Curated set · answers marked
Which novel does Wide Sargasso Sea act as a prequel to, reinterpreting the backstory of the character often referred to as "the madwoman in the attic"?
AWuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
BJane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë✓
CMiddlemarch by George Eliot
DThe Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Rationale
Jean Rhys's 1966 novel brings to light the story of Antoinette Cosway (Bertha Mason), the Creole first wife of Edward Rochester, whose narrative is mostly overlooked in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Rhys explores Antoinette's Jamaican heritage, her marriage, and her gradual descent into madness through her own eyes, providing a postcolonial counter-narrative to the Victorian classic.
Which character from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is reimagined as the main character in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea?
AJane Eyre
BBertha Mason (Antoinette Cosway)✓
CSt. John Rivers
DGrace Poole
Rationale
Jean Rhys's novel acts as a postcolonial prequel to Jane Eyre, exploring the life of Antoinette Cosway—a Creole woman from Jamaica who becomes Rochester's first wife and is later locked away in the attic of Thornfield Hall as "Bertha Mason" in Brontë's story.