Jean Rhys · 1966 · sea

Jean Rhys's prequel to Jane Eyre gives the madwoman in the attic her life back. Antoinette grows up on a ruined Jamaican estate, is married to an English stranger, honeymoons in the Dominican hills, and is carried across the wide Sargasso Sea to an English house and a locked room.

1. 1
   Coulibri

   Antoinette's childhood estate near Spanish Town, its garden gone wild after emancipation ruins the family. The house is burned in a riot and her world with it.

2. 2
   Spanish Town

   The old Jamaican capital, where Antoinette is sent to the convent school - a brief refuge - and later married off to the Englishman who narrates her undoing.

3. 3
   Massacre

   The landing on Dominica for the honeymoon, a village whose name unsettles the husband. From here they climb into the hills to the estate.

4. 4
   Granbois

   The shabby white honeymoon house in the mountains, Antoinette's one place of belonging. Here the marriage curdles into suspicion and betrayal, and he resolves to take her away.

5. 5
   England

   The cold grey house across the wide Sargasso Sea - Thornfield, though never named. Locked in the attic, no longer sure the place is real, she keeps a stolen candle for the fire to come.