Jean Rhys’s 1966 novel is the postcolonial and feminist prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, reimagining the “mad woman in the attic” theme through Antoinette Cosway, whose native Jamaica is the scene where Caribbean history and culture, race and assimilation, collide before Cosway’s removal to England.

 Leigh E. Rich is a professor in GSU’s Department of Health Sciences and one of the founding instructors of the Friday Reading Forum. She hosted the radio program Listening to Literature and was awarded the 2026 Literary Good Citizen award by Seersucker Live. Roger Smith’s first post-university career was teaching literature to eleventh-graders, which he did for a decade. Susan K. Weston is a retired attorney and avid reader who has been involved in the Friday Reading Forum since its inception.