Demons in the attic

The author Jean Rhys created a story of the life of Mrs Rochester, the 'mad wife' in 'Jane Eyre'. Now, Polly Teale has dramatised an equally remarkable but true tale - that of Rhys herself

Five years ago, I wrote an adaptation of Jane Eyre. As part of my research, I read an astonishing book in which the author invented a history for the madwoman who ends her life locked in the attic. The novel was called Wide Sargasso Sea. The name refers to the treacherous waters that ships crossed on their journey to and from the West Indies. Jean Rhys, the author, was born and grew up in the West Indies. I was immediately moved by the power and intensity of Rhys's writing.

The introduction to the novel contained a few details of Rhys's life, and I was intrigued. As I began to read the rest of her novels and found out more about her, a picture began to emerge of an extraordinary life and of the parallels between her own story and that of Mr Rochester's mad wife – the woman who would become the heroine of Rhys's late masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966). Like Rhys, Mrs Rochester was a white Creole born in the West Indies who ended her life isolated in the remote English countryside.

Rhys first read Jane Eyre as a young woman. I have often thought how startling it must have been to discover a West Indian character hidden among the pages of English literature that made up her father's library. It is not surprising that this creature took hold of Rhys's imagination. She too was rebellious. She too felt lonely and misunderstood. She too was prone to fits of violent temper. Years later, Rhys would be sent to Holloway prison for biting a neighbour who, she said, had made too much noise and disturbed her writing. Mrs Rochester used a similar method of attack on unwanted intruders into her attic.

By the time we meet Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre, she has become a monster, scarcely recognisable as human. It is not surprising that Rhys felt a desire to rewrite Mrs Rochester's story, to tell it from the beginning. To tell it from the inside.

I began to think of writing a play about Rhys. An image came to me of Rhys locked in a room with the madwoman from Jane Eyre. Locked out was Rhys's daughter. I began to write the first scene. Rhys, in the depths of depression, had sent her daughter a desperate telegram begging her to come. When her daughter arrives Rhys refuses to open the door. In reality, Rhys's daughter never lived with her; she was placed in a clinic soon after her birth and saw her mother only on visits and holidays.

As I found out more about Rhys's life, I was struck by the number of relationships she had (three marriages and many affairs), but how rarely she felt close to anyone. "I've always felt best when I was alone. Felt most real. People have always been shadows to me... I have never known other people."

Her own daughter never lived with Rhys. She found it hard to get to know her mother. Then the metaphor of the locked room began to take hold. Whilst Mrs Rochester was literally locked up and held captive, Rhys was also a prisoner; a prisoner of her own psyche, of the conditions that had created her unhappy life, of the schizophrenia of growing up as a poor colonial, and of her critical controlling mother, who convinced her she was unlovable. It was not surprising that Rhys struggled to love her own child.

The question of why Rhys cannot open the door to her daughter became central to the play. It is the fear that if she let her daughter into the room, she would see the madwoman. When her daughter threatens to leave, Rhys is forced to return to the past to understand the cause of her madness. The first image that crashes into her head is of her mother holding the cane she used to beat Rhys with as a child.

I wanted Rhys's mother to represent the whole colonial system and the fears that influenced the ways that the colonials behaved – their obsession with control and order in the face of the unknown. Although she behaves monstrously in the play, I see her as a tragic figure born into a regime based on fear and repression. It must have been very confusing for Rhys. She saw – and longed for – the freedom of the islanders, yet her head was crammed full of Western notions of respectability and superiority.

In her biography, Carole Angier describes how the novelist Rosamund Lehman met Rhys in later life, having admired her novels. They met for tea in a smart London restaurant. Lehman was expecting to meet a bohemian, a kindred spirit, but Rhys was a picture of poise and elegance. She was charming but distant, and refused to talk about her work at all. Later, when Lehman was invited to Rhys's home, she was to meet a different woman. Rhys's husband answered the door. His face was scratched. Rhys was drunk and dishevelled, muttering angrily, only half aware of her guest, whose visit she had forgotten. Lehman stayed only a few minutes.

The need to conceal the parts of herself she knew to be unacceptable was a constant theme in Rhys's life. Her obsession with her appearance and her clothes was in part due to this. Yet in spite, or perhaps because, of her need to hide she spoke the truth in her novels. They are as vivid an account as you will find of the dark underside of human experience, the voice of the underdog, the outsider. She speaks for anyone who has ever felt alone or afraid.

For Rhys, writing was not a choice but a necessity. Through it, she tried to exorcise her demons. "When you've written it down, it doesn't hurt any more."

She was not always successful. "If I could put it into words, it might go. Sometimes you can put it into words and get rid of it. But there aren't any words for this fear. The words haven't been invented," she wrote in the short story The Sound of the River.

And yet Rhys did find the words. With extraordinary honesty, she strips away the layers of social behaviour and shows us ourselves at our most naked or most alone.

Polly Teale is the joint artistic director of Shared Experience. 'After Mrs Rochester' is at the Lyric Hammersmith, London W6 (08700 500 511) from 22 April to 10 May