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In this Reader's Guide, Carl Plasa provides a comprehensive survey and analysis of the most stimulating critical responses to Wide Sargasso Sea. The opening chapter outlines initial reactions to the novel from English and Caribbean critics, charting the differences between them. Chapter Two explores Wide Sargasso Sea's dialogue with Jane Eyre and the theoretical questions it has raised. Succeeding chapters examine how critics have assessed the racial politics of Rhys's text, discuss the novel's African Caribbean cultural legacy, and explore how critics read the work both in terms of its moment of production and the early Victorian period in which it is set. Throughout, Plasa contextualizes and clarifies the critical exchanges which this daring and dramatic novel has provoked.

Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea

Introduction.- 'A Considerable Tour de Force by Any Standard': Reviews and Early Criticism.- 'The Creole is of Course the Important One': Rewriting <Jane Eyre.- 'Like Goes to Like': Race and the Politics of Identification.- 'There is Always the Other Side': African Caribbean Perspectives.- 'Not Even Much Record': The Place of History.- Notes.- Select Bibliography.- Acknowledgements.- Index.