First Published: October 1966
SPOILERS!!!
This is a book about Bertha Antoinette Mason, who appears in Jane Eyre as Mr Rochester's mad wife who he kept locked in the attic.
The book starts with Antoinette as a child, living with her mother and her brother in the West Indies. Her mother was widowed and very beautiful, but her love came to her son and not Antoinette. The boy, Pierre, had a mental disability. Antoinette, though, had the support of her black nanny, Christophine, and her aunt Cora. Then her mother married Mr Mason, and Antoinette changed her surname.
Things went wrong when the black workers attacked the house, and Antoinette and her family had to leave. Near the house she saw Tia, a black girl who she had considered a friend, and Tia hit her in the head. When she came to, she was in her aunt Cora's house, and she was told that Pierre had died and her mother was mad with grief. Then when Aunt Cora goes to England for her health, she goes to a convent school where she has the first friends.
In the second book Antoinette is married. Her husband, whose name we never learn, has married her at his father's request because Antoinette is rich. This is Mr Rochester. At first, althoug unsure of himself, he is good to her, but then he gets a letter from a man, Daniel, who claims that he is the son of Antoinette's father, and he tells him that Antoinette's mother was mad, her brother an idiot, and she is also mad. Rochester changes and seems to believe this man. Antoinette's behaviour is erratic, but I think that is rather due to her different upbringing to his. And then he has a fling with one of the blak servants and gives her money to leave.
In the last book Antoinette is in England, and she explains that she is locked in a room with a woman called Grace Poole. And when Grace is drunk, she often runs away and wanders around the house.
I think the book was interesting but I didn't like the style.
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