I just finished Wide Sargasso Sea for the second time; this book stands up to countless readings.  I don't know if Jean Rhys was the first novelist to tell "the other side of the story" ; I have since read more novels that follow this theme, such as Ahab's Wife and The Red Tent.  Some of these retellings work well and some fall flat.  Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea not only works, but it actually manages to rewrite Jane Eyre itself. (which I think would please Rhys as she was not a fan of English culture or the English as a people)

Rhys creates the life story of Antoinette Bertha Mason; the character who was created by Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre, but Rhys is the author who gives her life.  Antoinette "Bertha" Mason was the creole mad woman locked in Mr. Rochester's attic in Jane Eyre, but that is all we really know about her.  She is depicted as wild, inhumane, savage, and consumed with madness.  How did this woman end up mad?  How did she end up in the attic in the first place?  Are we to believe everything Mr. Rochester tells Jane after he is exposed as attempting bigamy?

 Rhys creates a life and a story for Antoinette before she was imprisoned in the attic.  Rhys successfully creates a prequel to Jane Eyre that manages to superimpose Rhys's story over the one given to us in Jane Eyre.  After reading Wide Sargasso Sea, one cannot read Jane Eyre the same way again.  As Antoinette says in the novel, "there is always another side, always the other side of the story." 

Antoinette's story is told in three parts.  The first part is predominately told in Antoinette's voice; this part gives us glimpses into her childhood and leads us up to her marriage with Mr. Rochester.  The second part is told by Edward Rochester, and even though he makes choices we wish he doesn't, and he ends by hurting and attempting to create Antoinette into a new person (hence Bertha), we are given access to his thoughts and his confusion.  Rhys give us the "other side" of Rochester also.  The third part starts with Grace Poole's voice (Antoinette's prison guard of Jane Eyre), and ends in Antoinette's mind.

Antoinette appears as a shadowy unsubstantial character in Jane Eyre; Rhys turns the tables in Wide Sargasso Sea, by creating a vivid energectic Antoinette and only alludes to Jane in the shadows.  This is Antoinette's story, not Jane's.

Rhys doesn't try to change Antointette's ultimate fate; she bows to Bronte's authorship for that.  Antoinette, sadly ends up in Mr. Rochester's attic, and yes, she does leap to her death after she sets the fire.  (This information can only spoil the ending for anyone who hasn't read Jane Eyre). 

But Rhys manages to change the meaning behind Antoinette's death.  Instead of the fire resulting from the deranged antics of a lunatic madwoman, it is Antoinette's triumphant leap into death to regain her identity and to resist being "colonized" by Rochestor.  (this novel is filled with post-colonial references)

I urge everyone to pick up Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.  It is actually a short read, especially in comparison to Jane Eyre, but it is an unforgettable one.