Jean Rhys. Wide Sargasso Sea. Introduction by Francis Wyndham. London: Andre Deutsch, 1966.
I include Wide Sargasso Sea in the literatures of the fantastic because it is, quite simply, a pioneering work. What Rhys accomplishes is a perfect example of the critical fiction: a writer’s artistic response to another work of literature. This short novel of the life of a Creole heiress to lands in Jamaica and Dominica is an indictment of a legal system that assigns a wife’s money and properties to the fortune-hunting husband; it is also the story of the first Mrs. Rochester of Jane Eyre.
No. 35.