Jean Rhys’s 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea rethinks the character of Bertha Mason, Charlotte Brönte’s madwoman in the attic from Jane Eyre. In Brönte’s novel, Bertha, a Creole woman from Spanish Town, Jamaica, serves as a paradigmatic character, embodying Victorian England’s fears of the foreign and female body. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys revives Bertha’s outdated and trope-riddled character by returning to Jamaica and telling her story. Rhys artfully uses Jane Eyre as a springboard to rethink and complicate Bertha, or as she is known in Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette Cosway. Bertha Mason is not her name, but rather, much to her annoyance, one Edward Rochester begins to use after they are married. The gradual shift of Antoinette’s name to Bertha depicts her eventual loss of agency and identity. Rhys also opts to not name Rochester, which alludes to his role as a flat character, representing typical Victorian patriarchal ideas. In many ways, Antoinette has a similar upbringing to Jane. Both are dynamic, independent women who had difficult childhoods and grew up in the church. There is so much to unpack in this beautifully and intentionally crafted novel.