Jean Rhys – mad, bad and creative

A haunted life of fear, betrayal, louche behaviour, imagined victimhood, callous insensitivity and heavy drinking was the backdrop to Jean Rhys’s highly acclaimed novel Wide Sargasso Sea – a transplanted rendition of Bronte’s ‘mad wife in the attic’ in Jane Eyre. Although started 30 years earlier, it was only published in her 70s when she was living in a Devon shack in poor health.  Her astrology gives a clue as to why this character struck a chord with her. Sh