Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea: A Postcolonial Rewriting of Brontës Jane Eyre Without doubt, the Victorian classic Jane Eyre has generated a number of intertexual references. Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea (WSS) has been regarded as the most famous rewriting of Jane Eyre and a paradigm of postcolonial literature. The novel, a prequel to Brontës Jane Eyre, tells the story of Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress living in Jamaica. In remembering the representation of the character Bertha Mason/Rochester in Brontës Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys as a postcolonial writer, re-writes Brontës account of Bertha, Rochesters first wife first, the madwoman in the attic who is denied to have a voice. Thus, Rhys makes use of various narrative devices and techniques, not only to capture the readers attention, but also in order to present a different version of Bertha. The inquiry the present volume seeks to undertake is not new in the field of postcolonial studies but rather aims at throwing more light on the strategies Rhys uses to rewrite the Victorian classic Jane Eyre.