![]() ![]() The second part begins to dovetail into Jane Eyre, as we hear from the point of view of Rochester and in part three we are in familiar territory as Antoinette takes over the narrative again, this time from her attic room in Thornfield Hall as she becomes increasingly unravelled and unable to distinguish between dreams and reality. The book is told in three parts, in the first part, Bertha, or Antoinette Cosway as she is before being renamed, is detailing her childhood brought up by that ‘infamous mother’. She challenges and questions it, illuminating what has gone before and reminding us that, In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys doesn’t so much as give Bertha a voice, she gives us a new way of looking at such a well-known book. A plot device rather than a character, she serves to represent the darkness in our pasts that can reignite in the present with devastating consequences. Alcoholism, adultery and insanity are blamed and Rochester explains how he was forced to marry this Creole woman and bring her back to England. ![]() ![]() Everything we learn about her comes from Mr Rochester and his brother-in-law and everything confirms the evidence of her madness. In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Bertha Mason, the archetypal madwoman in the attic does not speak. There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about. ![]()
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