Jean Rhys Biography | Author of Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea Author Biography

Set in mid-1800s Jamaica, Wide Sargasso Sea is the least overtly autobiographical of Rhys's fiction. However, critics have noticed some connections between Rhys's life and family history and that of her doomed protagonist, Antoinette Cosway. Born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams in 1890, Rhys was the third child of a Creole mother and a Welsh doctor. She grew up in Dominica, one of the Windward Islands, and, like her heroine, moved from the Caribbean to England while still a teenager. Rhys's ancestors on her mother's side had been slaveholders in Dominica, and their plantation house was burned down by freed slaves soon after emancipation. Antoinette witnesses a similar scene in Wide Sargasso Sea. Like Antoinette, Rhys was educated at a convent school. Rhys left the Caribbean when her parents discovered her relationship with a partblack man. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette's husband shuttles her off to England after hearing rumors of...
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