Miranda Seymour: ‘Jean Rhys was far ahead of her time’
Bertha Mason, the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre, despite being the first wife of Edward Rochestor, remained dehumanized and faceless until Jean Rhys decided to bring her to literary life in 1966 through her hugely popular work, Wide Sargasso Sea.
432pp, ₹1399; William Collins
Rhys recreated Bertha’s (Antoinette Cosway in Wide Sargasso Sea) childhood and youth as a Creolean heiress, her first meeting with a young Rochester and marriage to him, and her eventual breakdown, all…