To start at the end is only sensible, for
this is the imagined back story of Antoinette, the mad wife of Mr Rochester in
Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.
Before then she is the attractive
stepdaughter of a Mr Mason, with a large dowry designed to get her off his
hands. Edward Rochester takes the bait
but soon regrets it as Antoinette comes with a lot of baggage: a Jamaican
estate denuded due to the emancipation of the slaves; a handful of house
servants, some faithful, some resentful; an absent mother reputed to be crazy;
and mixed race relatives that date back to the indiscriminate philandering of her
dead father, ‘old’ Cosway’.
The Caribbean climate is oppressive, as is
the poisonous social sphere where complexities of race, nationality, class and
wealth conspire to confound both characters and the reader.
We know how it ends, and Jane Eyre fans will
probably enjoy this spin-off telling how it started. The general reader less so?
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