The Cosways live in poverty at Coulibri Estate after the Emancipation Act frees their enslaved workers.

Annette Cosway marries the wealthy Englishman Mr. Mason, who restores order and prosperity to Coulibri Estate.

A mob of formerly enslaved people sets fire to Coulibri Estate, forcing the Cosway family to flee into the night.

Pierre dies from burns suffered in the fire, and Annette spirals into a complete mental breakdown.

After Pierre's death, Antoinette stays with Aunt Cora until she is eventually enrolled at a convent school.

Antoinette dreams of following a strange man through a dark forest — a vision that frightens her awake.

Antoinette marries her unnamed English husband in a match arranged by her stepbrother Richard Mason.

Daniel Cosway sends the husband a letter claiming Antoinette has hidden her family's history of madness and dishonesty.

The husband sleeps with the servant Amélie while Antoinette lies in the next room of the honeymoon house.

Antoinette grabs a broken rum bottle and physically attacks her husband after learning of his affair with Amélie.

Christophine confronts the husband and warns that Antoinette will descend into madness like her mother if he refuses to love her.

The husband threatens Christophine with arrest and banishes her from the honeymoon house at Granbois.

Departing Dominica, the husband tells Antoinette he despises her and will show it through permanent coldness.

Antoinette is locked in a sparse attic room in England with no mirror, tended by a woman named Grace Poole.

Antoinette seizes Grace Poole's keys and walks down the dark hallway of the English house holding a lit candle.

Antoinette Cosway grows up in poverty at Coulibri Estate after the Emancipation Act strips her white Creole family of its enslaved workforce and social standing. Her mother's remarriage to the Englishman Mr. Mason briefly restores the estate, but a mob sets it on fire, killing Pierre and driving Annette into madness. After years in a convent school, Antoinette is married to an unnamed Englishman who travels with her to Dominica for their honeymoon, where their relationship rapidly deteriorates after he receives a poisonous letter from Daniel Cosway. The husband's affair with the servant Amélie provokes Antoinette to violence, and his subsequent banishment of her nurse Christophine leaves her utterly alone. He takes Antoinette back to England and locks her in an attic room, stripping away her identity, her freedom, and her connection to the Caribbean. The novel ends as Antoinette seizes her caretaker's keys and walks toward a final act of defiance with a lit candle.

The headline events that drive Antoinette from Coulibri to an English attic.

Annette Cosway's horse is found dead under the frangipani tree, a sign that the family's privileged world has ended.

Antoinette and Tia form a childhood friendship, meeting each morning at a nearby river to swim together.

After a quarrel over a swimming bet, Tia steals Antoinette's clean dress and forces her to wear Tia's soiled one home.

Mr. Mason dismisses Annette's repeated warnings that Coulibri is dangerous and refuses to move the family away.

As the family flees the burning estate, Tia hurls a rock at Antoinette and both girls cry at the same moment.

Antoinette visits Annette at the country sanitarium, but Annette pushes her daughter away and refuses her embrace.

On the way to convent school, Sandi — Antoinette's mixed-race cousin — rescues her from two taunting bullies at the gate.

The morning before the wedding, Antoinette tries to cancel the marriage; her fiancé persuades her to proceed by asking for her trust.

The newlyweds arrive at the Granbois estate and are introduced to the servants, including Christophine and Amélie.

The couple enjoys early honeymoon days swimming in the island's pools and watching sunsets together from the summer house.

Christophine announces she is leaving the honeymoon house voluntarily, saying she does not want to cause division between the newlyweds.

Antoinette rides to Christophine's home and desperately begs her former nurse to cast a love spell on her husband.

The husband visits Daniel at his home, where Daniel insinuates a past romance between Antoinette and Sandi and demands money for his silence.

The husband secretly writes to the magistrate Fraser, using a false research pretext to gather damaging information about Christophine.

Richard Mason visits Antoinette in England, and she attacks him with a concealed knife without recognizing her own stepbrother.

Pool 2 traces the smaller but vital events surrounding Antoinette's life, from the symbolic death of her mother's horse to the betrayals of her honeymoon and her imprisonment in England. Early losses — including her friendship with Tia and her mother's rejection at the sanitarium — establish Antoinette's recurring pattern of being abandoned by those she loves. Her husband's courtship is already compromised before the wedding, when Antoinette nearly cancels the marriage and Aunt Cora fails to secure her financial protection. On the honeymoon at Granbois, a fragile early happiness is undermined by the husband's growing suspicions, his secret investigation of Christophine, and his visit to the manipulative Daniel Cosway. Christophine's voluntary departure and Antoinette's desperate visit to beg for a love spell mark the marriage's point of no return. By the time Antoinette is confined in England, her own stepbrother fails to recognize her, underscoring how completely her identity has been erased.

The relationships and secondary moments that shape Antoinette's world.

Christophine chooses to remain at Coulibri Estate after emancipation while most other servants abandon the Cosway family.

Annette pleads desperately with Mr. Mason to leave Coulibri Estate, insisting that the family is in serious danger.

The nun Mother Justine tells the convent girls stories of St. Agnes — a beautiful woman confined and executed by men.

Aunt Cora secretly gives Antoinette two gold rings before the wedding and makes her promise to hide them from her fiancé.

During the honeymoon, the husband privately admits to himself for the first time that he does not love his wife.

Antoinette confesses to her husband that happiness has always frightened her, revealing her lifelong dread of loss and abandonment.

A second letter arrives from Daniel; the husband sends Amélie to tell Daniel to stop writing to him.

The husband confronts Antoinette about falsely claiming her mother was dead long before Annette had actually died.

Antoinette admits to her husband that she asked Christophine to give him a love potion in order to restore his affection.

The husband begins calling Antoinette by the name Bertha — her mother's middle name — as a deliberate act of psychological erasure.

The husband enters Antoinette's room while she sleeps and assaults her, then signals a young servant girl to stay silent.

Antoinette confronts her husband and declares that by sleeping with Amélie he has permanently ruined Granbois for her.

Christophine demands that the husband return half of Antoinette's dowry and leave the West Indies; he dismisses her as ridiculous.

Antoinette realizes she no longer knows her own face after being confined for an unknown stretch of time in a room without mirrors.

Antoinette dreams of lighting candles in the empty house and sees a ghostly woman with streaming hair appear in the corridor.

Pool 3 focuses on the turning points and hidden discoveries that gradually doom Antoinette's marriage and her sense of self. Foreshadowing begins early — in Christophine's loyalty at Coulibri, Aunt Cora's secret gift of rings, and the convent story of St. Agnes — all hinting at the captivity to come. During the honeymoon, the husband's private admission that he does not love Antoinette marks the marriage as hollow from its start, while Daniel's second letter and a series of bitter confrontations sharpen his resolve to see her as a threat. His renaming of Antoinette as Bertha, his assault on her while she sleeps, and Christophine's failed demand that he return the dowry represent his systematic dismantling of her identity. In England, Antoinette's discovery that there are no mirrors in her room signals how completely she has been erased. Her dream of fire is not only a vision of destruction but the moment she reclaims the will to act.