#179 in Historical fiction
Wide Sargasso Sea
- 189
- Pages
- about 3.5 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Wide Sargasso Sea” gives the “madwoman in the attic” of “Jane Eyre” a past and a voice of her own. Jean Rhys sets her short, dark novel in Jamaica in the 1830s and 1840s and turns Brontë’s Bertha Mason into Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress. Some readers find it hard to get on with, and some come to it not knowing of that connection. It gives most to anyone who remembers Brontë’s novel.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 postmodern novel by Dominican-British author Jean Rhys. Set in Jamaica in the 1830s–1840s, the novel is a postcolonial and feminist prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), detailing the background to Edward Rochester's marriage from the point of view of his wife Bertha Mason, Brontë's "madwoman in the attic", reimagined by Rhys as a Creole heiress named Antoinette Cosway.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.0 across 215 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 59% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Historical fiction average of 8.0. That is how 7.4 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.0 | 17 | 8% |
| Hardcover | 6.9 | 198 | 92% |
Frequently asked
How long is Wide Sargasso Sea?
It has 189 pages — shorter than 95% of the ranked books in Historical fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Historical fiction — with scores between 7.5 and 8.0, closest to this book.
