Wide Sargasso Sea
WIDE SARGASSO SEA (Jean Rhys) - One Star
Life Sucks. Because.
There's the entire novel for you, in three short little words. I'm glad I didn't waste a lot of time reading it (a mercifully short 160 pages), because I found the book to be wholly without merit.
A hypothetical "prequel" to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Rhys's novel supposedly relates the hard-luck life story of Edward Rochester's hidden/insane first wife Bertha Mason. It is supposed to be a masterpiece of postmodern and postcolonial literature, but I found it soul-crushingly bitter and mean-spirited. Nearly all the characters presented in Wide Sargasso Sea are loathesome individuals (or, perhaps, simply have their worst traits emphasized), and the misery and bad tidings are heaped upon them with sadistic remorselessness. I can assure you that nothing good happens to ANYONE in the entire course of the novel.
I understand that Jean Rhys had a rather rough life herself. Perhaps Sargasso's matter-of-fact but pessimistic portrayal of life displays that. I also have read that Rhys (originally from the West Indies herself) took exception with the rather slanted portrayal of Creole women in Brontë's Victorian text. However, all of Rhys's attempts to explore themes of isolation, cultural alienation, and loss of identity fell flat with me because I could never sympathize with the main character.
The book is whiny and angsty, even through the narrative voice-changes; far from a great novel, for me it read more like a teenager's livejournal put to paper.
Life Sucks. Because.
There's the entire novel for you, in three short little words. I'm glad I didn't waste a lot of time reading it (a mercifully short 160 pages), because I found the book to be wholly without merit.
A hypothetical "prequel" to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Rhys's novel supposedly relates the hard-luck life story of Edward Rochester's hidden/insane first wife Bertha Mason. It is supposed to be a masterpiece of postmodern and postcolonial literature, but I found it soul-crushingly bitter and mean-spirited. Nearly all the characters presented in Wide Sargasso Sea are loathesome individuals (or, perhaps, simply have their worst traits emphasized), and the misery and bad tidings are heaped upon them with sadistic remorselessness. I can assure you that nothing good happens to ANYONE in the entire course of the novel.
I understand that Jean Rhys had a rather rough life herself. Perhaps Sargasso's matter-of-fact but pessimistic portrayal of life displays that. I also have read that Rhys (originally from the West Indies herself) took exception with the rather slanted portrayal of Creole women in Brontë's Victorian text. However, all of Rhys's attempts to explore themes of isolation, cultural alienation, and loss of identity fell flat with me because I could never sympathize with the main character.
The book is whiny and angsty, even through the narrative voice-changes; far from a great novel, for me it read more like a teenager's livejournal put to paper.
posted by Kevin at 4:34 PM
1 Comments:
Thank God! I thought I was the only person that thought that book sucked. Nice to know I'm not alone.
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