Last night, to run alongside the BBC1 production of Jane Eyre, BBC4 screened a dramatisation of The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, the prequel to Jane Eyre, the story of of Rochester's marriage to Bertha Mason in Jamaica. This book had languished in obscurity for many years and back in 1968, when I worked at Highgate Library in London, I remember reading about this newly discovered book which was due to be reprinted that year, and was thrilled to bits, Jane Eyre being one of my favourite reads of all time. Jean Rhys was half Creole, as was Bertha Mason, and as her biography shows, she led an extraordinarily precarious, raffish life, at the mercy of her emotions and seemingly victimised and treated badly by men. Hardly surprising that the intriguing conundrum that was the Mad Woman in the Attic should have attracted her attention.
I was only about 17 when I read it and was bitterly disappointed. Not quite sure what I expected, but I 
found the writing wild and disjointed and the whole atmosphere totally repellent. I had expected Jane Eyre and instead I got this free wheeling stream of consciousness in great clumps. I re-read it years later and of course, realised that this style perfectly portrayed the febrile, decaying atmosphere of the lush Jamaican countryside and Mrs Rochester's fragile hold on sanity. I still found it unpleasant and disturbing however, and the BBC4 adaptation last night left me feeling vaguely nauseated. The fact that it did so is, perhaps, an indication that they got it about right.
The story starts with the arrival of Edward Rochester in Kingston, sent there by his father to earn his living as he was the younger son, and feeling very much that he lived in his elder brother's shadow. He wanted to earn his father's approval and respect and was easily seduced into marrying a rich heiress, thereby earning himself a fortune and making his father happy. He was duped, as we all know, and we see his own mental disintegration when he hears of the rumours of the madness in his wife's family and his fear that her erratic behaviour will lead to her insanity. Rochester is portrayed as cruel and unpleasant in the Rhys novel and his treatment of his wife is sadistic and pretty unforgivable. The fact that his own actions could have tipped her over the edge of madness is made very clear to the reader.
As a lover of the Yorkshire moors myself, which I have often visited and found beautiful with clear moorland air, it is hardly surprising that Rochester, after all his wanderings, returns to Thornfield perhaps hoping to find some way of coping with his tortured life. He is riding home when he sees Jane for the first time.
"On a frosty winter afternoon, I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall. I expected no peace - no pleasure there. On a stile in Hay Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself........I had no presentiment of what it would be to me; no inward warning that the abritress of my life .....waited there in humble guise.................After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love, I have found you"
Quite quite beautiful.
