With Hamer, Rhys lived a retired life in Europe, Cornwall, and, finally, Devon. Returning to the literary scene in 1966, she garnered critical acclaim with Wide Sargasso Sea, which tells the story of a minor character in Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel Jane Eyre (also in Literature and Its Times). This minor character is the insane first wife of the classic’s main male figure, Edward Rochester. Wide Sargasso Sea was especially praised for its portrayal of a doomed interracial romance between a Creole woman and a white Englishman. In giving it and the marginalized woman the leading role, Rhys’s novel shows a faithfulness to preoccupations of her own volatile times.
The British West Indies—an overview. At the time of Wide Sargasso Sea, Jamaica and the Windward Islands (Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada, and the Grenadines) were governed by the British. Spain had been first among the European nations to gain a foothold in the New World in the late fifteenth century. Many of the Caribbean islands, including Jamaica, Trinidad, and Hispaniola, were settled by the Spanish in the wake of Christopher Columbus’s voyages of exploration.
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