfortunately only a 3 star / 3.5 star read!

I always had a feeling that I am missing something in Jane Eyre and I have never liked reading Jane Eyre that much JANE EYRE SPOILER BEWARE mostly Rochester and Jane's relationship, along with the lack of clarification of Bertha's actual circumstances but reading this made many things super clear not to mention the racial dynamics among former slave traders and recently liberated coloured people and how Racism and slavery made both of these miserable is different sense
3.75/5

The wild woman in the attic is given her story. The prose is lyrical, the narrative weaves in and out, unexpected swaps of POV. All characters are mysterious and problematic. You don't quite know who to root for, which is interesting. I liked her voice when she tells us about her upbringing, I liked how the couple is brought together, finds this one moment of sensuality in the mix of all the chaos. The second half lost me a bit, made it hard to follow the character reasoning as madness takes over.

Initially, I had my typical “this is going to be classic crap that I wade through and get nothing out of,” concern, but about 1/3 of the way through I started to really enjoy this novel. The beautiful estate setting in the Caribbean, the protagonist's mental unloosening and Rhys' amazing language skills make me think this may be my new favorite book.

Oh, and I have not read Jane Eyre and don't feel like I missed anything in this story because of it.

I don't know why, but I just wasn't a fan of this book at all. I might have just had high expectations because I recently read Voyage in the Dark and loved it. I found the narrative in this book to be a bit hard for me to follow, and I often got characters confused with each other. I also found a lot of the descriptions confusing, as in I had trouble tracking what was happening, to who, and where we were. It's by no means a terrible book, I just don't think it's for me.

Maybe it's because I never read Jane Eyre or maybe it's because I'm young and lose interest quick or maybe I don't have amazing reading comprehension but this story was so impossible to follow. I had to read spark notes alongside the book to understand what was happening. I only understood what they were saying and doing when it was spelled out for me. So many things happened so quickly and I wasn't familiar with anything that was referenced. The writing style, language, and characterization were all wonderful! I enjoyed it solely for these reasons.

Picked this up for Read Harder when it was suggested for the category “a book of colonial or post-colonial literature,” because I just read Jane Eyre for the first time and it's a prequel of sorts to Jane Eyre from the perspective of the crazy wife in the attic.

It was interesting in that it was kind of both colonial and post-colonial at the same time: Antoinette's family is white Creole, living on an island near Jamaica, and clearly had previously been slaveholders (or the children/grandchildren of slaveholders); slavery was outlawed on the island and the family had since been treated as outcasts, but then the Masons and Rochester (who is never named in the book) are Englishmen coming to the West Indies to marry the women and make what riches they can from their wives/the island.

The scenery was described beautifully and vividly, and the relationship painted as if it could have been something good, that was turned sour by cultural differences that he wasn't willing to try to understand. He allowed the gossip of the islanders to determine not only his own fate, but his wife's, of whose life afterwards is depicted only briefly, and we know the rest. A sad, good book.