Being Bertha Mason: Rhysian reworkings and Jane Eyre, 1930–1970

Abstract

ABSTRACT Jean Rhys's corpus is known for its continual rewriting and revisiting, yet scholarship on Rhys's reimagining of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre has concentrated on its extensive treatment in Wide Sargasso Sea. When traces of Brontë are found in Rhys's earlier works, they are most commonly understood as foreshadowings of Rhys's final novel, a position that figures Rhys's corpus as a practice of practising, whose potential is finally realized late in Rhys's life and career. This article, instead, emphasizes Rhys's sustained creative practice of rewriting, presenting her engagement with Brontë not in linear or developmental terms, but as a long-standing critical fascination worked out and through all of her novels. Traces of Bertha's distress, Rochester's control, and rooms that restrict and depress recur across Quartet (1928), After Leaving Mr. MacKenzie (1930), Voyage in the Dark (1934), and Good Morning, Midnight (1939). We show that Brontë's novel was a major influence on the settings, characterizations, and preoccupations across Rhys's earlier novels, arguing that Jane Eyre is a fundamental part of Rhys's imaginary and Bertha is an inextricable aspect of Rhys's protagonists.