Estudios Ingleses.

I choose some facts of her life which I considered interesting. The first one is that the idea and inspiration for her famous novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) came from a copy of Jane Eyre that her second husband had given to her as a birthday present. The first version of the novel was called Le Revenant, and Rhys burnt its manuscript after a row with her husband. After that, she thought of calling it The First Mrs Rochester,like she herself said: ‘with profound apologies to Charlotte Brontë and a deep curtsey too.’

I also found interesting a fact related to her political ideas and ideals. Rhys was born on August 24, 1890 in Roseau, Dominica, in the West Indies, where slavery was not abolished until 1834. After she openly advocated the rights of its black population and criticized its white ruling class, Rhys was popularly classed as ‘socialist Gwen’.

To finish with this part, I also found interesting the biographical facts about her relation with her mother, which I think that had a huge influence on her work. Her name was Minna Lockhart and she was a Dominican Creole. According to Rhys´s biographer, Rhys associated her mother with conformity and the "civilizing" mission of the English in the colonies at the end of the Victorian period. Her mother, Rhys claimed, was cold, disapproving, and distant. In one of the notebooks she kept during her life, Rhys recorded a time when her mother, after an attempt to discipline her daughter, gave her "a long, sad look," and said, "'I've done my best, it's no use. You'll never learn to be like other people.'"

 

The Windward Islands are the southern islands of the West Indian Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea. These islands are called Windward because they are more windward to arriving Caribbean cruise ships than the Leeward Islands in the North of the Lesser Antilles. The Windward Islands are Dominica, Martinique, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Grenadines and Grenada. Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago are sometimes put in this group as they are more windward than other Caribbean islands and are located in close proximity to the established Windward Islands. Barbados and Tobago were originally part of the grouping officially but Barbados returned to being an island country in 1885 and Tobago joined with Trinidad in 1889. Dominica joined the grouping in 1940 having previously been considered one of the Leeward Islands.

The geology of the Windwards is volcanic, with craters, hot springs, and sulfuric vents found in the mountainous central ribs of the islands. On May 8, 1902, the eruption of Mount Pelée on Martinique was one of the most destructive in modern history, killing about 30,000 people. Here you can see a picture of the eruption:

 

Spanish Town is the capital and the largest town in the parish of St. Catherine in the historic county of Middlesex, Jamaica. It was the Spanish and British capital of Jamaica from 1534 until 1872. The town is home to numerous memorials, the national archives, and one of the oldest Anglican churches outside England (the others are in Virginia, Maryland, and Bermuda). When the English conquered Jamaica in 1655, they renamed the settlement as Spanish Town (the first name was Villa de la Vega and it was founded 

by governor Francisco de Garay in 1534 as the capital of the colony.) 

In 2009 the population of Spanish Town was estimated to be about 160,000. The population of Spanish Town, like the rest of the St. Catherine, has been growing rapidly.It is sometimes referred to colloquially as "Spain" or "Prison Oval" within Jamaica. The most striking historical buildings of Spanish Town include St. Catherine’s Cathedral (1655), the Rodney Memorial, the House of Assembly, the Court House, and the 17th-century Eagle House. The ruined Old King’s House (1762) was the official residence of Jamaica’s governors until 1870; it was destroyed by fire in 1925. The National Repository contains documents dating to the early years of English settlement. The Jamaica School of Agriculture was founded in Spanish Town in 1910. Much of the city, including the historic centre, is dilapidated; renovation efforts began in the early 2000s. Hurricane Ivan caused extensive damage to the city in 2004.

I choose this picture because the headscarf that this woman is wearing remings me of the ones that appear in the novel when the author describes the appearance of some woman. Creole people is a therm that appears a lot and I wanted to know more about it. 

Creole people are ethnic groups which originated during the colonial era from colonialism mainly between West Africans as well as some other people born in the colonies, such as French, Spanish, and Native American people; this process is known as creolization. Creole peoples vary from different race. The development of creole languages is sometimes mistakenly attributed to the emergence of creole ethnic identities; however, they are independent developments. In colonial Jamaica, creolization involved not only the cognitive process of defining a distinctive identity, but adapting to the material conditions of the island's ecology and the social conditions of the island's society. This in tum was a dual process, involving both biological and social adaptation.

The official language of Jamaica is Jamaican Standard English. The true Jamaican language that was developed on the island does not have an official name. It is sometimes called Patois, Creole, Black English Vernacular or ungrammatical English (Barrett 143-145).

https://biography.yourdictionary.com/jean-rhys