WIDE SARGASSO SEA

Part 1.

When I read Wide Sargasso Sea for the first time, I found it hard to understand the general plot, and found the lack of emotion with which the author wrote frustrating, and made the novel less interesting. I think that the way in which she wrote was not in a way that was trying to entertain us necessarily, but to get a story told in the most unbiased way as possible- which would explain the lack of emotion. However, having read it again I can understand why she chose to write in this way, and that it can be quite effective.
One extract I found particularly clever was when she said, "I was certain that hidden in the room...there was a dead man's dried hand, white chicken feathers, a cock with his throat cut dying slowly, slowly." She doesn't elaborate on the point but uses the power of the description alone to make her point, which makes it more shocking because we are described it as vividly as the girl sees it in her imagination, with no skirting around the point.
Another thing I have noticed about the way in which Jean Rhys writes is that she often highlights certain words by putting them in a sentence of their own or by repeating them, "Persistently. Angrily." "slowly, slowly," and "Better. Better, better than people." This makes the text a lot more dramatic, but can easily be overused so it loses it's effect- and I'm not sure if this is the case in part one. It's a modern way of writing, and is probably very rare in Jane Eyre if it appears in it at all, which shows a contrast between the atmosphere of the two novels; Wide Sargasso Sea is more sharp, fast moving and dramatic, whereas Jane Eyre is more descriptive and follows a more ordered way of writing events. Wide Sargasso Sea is a very different style to Jane Eyre, but there are very strong connections between the childhood of Jane and the childhood of Antoinette- and having read Jane Eyre first it does feel like she is stealing ideas sometimes.