In this richly imaginative novel, Rhys gives a voice to the mad Creole wife in Jane Eyre. If Rochester was the victim of the machinations of their families, surely she was equally wronged? Who was Bertha Antoinette Mason? Were she, her mother and brother really congenitally mad? What might have turned this beautiful, ardent heiress into the biting, malicious monster in the attic? Sacred ground perhaps but as she points out: "There is always the other side". Rhys's masterpiece.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 67 Winter 2013 ) |
