Wide Sargasso Sea

From the book cover:
Jean Rhys's late, literary masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea, was inspired by Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and is set in the lush, beguiling landscape of Jamaica in the 1830s.

Born into an oppressive, colonialist society, Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent sensuality and beauty. After their marriage the rumours begin, poisoning her husband against her. Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is driven towards madness.
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 I read the edition with edits, an introduction and notes by Angela Smith.


Wide Sargasso Sea tells the story of the mad woman locked in the attic in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, while exploring the racial inequalities and injustices of the post-colonial world.

The novel is split into three parts.

Part one is set in Jamaica and narrated by Antoinette. We learn about her upbringing, her mother's marriage to Mr. Mason, the fire that killed her brother and her mother's resulting descent into madness, her education at a catholic convent and her arranged marriage, to a man assumed to be Mr.Rochester of Jane Eyre.

Part two is set in Granbois, Dominica. Antoinette is married and her husband takes over the narration. We learn how his mind and heart were poisoned against her and of the beginning of her descent into madness.

Part three is set in England. Antoinette, locked in the attic of the 'great house', resumes the narration. She is now completely mad and closely resembles the madwoman in the attic, as described in Jane Eyre.

I really enjoyed this novel. The fact that a large part is set in Jamaica, my homeland, was definitely part of the appeal. I left Jamaica when I was a young child, so all of my education is North American centered. I don't know a lot about the emancipation act and its affect on the West Indies and Jamaica, so this book offered me a glanced into the experience of the freed slaves and former slave owners.

If you're a regular reader of this blog you probably already know that I enjoy reading about women's issues and historical fiction, this novel is a blend of both of those genres. 

My only grievance is with some of the end notes Angela Smith provides. A lot of the notes seem unnecessary. Who needs a definition of shingles or a mango tree? I found the abundance of end notes distracting at times, as I'm not the type of reader who can ignore end notes. Even when I'm positive I know what the end note is going to say, I still flip to the back of the book. Despite this, I am really grateful for the introduction and notes on the emancipation act, Creole and obeah.

Before reading these notes I did not know about the compensation paid to slave owners (£19 per slave, slaves were valued at £35) or the proposed 7-year transition period. I also did not know about the history of the Creole people in the West Indies and Jamaica. I had always assumed that the slave owners where all of British or European descent. It was surreal reading about obeah. It's something I grew up hearing stories about but never took seriously, rolling my eyes when the grown folks would tell stories.

Wide Sargasso Sea is a powerful novel about a young girl caught up in a vicious cycle created by the patriarchal world surrounding her, in a time when the world is going through a metamorphosis. I recommend this book to those who enjoy reading about women's issues, historical fiction and race relations.

5

 Movie Trailer for the film adaptation of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.

Fly Away Home

From the book cover:
Sometimes all you can do is fly away home...
When Sylvie Serfer met Richard Woodruff in law school, she had wild curls, wide hips, and lots of opinions. Decades later, Sylvie has remade herself as the ideal politician's wife - her hair dyed and straightened, her hippie-chick wardrobe replaced by tailored knit suits. At fifty-seven, she ruefully acknowledge that her job is staying twenty pounds thinner than she was in her twenties and tending to her husband, the senator.
Lizzie, the Woodruffs' younger daughter, is at twenty-four a recovering addict, whose mantra HALT (Hungary? Angry? Lonely? Tired?) helps her keep her life under control. Still, trouble always seems to find her. Her older sister, Diana, an emergency room physician, has everything Lizzie failed to achieve - a husband, a young son, the perfect home - and yet she's trapped in a loveless marriage. With temptation waiting in one of the ER's exam rooms, she finds herself craving more.
After Richard's extramarital affair makes headlines, the three women are drawn into the painful glare of national spotlight. Once the press conference is over, each is forced to reconsider her life, who she is and who she is meant to be.
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I'm not sure why I put Fly Away Home on my reading list. I think I saw it advertised on a subway poster. It was probably around the time of some sex scandal or another. Anyhow, I read it this past week. It's an alright book but it doesn't fill me with satisfaction, inspire any new realizations about life or leave me wanting more. In fact, I feel like this novel could have been at least a hundred pages shorter.

 Porn anyone?
I don't think of myself as a prude but I found the sex scenes a bit too graphic, and they seemed to go on forever. At times I felt myself blushing and praying that no one in the subway car was reading over my shoulders. Weiner's sex scenes are comparable to the stuff I imagine would be found in a porn magazine.

Enough with the foreshadowing already!
Weiner goes over board with foreshadowing; she doesn't give the reader enough credit to pick up on hints. Almost every paragraph starts off with a flashback that inevitably foreshadows the main events of that chapter. In some cases this is good because it's a window into the relationship between the main characters but other times it's just too much. One of those times is when Lizzie discovers she's pregnant. Several pages are spent in a flashback of Lizzie and a high school friend smoking pot and watching I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant; both girls agree they would know if they were pregnant.

The characters are cliches:

• Cheating politician
• Devoted, wool suit wearing wife
• Successful but emotionally cold daughter
• Black sheep daughter
• Brash, Jewish mother

Need I go on?

Sex Scandals
Society is saturated with sex scandals. Just this week, alone, two major scandals are in the headline. Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger revealed the existence of a 10-year-old "love child" that he fathered with a former household staffer. International Monetary Fund Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn  was arrested and charged with attempted rape. Admittedly, the Strauss-Kahn scandal is a criminal matter but it can still be classified under PEMS (Powerful Entitled Man Syndrome). In contrast to this week's news, the 'scandal' that is the centre of the Fly Away Home plot is boring.

2.5/5

The Color Purple

From the book cover:
Life wasn't easy for Celie. But she knew how to survive, needing little to get by. 

Then her husband's lover, a flamboyant blues singer, barreled into her world and gave Celie the courage to ask for more - to laugh, to play, and finally - to love.
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Alice Walker's The Color Purple is set in a dark place in history yet manages to be uplifting. Set in the early twentieth century, the characters are one or two generations removed from slavery, and racism and sexism are a large part of life. The novel tells the story of the abuses heaped upon a small group of African-American women. The women are so different that together they represent almost every black woman. Or at the very least, it can be said that there is a little bit of at least one of these characters in each of us.

The colour purple is representative of God's creation or all things that are so magnificent that no man can destroy.

More than the abuse that that these women suffer as a result of sexism and racism, this novel is about the healing bonds of the female friendship. This strong bond and  friendship is illustrated amongst the African-American women living in America and the African women Netty comes across during her mission work in the village of Olinka. Despite being a continent apart these women have a lot in common. Celie's relationship with Shug and Sophia's relationship with Squeak is comparable to the relationship that exists between the sister wives in Africa. Although it would seem natural that the women would not get along and compete for the men's attention, they develop supportive relationships that are independent of the men.

I love that this story is told through a series of letters from: Celie to God; Celie to Nettie; and Nettie to Celie. The language is clear, colourful and unpretentious. I also like the redemption of two of the main male characters, Harpo and Mr. _________.

There are so many lessons to be learned in this book and messages to take away. This was my second time reading this novel but I feel like it's my first time because I've learned so much. I can't wait to read it a third time!

5

 A scene from the 1985 film, The Color Purple, which is based on Alice Walker's novel.

The Bell Jar

About the author
The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath's only novel. It was originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963. Plath suffered from clinic depression. It is an accepted theory that The Bell Jar is semi-autobiographical with names and places changed. Plath committed suicide in 1963, a month after The Bell Jar was published in the United Kingdom.

Plot Summary
Set in 1953, The Bell Jar is about Ester Greenwood's clinic depression. As the novel opens, Ester is in New York on a one month summer internship at a prominent magazine. As the month comes to an end Ester starts to ponder her future. The few options she has leave her feeling trapped. Upon completely her internship, Ester returns to her home in Massachusetts feeling down. And that feeling increases when her mom tells her that she did not get into a writing course she hoped to enroll in for the rest of the summer. Ester's depression worsens, she sees a psychiatrist, attempts suicide and winds up in an asylum.


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The Bell Jar is a hard novel to get into. At times I found it dragged. In the end, I came to enjoy Plath's subtle way of telling the story. At first I didn't think there was anything wrong with Ester, I thought she was just quirky. I didn't realize she wasn't all there until her last night in New York, when she is almost the victim of date rape. Once she started to decline in happened fast and furious. As her depression worsens, Ester describes herself as feeling trapped under a bell jar. A bell jar is a piece of laboratory equipment used to create a vacuum. In essence, she feels trapped in a vacuum.

Imprisonment is a major theme in this novel. Being a female Ester feels trapped by society's expectations, the consequences of sex and a lack of career choices.

Although times have changed and women have a lot more choices, many of us still feel pressure to live up to society's expectations. It's still expected that women are going to marry and have children, and when they choose not to go down this path, they are described as spinsters, old maids, cat ladies, or their sexual preference is questioned.

The world has gone through a sexual revolution since the 1950s but women still face more consequences when it comes to sexual relations. Just think how many words you've heard to describe women who are believed to be promiscuous. How many words do you know for promiscuous men? Also consider, women in committed relationships are more likely to be responsible for birth control. And when birth control fails, a woman's life definitely changes more than a man's life. Until oral contraceptives are widely available for men and they have the ability to physically bear children, women will always face more consequences in sexual relations.

My point in comparing the 1950s and 2011 is not to stand on a soap box, but merely to explain why I think The Bell Jar is still very relevant almost 50 years after it was first published. Read it if you like, you can only gain knowledge and insight into one of society's taboos - mental illness.

4/5