Premium Content From Madwoman to Rebel: Jean Rhys’s Reinvention of Bertha Mason in Wide Sargasso Sea
By Lindsey Warren - May 11, 2007
Jean Rhys’ 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea rewrites Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre from a modern, postcolonial standpoint. Wide Sargasso Sea tells the story of Brontë’s “madwoman in the attic” from Bertha Mason’s own point of view. In Jane Eyre, Bertha is “hidden away,” both in terms of her physical place in the attic and also in terms of her own…
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