Antoinette Cosway’s Martyrdom: Catholicism and the “Triumphant” Ending of Wide Sargasso Sea

Abstract: This essay examines Jean Rhys’s often overlooked engagement with Catholicism in her 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea . Over and against British Empire and its English Protestantism, Rhys draws on Catholicism to construct a martyr’s tale for her Creole protagonist, Antoinette Cosway. This Catholic framework of martyrdom enables a triumphant reading of Antoinette’s self-immolation—her act of resistance against her English, Protestant-coded husband. In turn, the redemptive Catholicism of Wide Sargasso Sea prompts a rereading of Rhys’s source text, Jane Eyre , to expose the pitfalls that Protestantism poses for Brontë’s bildungsroman.