Not your typical period drama, Wide Sargasso Sea is hardly the happily ever after dreamt by readers for their oh-so-beloved heroine. There is – unfortunately – no reformed Mr. Darcy sharing his ten thousand a year, no such southern belle to acknowledge tomorrow is indeed another day, nor, in fact, any honourable stands to injustice like in the days of Jean Valjean. Haunting yet devilishly infatuating, Jean Rhys’ novel is a beautifully sculpted coming of age tale with a twist of bittersweet misconception at its very worst. Focusing the lens on one of the much less favoured characters from Charlotte Bronte’s classic, Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea maintains the very same gothic grandeur which brings out the darker side of human nature – malice and betrayal.

From exotic colonial Jamaica to early Victorian England, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway travels the journey from isolated child to imprisoned madwoman. Not of Jamaican but Martinican descent, Antoinette and her mother Annette are scorned by other women, both for their beauty and origin. Married off to a nameless English gentleman upon his visit to Jamaica, Antoinette’s character is severely judged by her new husband, who feeling alienated by the coloured majority, questions his decision to marry her. He thus becomes tangled in a web of fear over losing his status as an Englishman, seeing everything through the coloniser’s perspective. The famous Mr. Rochester, as he is later revealed to be, struggles with paranoia and attempts to manipulate Antoinette, addressing her with a new name – Bertha Mason.

Narrated from both Antoinette and Rochester’s point of view, the story is depicted with a sincere sense of isolation from both characters, portraying both as hero and villain at different points throughout the novel. Other famous appearances are made by none other than Mr. Mason (known as Richard Mason), and Bertha’s drink loving nurse, the spinster Grace Poole.

With much foreshadowing, Jean Rhys successfully captures the manipulative forces at work within the heart of both colonial Caribbean society and Thornfield Manor, giving Wide Sargasso Sea the convincing air of a well established prequel. Readers with a taste for the poignant yet sinister are rewarded with toe curling pleasure as they learn why and how indeed, candle in hand and Thornfield alight, Bertha Mason turns mad.

Buy Wide Sargasso Sea online here.