Wide Sargasso Sea
Rhys gave the "madwoman in the attic" from Jane Eyre her name, her history, and her fire. Published in 1966, this postcolonial rewriting of Charlotte Bronte traces Bertha Rochester back to the Caribbean, to a Creole heiress named Antoinette. The result dismantles the original novel's assumptions about race, empire, and who gets to tell the story.
Without Jane Eyre fresh in your head, half the book's charge is gone; Rhys wrote a reply, and replies need their original. The middle section hands the narration to the husband, and the dream-logic compression leaves gaps a reader must furnish. And Christophine, the novel's strongest presence, exists to serve a white Creole heroine's tragedy; the rewriting has its own blind spot.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
