Wide Sargasso Sea

In the context of the novel, white Creole women live in relative freedom compared to their English counterparts. This freedom is largely facilitated by their control of property in the West Indies. Annette Cosway becomes the sole proprietor of Coulibri Estate after her first husband, Old Man Cosway dies. She cedes control of her land, however, after marrying Mr. Mason. Like Englishwomen, white Creole women were required to give their inheritances to their husbands after they wed. For this reason, Antoinette loses her inheritance from her stepfather, Mr. Mason, after she marries. Aunt Cora doesn’t recover any of her wealth or independence until after her husband dies, allowing her to return to the West Indies as she wishes.

Among the things that offend Antoinette’s husband about the West Indies is this relative freedom among white Creole women. He remarks that Aunt Cora is foolish, and he resents for supposedly keeping all of her wealth to herself while Annette and Antoinette struggled on Coulibri Estate. Antoinette dismisses her husband’s critical remarks, claiming that he doesn’t understand Creole people. He also overlooks how helpless Antoinette and her mother were on a plantation that they were unprepared to maintain. Aunt Cora, who was also a planter, demonstrated a facility with these affairs that Annette did not have, which is why Annette married Mr. Mason.

Aunt Cora also exhibits an awareness of the ways in which men can use money and property to control women. She is the first to express reservations about Antoinette’s husband and chastises Antoinette’s step-brother Richard for arranging the marriage without considering Antoinette’s financial independence. To make up for this oversight, Aunt Cora gives Antoinette two gold rings which she implores her niece to hide from her husband. Gold rings are typically used as wedding bands to validate the union and trust between spouses. Here, the ring’s meaning is reversed—Aunt Cora gives Antoinette the bands as a form of financial security against a potentially disloyal husband.

White Creole women could rely on the security of marriage to give them social legitimacy and to secure their prospects, but black women could not. Unions between slaves were not recognized by law, and white planters frequently raped black woman and took them as concubines. Despite their assertions that only white marriages were legitimate, white planters flagrantly broke their own vows to their wives. Thus, for black women like Christophine, marriage could never be worthwhile. She expresses shock when Antoinette tells her that English law forces her to give all of her money and property to her husband, leaving her unprotected and subject to his will. Christophine counters that she has kept all of her money and never married any of the men with whom she has had children. She embraces the illegitimacy that white people have both stigmatized and perpetuated. 

Jean Rhys’s descriptions of Jamaica and Dominica give the reader an understanding of the islands’ unique natural characteristics—its frangipani, lime trees, and fer de lance snakes. This rich description also helps the reader understand the islands as places with histories and traditions that long preceded the Age of Exploration, the slave trade, and colonialism. The West Indies’ materiality contrasts with Antoinette’s understanding of England as an imaginary place. Later, England’s figuration as a fantasy is upheld by the husband’s refusal to allow Antoinette to engage with the country without Grace Poole’s careful supervision, which means that she sees what her husband permits her to see.

Antoinette’s material separation from England makes it that much more difficult for her to identify as English despite having ancestral ties to this other island, and her imprisonment makes it impossible for her to integrate into the landscape and culture. On the other hand, while growing up in Jamaica, she had similar difficulty feeling fully a part of a colony in which white people were so outnumbered by black people. No longer protected by the slave caste system, the Cosways become compelled to integrate into a community over which they had ruled, which is impossible. When a mob gathers at Coulibri Estate and demands that the white family leave, it is an assertion that they can no longer claim Jamaica as easily as they once did.

Antoinette is a woman caught between Jamaica and England and denied full membership to either. This partially explains her preference for Dominica—a site of less contention in the former British colonies, as well as a place that she associates with the few happy memories of her childhood. 

European men who came to colonized nations to make their fortunes also sought freedom from Europe’s stringent sexual mores. Eager to act on their impulses and devoid of respect for women, they raped indigenous and enslaved African women with impunity. Children often resulted from these assaults. Antoinette’s father, Old Man Cosway, was a planter who had fathered at least two mixed-race sons by his slaves. Growing up, Antoinette had been taught not to acknowledge her black relatives, including her cousin Sandi, with whom she later developed a friendship. This denial of consanguinity fostered resentment among wives and abandoned children and showed that white supremacy was a means of ensuring that white men would enjoy both economic and sexual hegemony in colonized lands.

Daniel Cosway, Old Man Cosway’s son by Christophine’s friend Maillotte, expresses resentment about being a bastard and being less favored than his brother, Alexander. However, he also embraces the standards that have worked toward his oppression. He believes that his father should have bought him shoes so that he would not have had to walk barefoot like other black people. He also expresses the misogynistic view that women, particularly Antoinette, are untrustworthy. Daniel did not merely want his father’s attention; he wanted his father to regard him as a rightful heir so that he could inherit, not dismantle, a privileged position. Daniel has internalized the tenets of white patriarchy—that is, he doesn’t recognize the injustices of slavery and colonization, only the injustice of his disinheritance.

Daniel’s suggestion of an incestuous relationship between Sandi and Antoinette stirs the mistrust of Antoinette’s husband. The insinuation also illuminates an aspect of plantation life that often goes unmentioned. Denial of familial links, the insularity of plantations, and the dismissal of boundaries typically imposed by marriage would have made incestuous relationships inevitable. The possibility of a romance between Sandi and Antoinette is also made likely by the fact that he is the only man in her life who has ever taken interest in her well-being or respected her autonomy.

Rhys’s exploration of relationships between slaves and slave masters in the West Indies illustrates how the plantation system debased both groups but also forced them to invent new concepts of family, which included Christophine’s role as a surrogate mother to Antoinette. 

Numerous characters in Wide Sargasso Sea have multiple or dual names. Christophine is also Josephine DuBois, which could be a subtle reference to Josephine Bonaparte—the wife of Napoleon who was rumored to be mixed-race. Daniel Cosway names himself Esau. In the Bible, Esau was the disinherited son of Isaac. By identifying directly with Esau, Daniel asserts his entitlement and his feeling of having been denied his right of inheritance. Antoinette’s husband wonders if the servant, Baptiste, whose name alludes to the Christian ritual of baptism, has another name. Antoinette’s husband is the only character who has no name. Rhys’s obfuscation of his identity makes him a part of the opportunistic English collective that has both colonized the British West Indies and now seeks to profit off of its depreciated land value.

Antoinette has multiple names. Her husband calls her Bertha—her mother’s middle name, an act that approaches violence. Calling her by her mother’s name suggests that she, too, will succumb to madness. He also refers to her as Marionetta, which is a variation of marionette, or puppet. This name is an overt expression of his wish to manipulate Antoinette and to render her his object.

Renaming is not only a ritual in the Christian religion, it is also a practice in voodoo. When voodoo priests and priestesses seek to create a zombie, they give the victim a new name. Practitioners of voodoo believe that, by giving the victim a new name, they can successfully transform his or her life. Antoinette, having been partly raised by Christophine—a voodoo practitioner—recognizes what her husband is doing when he calls her Bertha: “Bertha is not my name. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name” (88). She refers to this renaming as “obeah,” which is synonymous with voodoo (88).

Both Antoinette and her mother also take on new surnames, in obedience to marital conventions. The only married female character whose surname we do not know is Aunt Cora. Her lack of a surname reasserts her relative independence in comparison to Annette and Antoinette.

Rhys depicts naming as a practice with an almost magical ability to transform characters’ understanding of themselves and their lives. By the end of the novel, the husband has succeeded in transforming Antoinette into Bertha—that is, constructing her as the madwoman that he wants her to be in order to justify his control of her. Antoinette’s final act in the novel—setting fire to her husband’s house—indicates her refusal to accept this name and her attempt to recover her lost identity.