As someone who never read (and still hasn’t) read Jane Eyre, I wasn’t keen on the loosely termed “prequel.” My mother had raged about Eyre, but never forgot to mention what a slough it was. She considered it a masterpiece, but always talked about the “Bertha” whom the beloved Mr. Rochester keeps locked in his attic. My resistance to reading Eyre was founded on this: how could we love a character who keeps a woman locked up in his attic?
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys delves into the life story of this “Bertha”: Antionette Cosway. She is born and raised in Jamaica, where the fundamental question is raised throughout her life: is she born “crazy” or did her surroundings make her that way? Her mother, an absent figure later in the story, is depicted as mentally unsound, and influences many of her later experiences in life. Her story revolved around this idea of mental illness, and interactions amid the communities in Coulibri and the village of Massacre. Eventually, the story ends with the one we all know: her marriage to Mr. Rochester and being brought to England for an indefinite period of time in an attic.
The juxtaposition of environments is drastic in the story, but something that is often lost in “White” stories is the realness of the land. Jamaica is the heart of the story, and while we occasionally see it as the jungle Rochester views it, as told from Cosway’s point of view, it is almost another protagonist. Pregnant with magic and seemingly otherworldly beings, it is a foreign entity to outsides, but fundamentally home to the characters of the story. England is a dream Cosway can’t quite find the edges of. And once she does get there, Rochester insists on calling her Bertha, reminiscent of the identity erasure present in colonial relationships.
The characters are undeniably real, and have flaws that are fundamental to the story and are not to be grown out of. My favorite quote, amid the horrible events that take place in the story that must be told: “If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heavens. No more damned magic. You hate me and I hate you. We’ll see who hates best. But first, first I will destroy your hatred. Now. My hate is colder, stronger, and you’ll have no hate to warm yourself. You will have nothing” (Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966).