The power of perspective

Cherwell discusses 'The power of perspective: how the narrative lens can transform a story' using Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea as a case in point.

Another transformative example is found in the 1966 novel that reworked the beloved Jane Eyre story. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys gives a back-story to the ‘madwoman in the attic’, Bertha Mason. She is re-imagined by Rhys as the Jamaican-born Antoinette, whose life of trauma and neglect leads to a drastic decline in her mental state, and her eventual imprisonment in Mr Rochester’s attic.

The Jane Eyre story casts Mr Rochester’s first wife as a gothic monster and a threat, who is othered and stripped of her humanity. This is epitomised in Jane’s first sighting of Bertha, where she becomes an it: “What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal…”

Rhys transforms Brontë’s “beast” into a human being. Her rewrite provides a biting critique of English colonialism through her depiction of post-Emancipation Jamaica, combined with a feminist reading of the marginalised ‘madwoman’ who has suffered in a world of patriarchal oppression.

Wide Sargasso Sea had a far-reaching legacy within literary criticism as a whole, paving the way for other classic works of literature to be re-examined with a more critical eye. Feminist and post-colonial readings became increasingly popular in the latter half of the 20th century, and are now essential elements of literary study. (Sarah Lewis)

The Times reviews the novel The Ghost of Gosswater by Lucy Strange.

Family secrets, a ghost girl and a forbidding manor house that goes up in smoke — this new story by Lucy Strange is a classic gothic novel for beginners with affectionate nods to Jane Eyre and Rebecca. (Alex O’Connell)

Stacker lists '100 monumental novels from literary history', including

Jane Eyre

- Author: Charlotte Brontë

- Date published: 1847

Literary critic Daniel S. Burt has called Charlotte Brontë “the first historian of the private consciousness” thanks to her novel “Jane Eyre,” the first to focus on a lead character’s moral and spiritual development. Well ahead of its time, this romantic novel follows the titular Jane Eyre through a rough childhood, as a student and teacher at a school, and then—in what readers remember best about the novel—as she accepts a job as governess and slowly begins to fall for her mysterious employer, Mr. Rochester.

Wuthering Heights

- Author: Emily Brontë

- Date published: 1847

Charlotte Brontë’s younger sister Emily wrote “Wuthering Heights,” a classic example of a gothic novel. The book, about the ill-fated love between Heathcliff and Catherine, contains elements of the supernatural, a host of scandals, and more than one love triangle. (Madison Troyer)

Financial Times has an article on Gresgarth Hall near Lancaster, now belonging to Arabella Lennox-Boyd and her husband Mark.

When the Lennox-Boyds came to Gresgarth in 1978, it was bleak and daunting, “like Wuthering Heights”, Arabella recalls. It is now like a bit of Eden. (Robin Lane Fox)

The Wire (India) has an obituary on Indian singer S.P. Balasubrahmanyam, who died yesterday.

When the ‘Jane Eyre’-inspired ‘Shanti Nilayam’ came out in Tamil in 1969, his rendition of ‘Iyarkai ennum’ was a burst of fresh air – a voice that could carry an A-list star’s shenanigans and share the load that T.M. Soundararajan and P.B. Srinivas carried almost exclusively. (Anand Venkateswaran)

Metro has an article on Ponden Hall being for sale. YourTango shares '50 Good Engagement Quotes For Instagram Photos Of Your Special Moment' including one from Wuthering Heights.