A new paper exploring
Wide Sargasso Sea:
Antoinette Cosway’s Martyrdom: Catholicism and the “Triumphant” Ending of Wide Sargasso Sea
Naomi Kim-Yu
MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Johns Hopkins University Press, Volume 71, Number 4, Winter 2025 pp. 742-764
This essay examines Jean Rhys’s often overlooked engagement with Catholicism in her 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea. Over and against British Empire and its English Protestantism, Rhys draws on Catholicism to construct a martyr’s tale for her Creole protagonist, Antoinette Cosway. This Catholic framework of martyrdom enables a triumphant reading of Antoinette’s self-immolation—her act of resistance against her English, Protestant-coded husband. In turn, the redemptive Catholicism of Wide Sargasso Sea prompts a rereading of Rhys’s source text, Jane Eyre, to expose the pitfalls that Protestantism poses for Brontë’s bildungsroman.
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