Jean Rhys is an unusual postcolonial writer. She was a woman of (mostly) European ancestry born on the island of Dominica in the Caribbean. People like her were, at the time, called (white) Creoles. She lived there until she was 16, when she was sent to England, where she finally settled to write. For most of her life, she wrote in obscurity, making almost no money. Then she published Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966 and shot to fame pretty much overnight.

Why is Rhys so important? Well, one reason is that her work exemplifies postcolonial "counter-discourse." She isn't afraid to stare the empire—Britain, in this case—in the face and talk right back to it. Her work is all about the underdog, and in Wide Sargasso Sea, her main character is a victim of both colonialism and patriarchy.

Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

So Jean Rhys basically read Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and was like, "What?"

You see, in Brontë's novel, there's this crazy woman, Bertha Mason, locked up in the attic. She's Rochester's wife. If you remember, Rochester is Jane's romantic interest in Brontë's novel. The thing is that Bertha Mason is a Creole from the Caribbean, just like Jean Rhys herself.

Brontë doesn't tell us much about Bertha, but Rhys was both intrigued by her and by the fact that her story didn't make it into Jane Eyre. So Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea, which tells the story of Bertha Mason and Rochester from Bertha's perspective (although in Rhys's book her real name is Antoinette).

Rhys's book was a direct response to the depiction of people from the Caribbean as loony in Charlotte Brontë's novel. Seeing things from Bertha's perspective complicates both Brontë's novel and the entire British enterprise in the Caribbean.

Tales of the Wide Caribbean (1985)

Jean Rhys's collection of short stories about the Caribbean gives us a panorama of Caribbean culture, colonialism, and issues relating to women and gender. It's not as well known as Wide Sargasso Sea, but it's worth a read to get a broader picture of Rhys's world and the culture that influenced her.