Woman must have spunks to live in this wicked world.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Wide Sargasso Sea picks up before Jane Eyre begins. If you're not familiar with the plot of Jane Eyre, feel free to read my plot summary from when I read that book for the blob here. I suppose telling you this plot will also spoil the plot of Jane Eyre for you, which is a real shame, because Jane Eyre is a great read. Suffice it to say that this book takes place largely in Jamaica and Dominica, with a short bit in England at the end. It provides the grounding and back story for the character of Bertha Mason (here, Antoinette Cosway) and how she came to be connected to Mr. Rochester.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

I know I didn't really go into detail there (I re-read my Jane Eyre plot summary and I was FAR more detail-oriented at that point in this project) but I think these are both interesting reads, so I don't care to spoil them for you. That being said, I may accidentally spoil the plots in this post, so if you're wanting to read either and haven't, hit the pause button and go read them now. 

I didn't love reading this book, but looking back, I have a real admiration and respect for it. 

"Fan fiction"/Extrapolated fiction
I haven't read much in the way of extrapolated fiction, or 'fan fiction', as I suppose some would call it these days. This book in particular took me back to March, and Geraldine Brooks's exploration of Mr. March's experiences and a more nuanced look at the historical moment. I didn't enjoy reading this one as much as I enjoyed reading March, but I think both are worthy and intriguing explorations of beautiful fictional spaces, and I appreciated the level of nuance that both brought to the table.

Race and confusion
That being said, a relatively big part of my confusion as a reader was tied up in race, and not understanding what race Antoinette was and how this played out in her life. Perhaps some (or all) of this confusion was intended on Jean Rhys's part. Speaking from the "I" perspective, though, I don't do terribly well with confusion, and if you don't ever spell something out for me, I can have a tendency to just plain miss it. 

Looking back on the book having finished it, navigating the racial and social structure of the islands was clearly a critical and challenging part of Antoinette's life (and perhaps Rhys's herself). 

Island life
I loved this passage about their garden, both for its intensity and for the way it reminded me of the overgrown space in The Secret Garden.

Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible - the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched. One was snaky looking, another like an octopus with long thin brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root. Twice a year the octopus orchid flowered - then not an inch of tentacle showed. It was a bell-shaped mass of white, mauve, deep purples, wonderful to see.

Mothers
The last few books I've read for the blob have had a running theme of mothers who were not, per se, hitting it out the park. In each case, the mother had a lot of things coming at her all at once, so this isn't meant to place blame. But all three (The God of Small Things, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Wide Sargasso Sea) feature narrators who have some pretty serious hardships because of their mother's absence. Here are a few lines to paint a picture of Antoinette's mom: 

On leaving the house for full days at a time as a young child and returning at night: My mother never asked me where I had been or what I had done.

"Did you have a nightmare?'
'Yes, a bad dream.'
She sighed and covered me up. 'You were making such a noise. I must go to Pierre, you've frightened him.'" oh, yes, PIERRE WAS FRIGHTENED. Let's go check on Pierre. CLEARLY You're Fine. 

124 was spiteful.

The house was sad when she had gone.

Lines like this reminded me of Beloved, and the personification of the home itself. 

First impressions
While the islands are packed with beauty and vital intensity for Antoinette, Rochester is immediately put off by them. I loved the contrast of their experiences. 

Everything is too much, I felt as I rode wearily after her. Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near.

Rebecca and Manderley
Just as the person in the attic is an ongoing mystery in Jane Eyre, the islands act as a source of mystery. The estate's connection to the mystery reminded me of Manderley in Rebecca. I loved these lines from Rochester:

It was a beautiful place - wild, untouched, above all untouched, with an alien, disturbing, secret loveliness. And it kept its secret. I'd find myself thinking, 'What I see is nothing - I want what it hides - that is not nothing.

Is loneliness a fancy or a feeling?
I loved this exchange between Antoinette and Rochester:

Rochester: 'So this place is as lonely as it feels?' I asked her.
Antoinette: 'Yes, it is lonely. Are you happy here?'
Rochester: 'Who wouldn't be?'
Antoinette: 'I love it more than anywhere in the world. As if it were a person. More than a person.'
Rochester: 'But you don't know the world,' I teased her.

and this line from Antoinette later, which reminded me of the way I feel some times given the volatile state of the world (and occasionally my mind): 
"I am not used to happiness. It makes me afraid."

Bertha is not my name. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name. 
At some point, Rochester starts calling Antoinette Bertha, even though it is absolutely not her name. I was already starting to hate Rochester in this version (which bummed me out a little because I like him in JE) but when he started doing that, I was like, is he gaslighting her? I would go a little bonkers, too, if people just started calling me a different name all the time. Can you imagine if you woke up tomorrow and people were just like, hey, I'm gonna call you a different name now. That's happening.

It also reminded me of this line in 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings': 

Every person I knew had a hellish horror of being 'called out of his name'. It was a dangerous practice to call a Negro anything that could be loosely construed as insulting because of the centuries of their having been called n***ers, jigs, dinges, blackbirds, crows, boots and spooks.

and then this one: 

Maya, on a woman named Mrs. Cullinan calling her the wrong name repeatedly, then renaming her "Mary" to suit her: I decided I wouldn't pee on her if her heart was on fire. 

Too bad Maya and Antoinette couldn't team up against Mr. Rochester. I'd like to see that showdown. 

Does adulting mean realizing our Prince Charmings are problematic?
The Rochester in this book adds some nuance (and some real ugliness) to Mr. Rochester's character. Obviously, this is one version of the back story, and perhaps not even a little the way Charlotte Brontë would have imagined it. That being said, I think the more I read, the more okay I become with nuance and complicated characters. Maybe it's just a growing up thing. ;) Here are some lines that capture Mr. Rochester.

No more damned magic. You hate me and I hate you. We'll see who hates best. 

Christophine, to Rochester: You think you fool me? You want her money but you don't want her.

Tied to a lunatic for life.

I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it. 

Referents and Reverberations
While this book reminded me of many other novels, and had a clear echo in Jane Eyre, the two most poignant connections I felt as a reader were with...

• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

It was Christophine who bought our food from the village and persuaded some girls to help her sweep and wash clothes. We would have died, my mother always said, if she had not stayed with us. this line from WSS reminded me of Merricat and Constance. I read this book for one of my book bingos, and I will have to blob on it at some point, because it was soooooooo goood.

• À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust

'I was never sad in the morning, and every day was a fresh day for me.' this line reminded me of this one from the second volume of Proust - "I was only unhappy for one day at a time."

New terms
glacis - a gently sloping bank, in particular one that slopes down from a fort, exposing attackers to the defenders' missiles

octopus orchid - an epiphytic, sympodial New World orchid native to Central America, the West Indies, Colombia, Venezuela, and southern Florida

obeah - Obeah (sometimes spelled Obi, Obeah, Obeya, or Obia) is a system of spiritual and healing practices developed among enslaved West Africans in the West Indies. Obeah is difficult to define, as it is not a single, unified set of practices; the word "Obeah" was historically not often used to describe one's own practices.

Lines I Liked

• Money is good but no money can pay for a crazy wife in your bed.

• Have spunks and do battle for yourself.

• I feel that this place is my enemy and on your side.

• What am I doing in this place and who am I?

I'm off to a brief stay in green Gretna, and moving onwards to the fictional land of split personalities. Happy happy holidays and have a merry new year if I don't blob before then!