Secret Life of Books5 Jul 2024

Wide Sargasso Sea 2: bohemianism, madess and celebrity back in England

It should have taken a year. It took thirty. In writing Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys endured several mental breakdowns, was arrested numerous times for verbal and physical violence, served time in prison, lost two husbands and suffered a heart attack. All the time, she came to increasingly identify with her heroine, making the inevitable tragedy of the ending all the harder to write. With the aid of ‘pep’ pills (probably amphetamines), supplied by a local vicar, she finally completed the novel in 1966 at the age of 76. It went on to become one of the most revered novels of the 20th Century.

Join Sophie and Jonty as they look at Jean Rhys’ agonising but ultimately heroic road to greatness and examine the ways in which she subverts Jane Eyre, taking the literally dehumanised mad woman in the attic and turning her into one of the most psychologically complex characters in 20th century literature.

Further reading: Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, with introduction by Edwidge Denticat, (Norton, 2016); Miranda Seymour’s I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys (Norton, 2022) is a superb piece of detective work, excavating the forgotten years of Rhys’ life as well as those which are recorded. For landmark writing about race, empire and the novel see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism,” (Critical Inquiry, vol. 12, no. 1, 1985, pp. 243–61) and Edward Said Orientalism (Vintage, first pub. 1979).

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