An interesting one. Truly, this story is an important one to tell - having Bertha forever deemed as 'the mad-woman in the attic' due to how she is described in Brontë's Jane Eyre won't do, and her story and her voice, I think, is just as important as any other - perhaps even more so than any other character.

Rhys aims to narrate the story of Bertha (or rather Antoinette as she is named before Rochester enforces a name that he's "particularly fond of" onto her) before the events of Brontë's novel. Throughout Part One, we are shown the hardships that she and her family face, with a particular focus on Antoinette's personal identity and how she struggles with this. I think that @Sean Barrs put it best in his own review, stating that "She is a hybrid, a figure that walks between cultures. As a white European girl she was raised in Jamaica; thus, she is neither fully Jamaican nor European. This sounds very similar to the role of the governess, a figure that belonged to no particular class structure."

And yet, once Rochester comes into the picture in Part Two, we are disappointingly whisked back into the eyes of an onlooker. From this point forward, nearly all of the narrative is constructed through the eyes of either Antoinette's husband or Grace Poole. Personally, I found this to be a major element that I disliked: after all, was not the purpose of this book to give a voice to the woman left aside in the original text? I should have liked to have observed exactly how *she* experienced her relationship with Rochester (as we've already had his point of view from Brontë) and how it played a major part in the deterioration of her mental health. Seeing this all happen through the scornful eyes of Rochester again, who consistently filled the narrative with his own entitled opinions and comments, was one of the main reasons why my rating was knocked down a few stars.

Perhaps once I've attended a class on this I might learn a little more about the narrative choices, and my opinion might change.