Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Oct.11,1964

Sitting in bed. Scribbling. Using a pencil instead of pen for the ink spills over while I shake. Influence of cheap wine.

Sometimes I get out of control, freaky. My neighbors think I am mad. Ha! What do they know of madness? Who knows of madness? People only see what is there before their eyes. Who bothers to think how the despair creeps inside, shutting out the doors to the World permanently?

I look at the copy of Jane Eyre kept on the table by my side. I fill with rage.

No one thought of you. No emotion or thoughts expressed, not even fear. No one thought you had a soul too; a heart that once throbbed to the love of a man. Or that you loved to sing and dance, perhaps. Or that you had a mother, consumed by a raging fire of the memory of your dead brother. That you tried to keep sane in a mad-mad world filled with people who were no better.

Why did no one think of you, Bertha? No, not Bertha. I won’t call you that. It is how they have known you, till now. Only a madwoman in the attic. I will call you Antoinette, a name your mother may have given you, with love, when you were born.

I’ll tell your side of the story. The other side.

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Disclaimer: It is a fictional attempt to imagine and understand how Rhys
might have felt about writing for the madwoman, the writing being done while living in isolation at a small place for almost 20 years.





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