Taking time out and defying convention

Delayed publication

The author of Wide Sargasso Sea, on which Crossref-it.info has just launched an A Level guide, had quite a job in getting her manuscript to a point of publication:

• In 1957 Jean Rhys told her editor, Diana Athill, that it would be ready in six to nine months time, claiming that a large part of it was already written
• In fact, the writing of Wide Sargasso Sea was not finished until the end of March 1966
• Diana Athill wrote to Jean about ‘the labour and torment’ that had gone into its writing. No doubt she was referring to herself as the editor, as well as to its author!

A new approach

Rhys was writing using innovative forms and a variety of perspectives. It took her a while to work out how these could be utilised to create a narrative whole. During that time, her life and work disappeared from popular view.

At Crossref-it.info we too have had to take some time and work out a different approach with our guide to Wide Sargasso Sea.

Like you, we know that the future of literary study lies on-line rather than in a book-case. That’s why we developed a web-based English Literature resource and that’s why it has proved so popular worldwide. For each text we have covered that is not in the public domain, the author’s publisher has understood the power of the medium and granted permission to quote from their text.

Problems and solutions

However, we faced a problem when Rhys’ publisher seemed anxious about having her novel analysed on-line.

What to do? We knew how important it was that the text wasn’t once again rendered invisible to a new generation of students, whose automatic port of call is the internet. It has taken a while, but the whole guide has been re-worked, aiming to be as clear and specific as possible in its explanation of Wide Sargasso Sea, without actually using Rhys’ words. Not so easy for a novel that doesn’t have numbered chapters!

Result

It was worth waiting for Rhys’ masterpiece.

Hopefully everyone who uses the new Crossref-it.info guide on Wide Sargasso Sea will agree that it was worth waiting for this as well!

Why not check it out now?

Wide Sargasso Sea

Some authors are defined by one particular work which overshadows the rest of their output:

• Joseph Heller will forever be identified with his satirical masterpiece, Catch 22
• J. D. Salinger is known primarily as the creator of Holden Caulfield, narrator of The Catcher in the Rye
• Margaret Mitchell did write another novel, but nothing to match Gone with the Wind.

Until the late 60’s few people would have heard of Jean Rhys, who had produced a few collections of short stories and novellas in the 1920s and 30s. By the end of the 1950s many were not even sure if she was still alive. Then in 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea appeared.

For all sorts of reasons Wide Sargasso Sea became the work with which Rhys is for ever identified. It had a huge impact:

• With its multiple viewpoints and disjointed narrative, it echoed the multilayered interpretations of modernism, yet was also post-modern before the term had become recognised.
• Its perspective on a ‘colonial’ account (Jane Eyre), from the viewpoint of the colonised, helped to wake literate Britain up to the role of Britain’s economic world dominance within its literature
• It was revisionist in its handling of a well loved cultural icon, Mr Rochester, shaking forever the unthinking adulation of Brontë’s romantic hero
• It created a woman’s narrative voice at variance with the clear female voice of Jane Eyre herself, whom generations had learnt to love.

All these reasons and more make Wide Sargasso Sea a distinctive novel, and a popular choice on A Level syllabuses, especially when set in conjunction with Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

At Crossref-it.info a comprehensive guide to Brontë’s classic has already been available for a couple of years. Now we are about to launch one to help students studying Rhys’ most famous work.

Watch this space!