Beginning of Essay
How and why are selected canonical texts re-written by female authors? Answer with close reference to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. The Sargasso Sea is a relatively still sea, lying within the south-west zone of the No ....

Middle of Essay
.... For Jean Rhys, Jane Eyre depicted representations of a Creole woman and West Indian history which she knew to be inaccurate. ‘Bertha Mason is mad; and she came from a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations. Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard!’ She is further described as having a ‘discoloured face’, ‘a savage face’ with ‘fearful blackened inflation’ of the features, ‘the lips were swelled and dark’; described as a demon, witch, vampire, beast and hyena1. But nowhere in the novel does Bronte allow ‘the madwoman in the attic’ to have ....