Jane Eyre Research Paper

In 1966 author Jean Rhys published her novel Wide Sargasso Sea, a paraquel to the events depicted in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, which was published 1847, some one-hundred nineteen years prior. Rhys gave an in-depth description of the life of Edward Rochester’s first wife, Antoinette “Bertha” Cosway, a white Creole woman. Little is known about the character in Jane Eyre other than the fact that she is stark, raving mad, comes from a family plagued by lunacy, and has been confined to life in the third floor of Thornfield Hall. In Jane Eyre, Bertha’s most noticeable contribution to the story is the part she plays in thwarting Rochester’s marriage to Jane, and her apparent suicide after setting the estate on fire. Other than this, her character

Moreover, Rhys didn’t fill in the gap that exists in Jane Eyre, she used her novel to speak about Creole life in the West Indies, something rarely ever discussed in literature. Her accounts draw inspiration from her own experiences, herself being a white Creole who grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica in the early 20th century. In addition, Rhys included her own commentary on the negative effects of colonialism in the West Indies, the racial issues that were prevalent in the 19th century, and men’s dominance and women's dependence in marriages at the time. All this is covered by Rhys throughout Antoinette’s painful, yet thought provoking transformation from an independent woman, as vibrant as her Caribbean culture, to the “madwoman in the attic.” English critic Walter Allen published an unfavorable review of Wide Sargasso Sea in The New York Times Book Review in 1967, in which he argued that Rhys, for all of her effort to re-create the character Bertha Mason, did not stray far enough from Bronte’s