The heart wants what the heart wants, and our hearts want books.

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Darling readers, do you ever read a book and really want the other perspective?  We do sometimes, like last week, and this week, with our Jane in January titles.  But also, we love an alternative Point of View chapter, like when Sarah J. Maas throws us a couple in her A Court of Thorns and Roses series.  They pop up just when you need them, but also, say it with me here: “I want more!”  That’s just one of many reasons I’m excited for A Court of Silver Flames in less than a month, but also it’s because I’m looking forward to more Prythian, and to chatting all about it with you on Friday, February 12 at 7:30 p.m. CST.  Will we finish the books?  Who knows, but we’ve read them so many times, it’s fine!  Also, I’ll only tell at virtual book club, so sign up here to find out!  

Shocker of shockers, I first heard about Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea on What Should I Read Next Podcast with Anne Bogel a couple of years ago, and consumed this complex text about a month later.  At that time, here’s what I had to say about the text: 

This was not what I expected, but it’s what I should have expected. The writing is gorgeous, the backstory of Bertha Mason is really interesting. I liked learning her origin story as well as how she and Mr. Rochester meet. While I feel for her, I don’t like her. I don’t like him and how he’s portrayed in this story. I’m glad I read it, but I won’t be reading it again any time soon.

Fast forward two years and this 1966 novel needed to be a part of Jane in January and I am not sorry I reread it.  Reading Rhys’s tale far removed from Jane Eyre was a very different experience than reading it with such close proximity to the original (and the different / more thorough bit of backstory of Mr. Rochester).  

Independently, Wide Sargasso Sea is the story of a white girl whose family was financially ruined when slavery ended in Jamaica.  We get a glimpse of her as a child, then her mother remarries (as her father dies before the story opens), drama ensues, and tragedy erupts, and she’s sent to convalesce with her aunt in Spanish Town and then attend school at a convent nearby.  Then we shift ahead to her mother passing and her step father bringing her out of the school to marry and the story focuses on her honeymoon.  Finally, we get a brief glimpse of her life as an invalid in England before her tragic end.  If you know the story, you can follow along and see the pieces.  It’s tragic, complicated, heartbreaking, and so beautifully written it makes me want to consume Rhys’s backlist, if only I could access it easily.  Reader, I might purchase her backlist, in dead tree form.  That’s how much I enjoyed the writing of this book.  

But wait, there’s more.  The man Antionette (who we know as Bertha) marries is never named in the book, never!  I adore that Rhys flipped the script in Wide Sargasso Sea and made it all about Antoinette and her trauma-filled life that we see glimpses of in Jane Eyre. I also adore that we have an unnamed male character (in contrast to the Bible’s myriad of unnamed female characters, thank you Jamie B. Golden).  It’s not about him, and Rhys is very clear on that point.  Although he does narrate most of the honeymoon, he’s really just along for the ride and figuring out all that he doesn’t know, all that he’s been tricked into being intimately connected to for as long as they both shall live.  

If we’re holding up Wide Sargasso Sea critically to Jane Eyre (the way it seems Sarah Shoemaker held up Mr. Rochester), it isn’t a smooth fit.  In Wide Sargasso Sea, Mr. Mason is Bertha Antoinette Cosway’s step father, not biological father, and the time frame is very different, with the main part of the story taking place around 1839, five years after the end of slavery in Jamacia.  According to the footnotes of the Norton Critical Edition of Wide Sargasso Sea, Jane Eyre is “set” in 1818 or 1819 and tells of what happened from 1798 to 1808.  Regardless, Jane Eyre is definitely looking back from beyond the story to the beginning, and as it was published in 1847.  Even if Jane Eyre was narrated in 1845, at the end we are years past the fire, which was, if I recall correctly, 15 years after Rochester returned from Jamaica, so Rhys’s timeline doesn’t work, but it’s really interesting to consider.  

Rhys has other things to tackle in Wide Sargasso Sea than fitting a nice, neat backstory for Mr. Rochester.  By focusing on Antoinette, she highlights the tragic background of how Bronte’s Bertha came to be so…mad, which is at the hands of her tragic childhood.  In Rhys’s tale, her father was dead, her mother was crushed by grief and the care of a sickly child, unable (or unwilling) to be bothered with Antionette’s wellbeing.  We also get a glimpse of the woman who took care of Antoinette and her family when her mother could not – a black woman – a former slave, who practices obeah-voodoo magic, and does what she can for Antoinette when she doesn’t have to any more, and is a great influence on her.  Her stepfather, Mr. Mason comes in to highlight the differences between the slave owning planters and the colonists seeking their fortunes amongst the ruined estates.  There is also the opportunity in the text for the reader to learn of Antoinette’s half siblings, those her father had with women other than his wives who are now part of the “colored” community (read of mixed ethinic heritage).  We also see (if we’ve recently read Jane Eyre) Rhys’s perception of the contrast between Jamaican and English servants, as “he” says “However much I paid Jamaican servants I would never buy discretion.”  It is clear that Rochester does not understand Jamaica and much that goes on there in Rhys’s view.  

As she was born on Dominica in 1890, the daughter of a woman whose grandfather had been a slave holder, Rhys has feelings about the 1830s and how the events of that decade shaped her family and influenced her life.  I want to recognize the privilege she has in going to England to school, living through two World Wars, and being able to be a writer, when many of those affected by the rapid changes in the 1830s, particularly the former slaves and their descendents had/have an impossible path ahead, filled with more injustice.  I also want to acknowledge that the pieces of what Rhys writes about in Wide Sargasso Sea are things that, even if one adjusts for the timeline differences, Bronte didn’t tackle in Jane Eyre.  There was no mention of slavery in the new world, during Rochester’s time in Jamaica, or how it added to his riches.  While this is surely not the rest of the story, it’s another interesting perspective that enriches the tale and offers a new lens through which to look at Rochester and his relationship with Bertha.  I don’t like him any more than I did last week, and I still wonder, reader, why did she marry him?

What titles have you read that enriched your perspective but still left you with many unanswered questions?

~Nikki

Jean Rhys was born in 1890 in Roseau on the island of Dominica in the Caribbean as Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams. At sixteen she was sent to her aunt in England to finish her education. After her father died she became mistress (yes, demimondaine, a kept woman) to a wealthy stockbroker in London which is when she also started writing. During WWI she served as a volunteer in a soldier’s canteen and after the war at a pension office. She had three husbands, the first she divorced after 10 years of marriage and two children, the other two left her a widow. Her debut short story collection The Left Bank and Other Stories was published in 1927 before her divorce, under the patronage of English writer and editor Ford Madox Ford. Rhys’ next works are her novels, Quartet (1928), After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (1931), Voyage in the Dark (1934) and Good Morning, Midnight (1939). Once WWII began, she retired from writing and public life until she was sought out in 1949 because Good Morning, Midnight was wanted for a radio show. The encouragement and respect of her earlier works inspired Rhys to begin writing again which led to 1966’s Wide Sargasso Sea and it’s winning the W.H. Smith Literary Award in 1967. Two more collections of short stories were published before her death in 1979. In 2003 Polly Teale’s book and play After Mrs. Rochester is based on Rhys’ life and her most famous work Wide Sargasso Sea.

In the majority of her works, Rhys depicts a female protagonist who has been abandoned and made an underdog in some way, which is certainly the situation for Antoinette Cosway Mason of Jamaica. Young Antoinette’s father died leaving his young second wife and their two children destitute after the slavery ended. Antoinette is also abandoned by her mother in succumbing to grief and madness as well as by her Aunt Cora whose frailty didn’t allow her to care for her niece as she wished, so Antoinette was sent to a convent for education. The only person who doesn’t abandon her is Christophine, her black nurse and former slave, even though they were apart for Antoinette’s education.

I was intrigued at the way fire presented itself in the novel. Fire is first mentioned by Antoinette when she played with her black companion Tia as a young child and they ate boiled green bananas together at the bathing pool. Let’s just say that there’s some fire involved in the ‘drama and tragedy’ that Nikki mentions above… it could be terrible and scary, it could just be some letters in a fireplace, I won’t tell. But then on the honeymoon, the availability and use of candles echoes the light and dark places of the marriage relationship. These glimpses of fire echo in Bronte’s Bertha who uses fire to show her displeasure of Rochester’s choices and dare I say very existence. This is not surprising given Antoinette’s treatment by her husband to a marriage that is young and yet lifeless and loveless. 

Every crisis in Antoinette’s life is punctuated by the undeserved cruelty of a black girl near her same age. Yes, I am making the assumption that Rhys wanted to reflect the undeserved cruelty towards blacks onto one of more privilege.  Tia caused her pain when she was a young child, Myra as a girl, then Amelie as a young married woman. Something she loves is taken from her in each situation and she is innocent of the cruelty shown to her. Is it a surprise that she then goes mad at the lack of control and unwarranted cruelty that life has thrown at her? Is it a combination of grief and madness, perhaps – probably. But don’t we all go a little crazy in our own minds and just have the ability to not manifest it out into the world?

We haven’t discussed the concept of the Sargasso Sea, and I want to close with an explanation. The Sargasso Sea is a sea in the Northern Atlantic not bounded by any landmasses, but by four currents that then create a clockwise moving ocean gyre. It’s named sargasso because of the sargassum seaweed that the currents bring to the surface and is noted for its crystal blue water that allows one to see down to 61 meters. Is Rhys’ title a metaphor for the madness repeated trauma brings up from the depth of our minds? I’d say yes.

~Ashley

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Darling readers, we’ve been digging deep with sweet Jane Eyre who is orphaned and eventually finds herself settling amidst this found family of Thornfield Hall, yet there’s something lurking that’s not quite right, and it seems like more than Grace Poole.  It reminds me of when Feyre finds herself settling the first time, except there is so much she doesn’t know, yet, because all she’s told, all she can be told, is that there’s a blight on the land.  What happens when secrets are in between people in relationship?  Nothing good dear readers!  Jane runs away because she won’t be a mistress.  What does Feyre darling do?  We’ll discuss that and so much more on Friday, February 12 at 7:30 p.m. CST.   Sign up here to join us for an evening of conversation about  Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series.   Spoilers will abound as we prepare for the next book in the series.  

Sarah Shoemaker knew by third grade that she was going to be a writer. But, as she states on her website: “On the way, I became a teacher, a wife, a mom, a librarian, and, finally, a published writer.” It is amazing to know that this is her debut novel, and only published work because there is such a depth of style. One gets the feeling that Shoemaker has had stacks of published works in which to hone her skill. She lives in Michigan where she grows her own popcorn and, according to her Goodreads profile is working on her sophomore novel which is NOT a reimagining of a known character’s journey.

Mr. Rochester was published in 2017 and it is an amazing imagining of the backstory of one Edward Fairfax Rochester. We are told the life’s story of the character who is considered in one poll to be literature’s “most romantic fictional character.” I never saw him as such, nor do I see the possibilities translated on screen for such a distinction, but that’s a discussion for Monday’s post.  We meet young Edward close to his eighth birthday, a young boy of the opinion that a governess is no one “other than a presence to be borne.” His brother Rowland is eight years his senior and their mother died giving birth to Edward. So, yes, we start the novel feeling such pity for a privileged white boy who never met his mother, whose father ignores his existence except for how it benefits the Rochester family, whose elder brother is physically abusive, and whose only friends are the servants of  Thornfield Hall. There’s such possibility for us as readers to somewhat justify the way Rochester treats Jane, Adele, his other servants, his wife, and his peers, by understanding the horrid upbringing he had, thinking that he never received an example of a good human of his ilk.

When Edward gets sent off to be schooled at Black Hill at the age of eight years old, he has to travel by himself the entire way, to a place he has never been – or heard of – to live with people he has never met. George Howell Rochester, Esquire, is, quite frankly, guilty of child endangerment and it’s a miracle Edward arrives at Black Hill with as little trouble as he received. Don’t think Rochester Senior will have some redemption arc, he doesn’t, and Rowland only becomes <this much> less of an asshole during Edward’s teen years. His life isn’t all woe and terrible, scary experience. He makes friends who become like brothers to him at Black Hill. And, even though Rochester Senior is the orchestrator and manipulator of Edward’s life trajectory, the son finds joy in his apprenticeship to a mill owner, in his attendance of Cambridge University, and surprisingly, up to a specific point, the life and business he takes up in Jamaica. (The point is Bertha’s decline into madness, y’all.) The descriptions of Edward’s life on the continent are typical of a person who has lost touch with who he thought he would be and is trying to find some semblance of happiness in the situation in which he finds himself.

Edward stumbles upon Jane halfway through the novel and so the final half of the book is the plot of Jane Eyre but with so many surprises by all the characters (except Jane, of course) I will not spoil them here. Overall, Mr. Rochester was an enjoyable read, an unexpected debut novel, and four solid stars of entertainment. I won’t be reading again, and I’m still not convinced that Rochester could ever earn the title of “most romantic fictional character” with his lies of omission and mercurial moods, but I do have a healthier respect for Rochester’s character knowing he never really made a good decision on his own until he fell in love with Jane.

Oh, readers, we love a good retelling, and by this point if you don’t know that Nikki always wants “MORE EPILOGUE” have you really been reading our blog? Do you prefer a modern author to continue a story or give a character we already know a more in-depth background?

~Ashley

Readers, isn’t Ashley cute?!  I want a continuation of the story AND a more indepth background, and even though it’s only a baby continuation (read: respectable epilogue), it’s there.  And I wouldn’t say no to more!  

I’ve already confessed that I don’t understand why Jane still loves Rochester and wants to marry him after he tells her that he asked her to unknowingly be a part of a bigamous / invalid marriage, so it should come as a surprise to no one that I was mad at Rochester when I started Mr. Rochester by Sarah Shoemaker.  What sort of a childhood makes a man in his mid-thirties (my age) feel like tricking the love of his life into a false marriage is acceptable?  Yes, I understand there are class issues that my twenty first century self doesn’t truly understand at play, but still.  I was expecting awful things in Rochester’s past honestly, more awful than those that Shoemaker writes, but oh dear readers, she does not disappoint!  

When Mr. Rochester opens, Rochester is remembering his younger days.  We know he’s the second son of a member of the landed gentry and we know his father has interests in Jamaica, but there is so much detail, and delight, that Shoemaker puts into the story that made it so much better and so much more heartbreaking.  Do I still not understand why Jane still loves him?  Absolutely.  Of all the lessons he learned from his father in this tale, lying by omission was not one of them (or rather, that’s exactly what dear ole’ dad taught him to do) and that’s one that gets me to the core.  Maybe my issue is really how does she forgive him for this?  Is this an issue that wouldn’t have affected readers of Jane Eyre as much 175 years ago?  Likely some expected it while others were offended by it, but really I’m not sure.  I still want Edward to be open and honest with Jane, but now I get why he wasn’t.  But why wasn’t being honest an idea that entered into his mind?  Here’s my big take away though:  Daddy Rochester is THE WORST and Rowland is essentially a waste of a person.  Readers are made to believe Edward thinks daddy Rochester tried, in his own way, but also, does he?  Really?!  NOPE.  Time after time, just when Edward gets acclimated and settled, dad rips the rug out from underneath him.  Even after dad and Rowland are dead, there’s another rug darling readers, and it gets ripped yet again.  I don’t want to spoil it, but there’s a thing I didn’t see coming from the original text, because it’s not there, but the space for it to be true sure is.  It works, and it’s glorious, and it makes me loathe father and big brother all the more, even though I’m not super confident I like it as an addition to the original story, I do love it in this book.  I want this book to be older, so much older, so that it too could be a Dickensian commentary on what not to do with the “spare” some men of land so crassly call their second sons.  

I give Mr. Rochester a solid four stars.  It’s a glorious response to the original text that is very much in the tone and language of the original.  Shoemaker did her research and spent loads of time in the original text, and readers, it shows!  If you like a deep dive, a backstory, or a familiar tale from a different perspective, give this title a try!  

What’s a book you expected to frustrate you but you read it anyway?  Did it surprise you?  Did you enjoy the experience?

~Nikki 

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