Crash Course AP Literature

Main Plot/Idea/Concept: The story is narrated by the governess who fears the

children in her care are being tormented by ghosts.

Tags: psychological novel, ghost story, sexual repression, madness

Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf? by
Edward Albee,
first performed in
1962

Genre: play

Setting: small New England university

Main characters: George, Martha, Honey, and Nick

Main Plot/Idea/Concept: George and Martha invite new professor Nick and

his wife to their home after a party, where everyone had been drinking. George

and Martha verbally abuse each other in front of their guests. In this play the

illusion of 1950s perfection is exploded.

Tags: marriage, social norms

Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys,
published 1964–66

Genre: novel

Setting: 1840s, Jamaica, the Windward Islands, England

Main characters: Antoinette, Mr. Rochester, Christophine

Main Plot/Idea/Concept: Rhys creates the unknown story of Bertha Mason,

the insane wife of Edward Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre.

Mason, born Antoinette Cosway, is the daughter of former slave owners in

Jamaica.

Tags: colonialism and clashes of culture, slavery, race, religion, symbolism,

written as prequel to Jane Eyre