Written over the course of twenty-one years and published in 1966, Wide Sargasso Sea, based on Charlotte Bront?’s Jane Eyre, takes place in Jamaica and Dominica in 1839–45. Textual notes illuminate the novel’s historical background, regional references, and the non-translated Creole and French phrases necessary to fully understand this powerful story.
Backgrounds includes a wealth of material on the novel’s long evolution, it connections to Jane Eyre, and Rhys’s biographical impressions of growing up in Dominica.
List of Illustrations
Preface
The Text of Wide Sargasso Sea
Introduction by Francis Wyndham
Wide Sargasso Sea
Backgrounds
Rachel L. Carson·[The Sargasso Sea]
Charlotte Bront?·From Jane Eyre
[Jane Eyre and Bertha]
[The Ruined Wedding]
[Rochester’s Story]
[Fire at Thornfield Hall]
Jean Rhys·Selected Letters
To Peggy Kirkaldy (October 4, 1949)
To Maryvonne Moerman (November 9, 1949)
To Peggy Kirkaldy (December 6, 1949)
To Morchard Bishop (January 27, 1953)
To Francis Wyndham (March 29, 1958)
To Selma Vaz Dias (April 9, 1959)
To Francis Wyndham (September 27, 1959)
To Diana Athill (August 16, 1963)
To Francis Wyndham (March 7, 1964)
To Francis Wyndham (April 14, 1964)
To Francis Wyndham (1964)
To Diana Athill (1966)
To Diana Athill (March 9, 1966)
The Bible is Modern
From Smile Please
Books
Meta
My Mother
Black/White
Facts of Life
From "Black Exercise Book"
Criticism
Derek Walcott·Jean Rhys
Mary Lou Emery·Modernist Crosscurrents
Michael Thorpe·"The Other Side": Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre
Kenneth Ramchand·[The Place of Jean Rhys and Wide Sargasso Sea]
Wilson Harris·Carnival of Psyche: Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea
Sandra Drake·Race and Caribbean Culture as Thematics of
Liberation in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea
Lee Erwin·[History and Narrative in Wide Sargasso Sea]
Caroline Rody·Burning Down the House: The Revisionary Paradigm of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea
Mona Fayad·Unquiet Ghosts: The Struggle for Representation in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak·[Wide Sargasso Sea and a Critique of Imperialism]
Benita Parry·[Two Native Voices in Wide Sargasso Sea]
Judith Raiskin·England: Dream and Nightmare
Jean Rhys: A Chronology
Selected Bibliography
