y separately published work icon Wide Sargasso Sea (International) assertion single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1966... 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Adaptations

form y separately published work icon Wide Sargasso Sea Jan Sharp , Carole Angier , John Duigan , ( dir. John Duigan ) 1993 Australia : Laughing Kookaburra Productions , 1993 Z189846 1993 single work film/TV

Wide Sargasso Sea is based on the 1966 postcolonial novel of the same name by Dominican-born author Jean Rhys. As with many postcolonial works, it deals with the themes of racial inequality and the harshness of displacement and assimilation.

The novel is essentially a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), telling the story of the first Mrs Rochester, a white Creole heiress caught in an oppressive patriarchal society in which she belongs neither to the white Europeans nor the black Jamaicans. Antoinette is a young female landowner who marries an Englishman (newly arrived in Jamaica) to avoid losing her property. All seems perfect, love arises, and happiness is on the way, but she is hiding an old secret regarding her childhood and her mother. The secret slowly begins to erode this perfect relationship and the young lovers are swept into a menage of black magic and erotic obsession that spirals into a climax of seduction, betrayal, and ultimately revenge.

Notes

  • Wide Sargasso Sea is included in AustLit because of an Australian-written adaptation.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 19 Dec 2013 09:07:03
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X