Summary

The first part of Wide Sargasso Sea is told from the perspective of Antoinette Cosway, a young girl who lives on an estate on the island of Jamaica (a British colony) with her mother and brother and a dwindling group of the family's former slaves. As the novella begins in 1834, the slaves have been granted emancipation and the island is in a state of total upheaval. Former slaveholders have yet to be compensated for the loss of human labor and as a result their estates are quickly falling into disarray. Coulibri, the mansion that is home to Antoinette and her family, is no exception. The situation is dire: the family has no more money and is on the verge of certain death.

The Cosways are outsiders in Jamaica. They do not fall into either of the island's dominant racial and social groups; that is, they are neither wealthy white property holders nor impoverished but recently freed black slaves. Instead, we learn in the opening pages, Antoinette and her mother and brother are Creoles, or whites of European descent born in the West Indies. In fact, Antoinette's beautiful mother Annette was born on the nearby island of Martinique (a French colony), and came to Jamaica as the much-younger second wife of Alexander Cosway, Antoinette's now-deceased father. The other white people in Jamaica apparently never approved of their marriage and therefore never accepted the Cosways as part of their circle. Now that the family is poor, they no longer even command the respect of the black people, who comprise the vast majority of the island's population due to their economy's years of reliance on slavery.

As the family's situation approaches the point of crisis, Antoinette's mother grows increasingly unstable. For a while she insists on going horseback riding every day, even as her riding habit gets torn and shabby, but after her horse is poisoned she refuses to leave the house and becomes thin, silent, and sullen. Antoinette gets concerned when her mother starts talking to herself and pacing up and down the glacis while the servants and townspeople point and stare. When she tries to comfort her mother, however, Annette pushes her daughter away and begs to be left in peace. The only person Annette seems to want anything to do with is her mentally and physically handicapped son Pierre, Antoinette's younger brother. A doctor comes to assess Pierre one day, but never returns. In the meantime, Annette grows more and more moody and distant.

Estranged from her mother, Antoinette spends most of her time either alone or with Christophine, the loyal black servant who was a wedding gift from Alexander to Annette. Several of the other servants are afraid of Christophine, who is reputed to practice the dark arts. She sings to Antoinette and finds her a playmate named Tia. For a while Antoinette and Tia go swimming together every day, but then Tia steals Antoinette's pennies and dress and calls her a "white nigger." Antoinette is ashamed.

She returns home to find visitors at the house for the first time in ages. They plan to take up residence at the neighboring plantation of Nelson's Rest. Antoinette's mother is delighted to have company, but Christophine is distrustful of the newcomers, who she believes will institute a new and legal but equally cruel form of slavery on the island. Antoinette, meanwhile, is so unaccustomed to strangers that she runs away in shyness at the sight of them. Her mother scolds her for this behavior and for not having a clean dress to wear. Christophine explains that Antoinette has no other dress; the next day yards of muslin arrive. Antoinette speculates that her mother must have sold her last ring to pay for the fabric.

The arrival of new neighbors seems to rejuvenate Antoinette's mother and things seem to improve at Coulibri for a time. The Luttrells lend Annette a horse to ride and as a result she is seldom home. Antoinette decides to stay away from the house too, and spends her days in solitude, wandering about the wild tropical landscape.

Analysis

The opening pages of Wide Sargasso Sea set a dark and ominous tone that will pervade the entire work. Two instances of death occur within the first two pages of the text - that of the Cosway's neighbor Mr. Luttrell and that of Annette's beloved horse. Antoinette describes both deaths in succinct and unemotional terms. Mr. Luttrell, she says matter-of-factly, got impatient waiting for the money he was owed for his slaves, and so he "shot his dog, swam out to sea and was gone for always." The horse, she explains, was "was lying down under the frangipani tree... he was not sick, he was dead and his eyes were black with flies." Such images of decay reinforce Rhys's theme of British imperialistic decline.

The first lines of the novella also serve to establish the undercurrent of racial tension essential to Rhys's post-colonial revision. "They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks," Antoinette nonchalantly remarks. Her words set up an immediate dichotomy between "us" and "them," between outcast and insider. There is, however, yet another element to this complex racial situation. In the work's beginning lines Antoinette refers to "the white people," but several paragraphs later she mentions, with similar detachment, "the black people" who also apparently view the her family with scornful derision.

The reason for the family's status as racial "other" soon becomes clear: Antoinette and her mother and brother are Creoles, or light-skinned European descendants born in the Caribbean but perhaps with some mixed racial heritage, although Rhys never makes this explicit. Antoinette is frequently called a "white cockroach" and a "white nigger," terms which perhaps imply some degree of interbreeding, but which could also simply denote inferiority. In Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, meanwhile, the Creole madwoman is definitively dark-skinned.

As a result of their marginalized racial status, the Cosway family lives in almost complete isolation - "marooned" as Annette puts it, "abandoned" and "forgotten." Young Antoinette feels this seclusion all the more acutely because her mother consistently rejects her in favor of her younger brother Pierre. Antoinette, therefore, is an outcast even within her own family. Except for a short-lived friendship with Tia, she spends her days alone, wandering about remote parts of her family's dilapidated estate and attempting to convince herself that ants and snakes are "better than people." When visitors finally come to the house she has become so used to being a recluse that she runs away and hides. Antoinette's reclusive behavior not only emphasizes her adolescent isolation, it also subtly prefigures her hellish life to come as Rochester's mad wife in the attic.

Wide Sargasso Sea contains many autobiographical elements, and it is worth noting that Antoinette's mother and father seem to be based at least loosely on Rhys's own parents. Critic Anne B. Simpson writes that Rhys's father, like Old Mr. Cosway, "flirted playfully with women other than his wife, and spent money improvidently"; Rhys's mother, meanwhile, was "frigidly inaccessible" much like Annette. As a result, Rhys, like Antoinette, spent her most of her childhood in solitude.

Summary

Time apparently passes and circumstances seem to have improved even more dramatically for the Cosway family when Antoinette takes up her narrative again. She recommences the tale by stating that she was a bridesmaid when her mother married an Englishman by the name of Mr. Mason. While their mother and stepfather are away on their honeymoon, Antoinette and Pierre stay with their Aunt Cora in Spanish Town.

By the time the family returns to Coulibri, the estate is "clean and tidy, no grass between the flagstones, no leaks." Mr. Mason evidently has money and has paid for the necessary repairs. He engages a group of new servants, including Mannie and Myra, to attend to the chores. Antoinette dislikes their gossip about Christophine's obeah practices, which causes her to become afraid of what she will find if she looks around the woman's room; she is certain there is "a dead man's dried hand, white chicken feathers, [and] a cock with its throat cut" hidden somewhere just out of sight.

After Annette and Mr. Mason have been married for about a year, they begin to have regular arguments. Annette wants to leave Coulibri, alone if necessary, believing that the Jamaican people hate her more than ever now that she is wealthy once again. Mr. Mason, however, believes that everything is and will be fine now that he has rescued the family from poverty. He refuses to accept that the ex-slaves might be still harboring vindictive resentment toward them, and goes about making plans to import laborers from the East Indies since the black people on the island refuse to work. Aunt Cora warns him not to speak of such things in front of the servants, but he fails to heed the warning. He insists that the blacks are "too damn lazy to be dangerous."

Then one night Antoinette goes to bed waiting for Christophine, who does not come. Antoinette has a premonition that something is wrong and wishes for the weapon she obtained for self-protection after her mother's horse was killed - "a long narrow piece of wood, with two nails sticking out at the end, a shingle, perhaps." When she awakens again, it is still night and her mother is standing in the room with her. She gets up and goes downstairs to find that a mob of angry black servants has gathered outside. Mr. Mason maintains that the crowd is merely a "handful of drunken negroes," but when he ventures onto the glacis and attempts to pacify them, he is pelted with stones.

Suddenly Mannie notices that the mob has set fire to the back of the house, where Pierre still lies asleep in his bedroom. Annette, who had entrusted the care of her son to Myra, rushes off to rescue him and returns badly burned but carrying the practically lifeless boy in her arms. It quickly becomes clear to everyone that Myra has betrayed the family and gone off to join in the rioting protest. Annette berates her husband for his naïveté in believing the black servants to be as harmless as children.

While the remaining loyal servants struggle to put out the flames, Aunt Cora announces that the mob has set fire to the other side of the house. The family must get out immediately or risk burning alive, but Annette wants to go back into the house for her beloved parrot Coco. Mr. Mason forbids it and drags her out of the building, where they are brought face-to-face with the loud and angry mob. Mannie and Sass have saddled the horses for escape, but it seems as though the crowd will not allow it. Mr. Mason begins to pray, and just then the crowd falls silent at the sight of the parrot falling to a fiery death, his clipped wings ablaze. The group begins to break up, and some members seem to be having second thoughts about their behavior. The family and their loyal servants scramble to enter the carriage, as Aunt Cora and Mr. Mason exchange heated words with some of the ringleaders. Antoinette turns back for one last glimpse of the house and sees Tia and her mother standing a little way off. She breaks away and begins to run toward them, but Tia stops her in her tracks by throwing a jagged rock at her forehead.

Analysis

Superficially, life seems to improve for the Cosway family with Annette's marriage to the wealthy Mr. Mason. Overheard conversational fragments relayed by the young Antoinette, however, suggest that their newfound happiness is only temporary. Hidden away in the overgrown garden of Coulibri, Antoinette is able to listen in on what the other islanders - many of them the same white people who previously shunned the family - are saying about them, and this gossip is far from flattering. Through Antoinette's ears we hear their predictions that Mason will live to regret his union with the rather unstable Annette, a marriage which none of the rumormongers can seem understand. Someone hints that the wedding is only happening because of Christophine has used her obeah magic to put a spell on the groom. Another person comments that Pierre is "an idiot kept out of sight and mind," and further intimates that Antoinette is "going the same way."

For her part, Antoinette seems to be ambivalent in her attitude toward her new stepfather. She is pleased that he has brought her mother back to life again, but at the same time she cannot help but feel that he does not understand their way of life. This becomes clear when he questions Antoinette about why her Aunt Cora did not do more to help the family during their time of need. Antoinette tries to explain that her aunt had no money of her own; under English law everything belonged to Cora's husband who "hated the West Indies" and disliked the family. This detail is significant because Antoinette will find herself in the same financially dependent position as her aunt after she marries (Mr. Rochester). Mason, however, doesn't seem to understand the extent to which women are subjugated in his society.

Mason also fails to understand the complexities of race and class on the island. He laughs when Annette tells him that she wishes to leave Jamaica because the family is more hated than ever by blacks and white alike now that they are wealthy again. He believes that no harm will come to the family because the blacks on the island are "too damn lazy to be dangerous." Staunch in his insistence that the former slaves are like "children [who] wouldn't hurt a fly," Mason continues with his plans to make money by importing laborers from the East Indies. Aunt Cora, whom he considers a "frivolous woman," warns him not to speak of these things in front of the servants, but of course he does not listen.

Mason's naiveté almost costs the family their lives. Even when an angry mob assembles outside the house, he maintains that it is just a "handful of drunken negroes" who will "repent in the morning." Again, the women of the house - especially Christophine and Aunt Cora - know better. In a purposeful preview of the fire that will inevitably conclude the novella, the mob torches Coulibri until there is "nothing left but blackened walls and mounting stone." The blaze clearly makes a big impression on Antoinette, who will later use precisely the same tactic to assert herself after she is imprisoned in Rochester's attic.

The fire scene brings about the complete mental breakdown of Annette, an event that has been building for a long time. Annette turns on her husband, telling him that he "ought not to live." This too foreshadows Antoinette's own psychological demise and the downfall of her marriage to Rochester. Both mother and daughter suffer because of the patriarchal society in which they live, a world in which the feelings and opinions of women do not matter. The tragic fates of Annette and Antoinette are symbolized by the fiery death of the parrot Coco, who cannot fly to safety because Mason has clipped his wings and thus made him a prisoner in the house.

Summary

More time has passed, and when the story continues Antoinette is just waking up after an illness of almost six weeks, apparently brought on by the traumatic flight from Coulibri. She is at the home of her Aunt Cora in Spanish Town. Her aunt assures her that she is recovering nicely, but tells her that her brother Pierre died in transit on that fateful night, and that her mother has been sent to the country to rest. Antoinette recalls waking up in her feverish delirium and hearing her mother screaming and shouting obscenities. Still, she insists on going to visit her mother as soon as possible. She and Christophine make the journey, but Antoinette's mother once again rejects her upon learning that Pierre has died.

Aunt Cora decides to enroll Antoinette at the local school at Mount Calvary Convent. As she walks there on the first day, Antoinette is followed and harassed by two bullies. They taunt her for being crazy like her mother and push her around, but then run away when a tall boy comes to her rescue. She recognizes him as her "cousin Sandi" - one of her father's colored, illegitimate children and therefore her half-brother. While Sandi pursues her tormentors, Antoinette proceeds to the convent. Once inside, she breaks down in tears and the nuns attempt to comfort her. They introduce her to Louise de Plana, another student who, along with her sisters Hélène and Germaine, are heralded as examples of "impeccable deportment."

At the convent, Antoinette learns lessons about the manners and virtues a lady must possess, while simultaneously being inculcated in the beliefs and rituals of the Catholic Church. She spends a lot of time agonizing over the notions of sin, and she frequently wonders about and prays for her mother, although no one will tell her what has become of Annette. Christophine, meanwhile, has left to live with her son, and Aunt Cora too has departed for England. For a while Antoinette seldom sees her stepfather, but as she grows older his visits become more frequent. He always brings her an extravagant gift, and when she turns seventeen he announces that it is time for her to leave the convent, live with him, and be presented to society. He tells her that he has asked a group of English friends to come and spend the following winter in Jamaica; he says that he knows for sure at least one of them will accept.

That night, for the second time in her life, Antoinette dreams that she is walking in the forest with someone who hates her. She awakens and tells one of the nuns that she has dreamed she was in hell. The sister gives her some hot chocolate to drink and instructs her to put the nightmare out of her mind. Antoinette then remembers that her mother has died, although no one told her how it happened. She asks why such terrible things happen, but the nun tells her only that soon it will be morning.

Analysis

Once again time has passed and we learn about important developments in the plot only after they have already happened off the page. When Antoinette regains consciousness, Aunt Cora explains what took place on the night of the fire and tells her that Pierre is dead and her mother is "resting in the country." This is a euphemistic way of saying that Annette has lost her mind, but Antoinette is not fooled. She remembers, through the fog of feverish semi-consciousness, hearing her mother scream "Qui est là? Qui est là?" in emulation of dead parrot Coco and threatening to kill Mr. Mason.

Antoinette remarks that her forehead is bandaged from where Tia hit her with the jagged rock. She asks if she will have a scar and Aunt Cora maintains that the wound will not spoil her wedding day, a statement that foreshadows Antoinette's disastrous marriage to Rochester in the next section. Even though the rock does not leave a mark on her forehead, Antoinette is still emotionally scarred by the traumatic late-night flight from Coulibri and this, in some sense, will ruin her wedding day. She says as much to Rochester later in the work: "I think it did spoil me for my wedding day and all the other days and nights."

Another violent incident, Antoinette's encounter with the bullies, introduces the character of her half-brother Sandi onto the page for the first and only time. Like so many important moments in the novella, their meeting is only described briefly and thus its significance is easily missed. In fact, Antoinette does not even mention specifically that he is her father's illegitimate son. "I knew who he was, his name was Sandi, Alexander Cosway's son," Antoinette admits, electing to refer to her father by his full name in this one instance. The complex familial relationships grow even murkier when she continues, declaring "Once I would have said 'my cousin Sandi' but Mr. Mason's lectures had made me shy about my coloured relatives." It is left to the reader to draw the connections between these various bits of information and to reach the conclusion that Sandi is the result of one of Old Mr. Cosway's affairs with a slave woman. Rhys does not make this explicit until Daniel's letter much later in the work.

Something strange happens during Antoinette's narration of her time spent at the convent. Since the beginning of the work she has been using the past tense but here she inexplicably switches to the present and then to the future. "My needle is sticky, and creaks as it goes in and out of the canvas... Underneath, I will write my name in fire red, Antoinette Mason, née Cosway, Mount Calvary Convent, Spanish Town, Jamaica, 1839," she relates. Still, despite these shifts in tense, Antoinette maintains that the incidents she is describing are memories, incidents that occurred in the past. "Quickly, while I can, I must remember the hot classroom," she begins, suggesting that perhaps something will impede her ability to continue to tell the story. Such examples of narrative breakdown become increasingly common as Antoinette starts to lose her mind, but this is the first such incident in the text.

Other details from this section portend Antoinette's tragic fate and the novella's inevitable conclusion. After Mr. Mason's visit, in which he intimates that he is going to arrange for her to marry, she has a nightmare that she is wearing a white dress and following an unknown man deep into the forest. The bullies taunt her by saying that Aunt Cora is sending her to be locked up in the convent because she is crazy like her mother. Finally, the "fire red" thread she uses to sign her sampler prefigures the blaze that will destroy Thornfield Hall. Rhys's deliberate and heavy-handed foreshadowing makes Antoinette's trajectory a virtual certainty.

Summary

The second part of the novella, which comprises the majority of the pages of the work, starts out from the point-of-view of (Mr. Rochester), although he is not named specifically at any point in the text. When his segment of the narrative begins, Rochester has just married Antoinette, and the two are about to spend several weeks honeymooning at a small estate in the Windward Islands that used to belong to her mother. As they travel to the honeymoon site, the couple and their attending servants are caught in a downpour and forced to take shelter. Rochester refuses to go indoors with his wife, and takes the opportunity to brood alone and reflect on all that has transpired in the past month since he arrived in Jamaica.

The marriage was apparently a very hasty affair. Rochester mentally composes a missive to his father detailing what has taken place, and we learn that he spent the first three weeks of his visit in bed with fever and now seems to be questioning his decision to wed a Creole woman he barely knows. Still, he muses, there was a great financial incentive for him to do so - Richard Mason, the son of the recently-deceased Mr. Mason, has apparently paid him £30,000 "without question or condition" to marry Antoinette. Evidently the money has saved Rochester from disgraceful ruin and dependence on his older brother.

When the rain ceases, the caravan continues on its way to Granbois, which is the name of Antoinette's inherited property. They climb upward through verdant vegetation and breathtaking beauty of the natural landscape, but Rochester thinks it is all "too much... [too] much blue, too much purple, too much green... [the] flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near." Finally they arrive at the house, where Rochester is introduced to the servants, including Christophine. Immediately he senses her distrust and asks Antoinette if she is afraid of the older woman.

Antoinette then leads him around the house, which he finds neglected, deserted, and generally run-down. She hands him a glass of rum and toasts their happiness. She seems to sense that her new husband is not pleased with the estate and attempts to reassure him by saying, "This is my place and everything is on our side." Rochester then takes refuge in his dressing-room, which formerly belonged to Mr. Mason. He sits down and writes the letter to his father explaining that the marriage transaction has gone according to plan.

Rochester then lapses into reminiscences about his whirlwind courtship of and marriage to Antoinette. He reflects that he must have "played the part" of the besotted lover perfectly, even though every though he found every action to be an agonizing effort. Moreover, he says that he barely recalls the wedding ceremony and subsequent celebration, except that he thought he detected pity and scorn on the faces of some of the guests. He does remember that on the morning the nuptials were scheduled to take place, Richard. Mason burst into his chamber and announced that Antoinette was refusing to go through with it. Rochester then went to speak with her about her misgivings and ultimately convinced her that he would provide her with "peace, happiness, [and] safety."

He falls asleep in the midst of these thoughts, and when he awakens it is the dinner hour. Antoinette has dressed up for the meal, and Rochester repeatedly remarks that she looks beautiful. As they eat, moths and beetles fly into the candle flames and burn to death. The couple discusses their respective homelands - Rochester's England and Antoinette's Jamaica - and argue about which is more "unreal" and "dreamlike." Rochester believes in that reality lies in the people, houses, and streets of the city, while Antoinette finds it in the rivers, mountains, and waters of nature. Leaving the argument unresolved, they take a walk on the veranda. Antoinette tells Rochester about an earlier visit to Granbois when she slept outside in the moonlight, angering Christophine.

The next morning, Rochester awakes for find Antoinette staring at him. Christophine comes in with their breakfast, and Rochester expresses his displeasure with certain aspects of her demeanor - the way her skirt drags on the floor, the way she speaks, and the way she carries herself in general. Antoinette tells him that he does not understand their way of life.

Analysis

With the change in perspective from Antoinette to Rochester, the work's tone grows noticeably darker in this section. Even the opening lines of Rochester's narration are laden with a sense of foreboding. "So it was all over, the advance and retreat, the doubts and hesitations. Everything finished, for better or for worse," he states, hardly sounding like a man about to embark on his honeymoon. Notably, he depicts the courtship with Antoinette as a sort of war of the wills - a series of strategic "advance[s] and retreat[s]" on his part, calculated to overcome her "doubts and hesitations" as quickly as possible. His assertion that "everything [is] finished, for better or for worse" sounds like a parody of the traditional marriage vows, and moreover suggests that Antoinette's fate is sealed once and for all.

Both Antoinette and Rochester clearly harbor misgivings about their union. In fact, we learn that Antoinette got cold feet on the morning of the nuptials and almost refused to go through with it. When questioned, she says she's "afraid of what [might] happen" because the two know so little about each other. Rochester manages to convince her that, as his wife, she will have no reason to be afraid; he promises to keep her safe. Yet although he is kind and patient with her, his interior monologue reveals that his behavior is motivated by powerful self-interest rather than genuine concern for her welfare. "I did not relish going back to England in the role of rejected suitor jilted by this Creole girl," he explains.

Rochester views Antoinette as a conquest, and in this respect his pursuit of her can be read as a recapitulation of British colonialist impulses in the West Indies. More than anything else he desires her wealth, and only after he possesses it - and her - does he actually begin to question his hasty decision to marry. His doubts emerge as soon as he embarks on his honeymoon; for the first time he remarks that she looks more like a Creole than an Englishwoman. "And when did I begin to notice all this about my wife Antoinette?" he asks himself. "After we left Spanish Town I suppose. Or did I notice it before and refuse to admit what I saw?" Paranoid that others are looking upon him with pity and ridicule, he tries to convince himself that he is blessed with good fortune in the form of a wealthy and beautiful wife.

To an even greater extent than Mr. Mason, Rochester seems to incapable of understanding the way of life on the island. At Granbois he feels overwhelmed by the scenery and uncomfortable in the presence of the servants, especially Christophine. Perhaps most poignantly, when Antoinette discloses how afraid she used to be in the days right after Emancipation, he does not comprehend why. She tries to convey to him how difficult life used to be for her family, but he tells her that he would prefer not to hear such a "sad story."

Again, many of the details from this section foreshadow the events to come, the conclusion to Antoinette's tale as already written by Charlotte Brontë. Ominously, the honeymoon house is located near a village by the name of "Massacre." Rochester tramples one of the ceremonial frangipani wreaths set out for the wedding celebration, and moths fly into the candle flames and fall dead on the table during the dinner. Later, Rochester touches a rose and its petals fall to the ground. "Have all beautiful things sad destinies?" he muses aloud.

Summary

More time passes, and after being at Granbois for several weeks Rochester begins to forget his misgivings about marrying Antoinette. The weather is nice and he spends his days in the bathing pool, where Antoinette joins him in the afternoons. Each evening, they watch the sunset and Antoinette tells him about the history of the place. She speaks highly of the overseer, Baptiste, but Rochester inwardly maintains that he does not trust any of the black servants.

Rochester notices that Antoinette has two very different sides. During the day she smiles and converses with him openly, but at night she grows somber and melancholy, telling her husband how unhappy she was throughout her lonely childhood. "I never wished to live before I knew you. I always thought it would be better if I died," she says at one point. Another time she tells him that she is afraid of the happiness he has brought to her life, afraid that one day he will take it away again. He assures her that he would be foolish to do so, and finally they consummate their marriage. Both soon become constantly hungry for sex.

One day Rochester receives a letter from a man by the name of Daniel Cosway. Daniel explains that he is Antoinette's half-brother, another of Mr. Cosway's illegitimate children. He says he feels it is his moral obligation to inform Rochester that the Mason family has horribly duped him into marriage. According to Daniel, Old Mr. Cosway died "raving like his father before him," Annette Cosway-Mason has to be "shut away" for trying to kill her second husband, and their son Pierre was "an idiot from birth." With such a history of madness - "and worse" - in the family, Daniel intimates, Antoinette is sure to go the same way, and that is why Richard Mason was willing to pay Rochester such a tidy sum to marry her. Daniel insists that he has no reason to lie about these things, and instructs Rochester to visit him so that they can discuss the situation in more detail. Rochester believes everything he reads.

When he goes back to the house, Rochester finds Antoinette arguing with the servant Amelie, who tells her mistress that Christophine is planning to leave. Amelie then slyly suggests that Rochester is growing "tired of the sweet honeymoon." Antoinette responds by slapping her across the face, and the two get into a tussle. Rochester intervenes, and then Christophine arrives and acknowledges that she is indeed planning to leave, largely because she does not like the new master of the house.

Rochester goes to take a nap and then a walk in the forest. As he walks, he angrily thinks about the contents of the letter and how he has been cruelly tricked. In the woods, he comes across the ruins of a stone house. Then he happens upon a young girl carrying a basket on her head; she screams when she sees him and runs away sobbing hysterically. Rochester wanders around in circles for a while and is beginning to get scared when he runs into Baptiste, who leads him back to the house, brushing off his questions about ghosts haunting the area. Rochester will not be so easily dismissed, however; alone in his room that night he picks up a book about obeah and begins to read.

Analysis

At this point in the narrative, we begin to notice the substantial alterations that Rhys makes to the character of Rochester, changes that play up the aspect of cruelty implicit in Brontë's depiction of him in Jane Eyre. Brontë portrays him as a cold and reserved gentleman with a mysterious past. Rhys imagines what that past might have been like and emphasizes that his aloof demeanor results not from shyness but from heartlessness. Some critics consider it odd that, in what is ostensibly Antoinette's story, Rochester is allocated the majority of pages of narration. Yet by giving us unprecedented access to Rochester's brutal thoughts Rhys actually enables us empathize with Antoinette's plight to a much greater degree. "I did not love her," Rochester freely admits, continuing "I felt very little tenderness for her."

Nevertheless, Rochester does desire Antoinette and the newlyweds consummate their marriage in this section. Although Rhys does not describe the scene in graphic detail - indeed, the fact that the two are having intercourse might easily be missed - it is still highly disturbing because of the obvious imbalance of power between them. Late one night Antoinette asks her husband why he has made her want to live; he responds by saying that he simply wished it. She then wonders what will happen when he doesn't wish it any longer, insisting that she will die if he commands her to do so. "Die then! Die!" he orders, and remarks that she does so "many times. In my way, not in hers." Here Rhys uses death in the conventional poetical sense as a metaphor for sexual orgasm, a substitution that effectively underscores the element of sadomasochism in Antoinette and Rochester's interactions.

There is a painful contrast between what Rochester likes to say during intercourse and what Antoinette likes to hear afterwards. He commands her to "die" and then brings her back to life by telling her that she is "safe." She clearly yearns for the security she never had as a child, and Rochester pretends to provide it, all the while admitting to himself that "[i]t was not a safe game to play - in that place." He further acknowledges that there were several times she came very close to dying in her sense of the word.

In the scene at the bathing pool Antoinette mentions her half-brother Sandi to Rochester in a casual and offhand way. When Rochester asks her who taught her how to throw so well, she responds by saying simply, "Oh, Sandi taught me, a boy you never met." Once again she fails to explain either to the reader or to Rochester how she and Sandi are related. The savvy reader should have already divined their relationship and will wonder why she is so reticent to speak of it when she seems so willing to tell her new husband about everything else in her past. We are led to wonder if she is merely ashamed to admit her father's transgressions with slave women, or if she is trying to hide some other aspect of their relationship.

Among other things, Daniel's missive suggests that there has been an incestuous relationship between Antoinette and Sandi. It is never true whether or not this is the case, but his letter is effective because it confirms all of Rochester's doubts and suspicions. Since his marriage he has questioned the motives of the Mason family and has continually been plagued by the feeling that there is something wrong with his new wife. Daniel tells Rochester exactly what the Englishman has been expecting to hear, and although this unknown man also gives multiple reasons why he ought not to be trusted, Rochester believes his every word.

Summary

The novella's point-of-view then shifts once again, this time back to Antoinette. She rides her horse past an outcropping of rocks known as "Mounes Mors" - the "Dead Ones" - in order to visit Christophine and seek her advice. She arrives at Christophine's new house and reports that her husband has become distant and hateful, sleeping alone in his dressing-room and not speaking to her for hours on end. Antoinette asks Christophine what she can do to make him love her again, and the wise older woman tells her that she should take her money and leave him, but Antoinette will not consider deserting Rochester. When she explains to Christophine that under English law her wealth now belongs to her husband, Christophine is appalled. She herself has chosen to remain unattached and independent.

Christophine suggests that Antoinette ask Rochester for the money to visit a cousin in Martinique and use such a trip as a way to escape from her marriage. Antoinette, however, has other ideas; she tells Christophine that she wants to go to England, where she believes she will be "a different person" to whom "different things will happen." Christophine expresses doubt that such an ideal place as the England Antoinette envisions can possibly exist.

Antoinette then asks Christophine to use her obeah magic to concoct a love potion. Christophine warns that such a brew will only make Rochester feel desire for his wife, not love. She encourages Antoinette to talk to Rochester and explain her feelings and her past, but Antoinette insists that he will not listen - he will no longer even call her by her name, instead using the moniker "Bertha." Antoinette continues to beg for a magic spell, and finally Christophine relents, realizing that there is no one else who will help. She tells Antoinette that she will perform the necessary ritual if Antoinette will make an effort to talk to her husband. Antoinette agrees, and gives Christophine her purse, but Christophine says that she is not doing it for the money. When Christophine's son Jo-jo arrives, Antoinette takes her leave.

Antoinette then reminisces about some incidents that took place prior to her marriage. She recalls overhearing Aunt Cora argue with Richard Mason about his decision to give all of Antoinette's inheritance to Rochester without a legal settlement. Aunt Cora, who was too ill to attend the wedding, did not trust Rochester and gave Antoinette her valuable rings to safeguard in case she ever needed the money. Antoinette thinks about selling the rings now, but cannot think of anyone who would buy them on the isolated island.

Analysis

In this very brief section Rhys offers us insight into Antoinette's character as she struggles to save her marriage. This is the last time that we will see a lucid Antoinette in the text and the only time that we get to actually hear her side of the relationship. The rest of part two - including Antoinette's breakdown - is narrated by Rochester, and by the time the novella returns to Antoinette's perspective again at the end of the work she is far too confused to understand what has happened to her, much less place it in any sort of context. Thus these pages, although few in number, are immensely important to our understanding of the work.

The jarring shift in point-of-view encourages the reader to juxtapose the respective attitudes of Antoinette and Rochester toward each other and toward their union; to be sure, the two view their situation very differently. What is perhaps even more striking, however, is the subtle way in which their values are similar. As Rhys elucidates in this section, both parties place a great deal of emphasis on appearances - on how their marriage is perceived by other people, namely the servants in the house. Over and over again Rochester has expressed concern that the servants know something he does not and that they are mocking him for this reason. Significantly, Antoinette is preoccupied with the same anxiety. She explains her problem to Christophine by saying that "the servants know" she and Rochester are now sleeping in separate bedrooms, a statement that suggests the perception of conjugal estrangement is worse than the estrangement itself. Moreover, the first reason she gives for refusing to leave her husband is the fear that "then everyone, not only the servants, will laugh at [her]."

Of course, another reason for Antoinette's inability to leave is her complete financial dependence on her husband under English law. "I have no money of my own at all, everything I had belongs to him," she explains. Christophine finds this predicament horrifying and accuses Richard Mason of deliberately placing his stepsister in dire circumstances. The older woman explains that, while she has three children by three different men, she has purposefully refused to marry any of them, preferring instead to "keep [her] money," not "give it to no worthless man." Ironically the former slave is now much freer than the "rich white girl" whose family she served.

Antoinette's subjection to Rochester results largely from the corrupting influence of money - the power lorded by those who have it over those who do not. Christophine understands this: "Your husband certainly love money," she tells Antoinette. "Money have pretty face for everybody, but for that man money pretty like pretty self, he can't see nothing else." Sadly, even Antoinette's relationship with Christophine, her only real friend, is tainted by economic inequality. She herself acknowledges her attempt to use her "ugly money" to bribe Christophine into using obeah to make Rochester love her again.

The two women argue about many things during the course of Antoinette's visit, most notably over the existence of England, which Christophine disputes. Antoinette accuses her of being "ignorant" but the wise ex-slave correct in her assessment. The idyllic England of Antoinette's imagination does not actually exist. Antoinette has a presentiment about this but chooses to ignore it, insisting that she will be an entirely "different person" when she lives in England. In fact, this is true: the Antoinette we see locked in the attic in part three is almost unrecognizable. Again, Rhys makes extensive use of foreshadowing. "I know that house where I will be cold and not belonging, the bed I shall lie in has red curtains and I have slept there many times before, long ago. How long ago? In that bed I will dream the end of my dream," Antoinette thinks perplexedly, offering a preview of what is to come.

Summary

The point-of-view then switches back to Rochester, who receives a second letter from Daniel Cosway asking him why he has not yet come to visit. Rochester questions Amelie about Daniel, but she offers only contradictory information. At first Rochester instructs Amelie to tell Daniel not to write anymore, but something she says convinces him that it might be worth his while to pay the man a visit.

Rochester goes to visit Daniel, who immediately launches into a long diatribe about the wrongdoings of the Cosway family patriarch, the man he insists was his father, Old Alexander Cosway. Mr. Cosway apparently refused to acknowledge Daniel as his son, and Daniel clearly is still holding a grudge even though many years have passed. He tells Rochester that everyone on the island - the Mason family, Christophine, Antoinette herself and all of her relations - have duped the Englishman into marrying her. He suggests that Antoinette has a family history not only of madness but also of incest. Like Amelie, Daniel implies that Antoinette has had a sexual relationship with her half-brother Sandi. He tells Rochester that for £500 he will keep quiet about these delicate matters. Rochester is disgusted and leaves.

Later, back at Granbois, Antoinette attempts to speak to Rochester as Christophine advised. She asks him why he hates her and he admits that he has been to see Daniel Cosway. Antoinette says that Daniel is a liar who has no right to her family's name. "I know what he told you," she tells her husband. "That my mother was mad and an infamous woman and that my little brother who died was born a cretin and that I am a mad girl too." Rochester does not deny it, but when Antoinette tries to tell him her version of the story of her family he resists, saying that he would prefer to wait until later, when she can be more "reasonable."

Antoinette tries to explain the situation at Coulibri after her father died and left the family impoverished and isolated. She speaks about how difficult it was for her beautiful mother to adjust to their new lifestyle, and says that they all would have died if not for Christophine. Rochester, of course, is skeptical. Antoinette then tells him about her feeling that her mother was ashamed of her, and further intimates that she was responsible for the events leading to her mother's breakdown. When she tells about the fire that destroyed Coulibri, Rochester begins to question whether or not there is any truth to her tale. Finally, she relates her fevered stay at Aunt Cora's, her brother's death, and her mother's hatred for Mr. Mason and eventual madness.

In narrating her past, Antoinette becomes highly emotional and Rochester suggests that it is time to retire for the night. She agrees but asks him to come into her room to wish her 'goodnight' first. When he does so, Rochester notices a white powder on the floor, which Antoinette says is to keep away the cockroaches. She then hands him a glass of wine to drink, which apparently contains the potion concocted by Christophine. Rochester says that the last thing he remembers is putting out the candles on the bedside table.

Analysis

Rochester's visit to Daniel Cosway's shack takes place just after Antoinette's trip to see Christophine and the two encounters share many parallels, most notably the motif of bribery. Antoinette attempts to use her money to induce Christophine to perform an obeah ritual; Daniel tries to convince Rochester to pay him to keep silent about Antoinette's dark past. In both cases, the racial hegemony established under colonialism is radically subverted by the monetary transaction. The wealthy Englishman and his Creole wife find themselves forced to rely upon the assistance of former slaves, help that is no longer available free of charge. Daniel in particular is intent upon exercising his newfound power over those who formerly oppressed him.

Rochester fails to realize that much of the information that Daniel provides, as well as the information that others offer about him, is contradictory in nature. Daniel insists that his last name is Cosway and that his father was a white man, but Amelie says that both of his parents were black. Similarly, although she at first tells her master that Daniel is "a very superior man, always reading the Bible," mere minutes later she announces that he is "a bad man" who will "make trouble" if Rochester does not comply with his demands. Strangely, while Rochester is incapable of dealing with the irreconcilable versions of Antoinette's past, he seems experience little or no cognitive dissonance when it comes to Daniel. He is inclined to believe the worst about the woman he has married and the best about this man whom he has just met, a tendency illustrating his masculine prejudices - a hallmark of patriarchy.

Daniel tells Rochester that he is motivated by a simple sense of Christian duty, yet he is decidedly not an impartial or disinterested third party in the situation he describes. He clearly harbors a great deal of resentment for the slaveholding and womanizing Alexander Cosway, the man who refused to recognize Daniel as a son. In fact, several details indicate that Daniel's understanding of Christian values is rather depraved. Symbolically, the Biblical text "Vengeance is Mine" (Romans 12: 19-21) hangs framed on his wall and he keeps his eyes fixed upon it as he speaks. Along the same lines, he tells Rochester that his real name is Esau, like the jealous and hateful son of Isaac and Rebecca in the Bible who tries to kill his older brother Jacob.

Daniel expresses extreme jealousy of Old Mr. Cosway's other illegitimate children, Sandi and young Alexander, both of whom are lighter-skinned and more readily accepted into white social circles. Both Daniel and Amelie mention Antoinette's relationship with Sandi in a highly suggestive manner, but again these accounts contradict one another. Amelie says that she heard the two were married, but that she doesn't believe it because "Miss Antoinette a white girl with a lot of money, she won't marry with a coloured man even though he don't look like a coloured man." Daniel, meanwhile, hints at an incestuous affair between the two half-siblings. "I see them when they think nobody see them," he insinuates. Later he taunts Rochester by saying that the Englishman is not the first person to make love to Antoinette.

Antoinette, upon returning from Christophine's, confronts Rochester about his behavior. She tells him that there is always another side to every story, elucidating what is perhaps the most important idea underlying Wide Sargasso Sea. Unlike her husband, Antoinette understands that there is no absolute truth in the world, and she is capable of living with the uncertainty created by a multiplicity of possible interpretations of the same event. Rochester, meanwhile, feels the needs to impose fixed meaning on every situation he does not immediately understand. Notably, in revising Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys does not suggest that Antoinette's version of the story is the only legitimate one; rather, by offering the conflicting and contradictory opinions of Daniel, Rochester, and others, she opens up the possibility for several shifting - and equally valid - versions of Caribbean/British history.

Summary

Rochester dreams that he has been buried alive. When he awakens he realizes what has happened - that he was drugged and has slept with Antoinette - and gets sick to his stomach. He looks at his sleeping wife and covers her with a sheet as if she is dead. Then he runs outside and eventually finds himself near the ruined house. He falls asleep for a while, and upon waking up returns to Granbois, where he encounters Amelie and spontaneously decides to have sex with her. In the morning, he regrets it, however, finding her skin darker and her lips thicker than he had thought. Still, he gives her a large sum of money. Amelie takes it and tells him of her plans to leave the island. Rochester hears Antoinette leave the house; she seems to know that her husband has slept with one of the servants.

Antoinette does not return for several days. During this time, Rochester writes to his friend Mr. Fraser asking about Christophine, who, he learned from Daniel Cosway, was once arrested for practicing the dark arts. Fraser writes back and tells Rochester that Christophine is still living in Jamaica, not far from Granbois. The letter instructs Rochester to be on the lookout for anything suspicious. "So much for you, Pheena," Rochester thinks to himself.

Antoinette finally returns and takes to her bed. Christophine comes to the house, and Antoinette frequently and frantically rings a handbell asking for her or Baptiste. Rochester is shocked when she finally emerges from her room: she is completely disheveled in addition to being drunk. She confronts him for ruining the one place in the world that she loved, and tells him that she hates him for it. When he reaches for her wrist, she tries to bite him and then smashes several bottles of liquor against the wall.

Christophine comforts Antoinette, then confronts Rochester about what he has done to his wife. She says she knows that he has mistreated Antoinette physically and emotionally. Rochester in turn blames Christophine and obeah for Antoinette's hysterical condition. Christophine denies any wrongdoing, saying that she has just tried to care for Antoinette and make her sleep comfortably. Christophine tells Rochester that she knows he only married Antoinette for her money, and further accuses him of trying to "break her up" psychologically, using and then withholding sex and affection to bring her under his control. Rochester admits to himself that Christophine's assessment of the situation is correct, but does not otherwise demonstrate any remorse for his actions.

Christophine begs Rochester to try to love Antoinette again, insisting that everything Daniel Cosway has said is a lie. She tried to explain the conditions that Antoinette and her mother lived in and the circumstances that lead to the latter's mental breakdown, to no avail. Rochester simply will not listen to anything she has to say. When Christophine realizes this, she begs Rochester to return half of Antoinette's dowry and go back to England without his wife. Christophine promises to take Antoinette to Martinique and care for her there, and Rochester actually considers the offer for a moment. Then, however, Christophine suggests that Antoinette will remarry and find love and happiness with someone else. Rochester flies into a rage at this idea and orders Christophine to leave the house; if she refuses he says he will call the police.

With no other choice, Christophine prepares to go, but first asks what will become of Antoinette. Rochester declares that he will take her back to Jamaica to consult the doctors in Spanish Town as well as Richard Mason. Christophine suspects that he will conspire to have Antoinette locked away just like her mother.

Just as soon as Christophine leaves, Rochester begins composing letters. First he writes to his father explaining that "unforeseen circumstances" have arisen; he says he assumes that his father must know what has happened. Then he pens a note to a firm of lawyers in Spanish Town requesting a furnished house and a staff of servants whom he will compensate amply for their discretion. With these tasks accomplished, he sits down to a glass of rum and begins sketching. The finished picture shows a large English-style house surrounded by trees, with a woman standing in one of the third floor rooms.

A few days later all the preparations have been made and Rochester and Antoinette are about to depart from Granbois. As they get ready to leave Rochester reflects on the situation. He alternates between feeling immense anger at having been duped into marrying "a mad girl" and thinking that perhaps he has made a terrible mistake in believing Daniel. He experiences a momentary crisis of conscience in which he questions the fate he has in store for his wife. On the verge of apologizing, he looks into her eyes and sees how much she has grown to hate him. Instantly his heart hardens again and he becomes resolute in his decision.

Baptiste saddles the horses and says a heartfelt farewell to Antoinette. Rochester becomes annoyed when a Nameless Boy begins to cry hysterically. Antoinette explains that they boy had hoped to be taken along with the couple; indeed, when they arrived she made just such a promise to him. Rochester once more becomes furious with her. As they ride away from her beloved home, he muses that she will never see the place again. The Nameless Boy follows them for a while, still sobbing.

Analysis

As Christophine feared would be the case, the obeah love potion does not work on Rochester. "Even if I can make him come to your bed, I cannot make him love you," the old woman warned Antoinette, adding "Afterward he hate you." This proves to be exactly what happens. When Rochester awakens next to Antoinette and realizes what has taken place, he feels nothing but disgust and contempt for his wife. Symbolically he covers her with a sheet as is she were "a dead girl"; she is now dead to him and his actions throughout the rest of the novella serve to render her nothing more than a zombie.

Rochester retaliates for what he perceives as his wife's betrayal by sleeping with the mixed-race servant Amelie, but once more he feels nothing but remorse in the morning. He sends the girl away immediately because he can no longer stand the sight of her dark skin and thick lips; he has come to hate all things associated with the Caribbean. Again Rhys illustrates the corrupting power of money, as Rochester of uses his wealth to reinstate a system of slavery on the island. He gives Amelie a large sum of money as though she were a prostitute, and although she accepts it she tells him that after the night they spent together she now can find it in her heart to feel sorry for Antoinette. Amelie has experienced Rochester's cruelty for herself.

Rochester's brutality appears to be physical as well as psychological in nature. In this section Christophine accuses him of abusing Antoinette, saying that she noticed sings that he has been "very rough" with his wife. Antoinette, upon returning to the house, responds to her husband's infidelity with violence of her own. She smashes bottles of rum against the walls and bites Rochester on the arm when he tried to stop her. She becomes the image of her mother in this section, telling Rochester that she hates him and wants to kill him. In some ways, it appears, Daniel's assessment was correct: Antoinette has gone "the same way" as Annette.

In a startling demonstration of independence Christophine makes a series of heavy accusations against Rochester. His internal monologue reveals that he does not dispute anything she says, although he does not admit anything out loud. His thoughts become increasingly difficult to follow as the tension escalates. He seems to be tormented by fragments of many different conversations he has had since arriving in the West Indies, including things that he has said to Antoinette, things that she has said to him, things that Daniel told him, and - most strangely - things that Antoinette told Christophine when he was not there. It is not clear how he would know these pieces of information, but the fact that Rhys gives him at least partial access to Antoinette's thoughts suggests that he consciously understands that he is destroying her.

Rochester's cruelty, then, is not inadvertent although he does manage to convince himself that it is justified. Still, during his final moments at Granbois his cognitive dissonance overcomes him and, for an instant, he wonders if "everything [he] had imagined to be truth was false." Such a possibility seems to send him over the edge and the last few pages of his narration begin to sound like the rant of a madman. There is no such thing, Rhys suggests, as 'truth' or 'madness'; both of these are constructions put in place and exalted by those in power as a way to oppress the weak. This idea is a fundamental tenant of post-structuralism.

Summary

The third section of the work opens with three italicized paragraphs that appear to be from the point-of-view of Grace Poole, the character from Jane Eyre hired to look after the madwoman in the attic. Speaking to another servant by the name of Leah, Grace explains that she was hired by a woman she calls "Mrs. Eff" (Jane Eyre's Mrs. Fairfax) and paid a significant amount of money to look after a "girl who lives in her own darkness." Mrs. Eff instructs Grace that "there must be no gossip" about her charge, a Creole lady who was brought back to England by the master of the house. Grace insists that she does not breathe a word of what is going on, and explains that she chooses to stay on in the house because it provides "a shelter from the world outside which... can be a black and cruel world to a woman." She speculates that this is why all of the female servants remain, but notes that the woman she looks after is not content with her restricted existence. Grace says she fears the fierce look in the girl's eyes.

Antoinette then takes up the narrative responsibilities for the remainder of the novella. She awakens just as Grace Poole is lighting a fire and she watches it burn with a great deal interest. As she stares at the flames she wonders why she has been brought to this attic and why she has been forced to stay there for so long. It is unclear precisely how many weeks or months have passed since her arrival - at one point she says "nights and days and days and nights, hundreds of them" - but she has had definitely time to develop a routine. Each night she pretends to be asleep while Grace Poole drinks and counts out a pile of money. When Grace finally falls asleep, Antoinette sneaks out of bed, removes the key from around her caretaker's neck, and wanders about the darkened house. On one such night she sees a girl in a white dress, probably Jane Eyre, who becomes convinced there is a ghost in the house.

Antoinette's account reveals just how confused and disoriented she has become during her period of confinement. She thinks she beholds her mother in the tapestry in the next room, she describes hearing voices in her head, and she refuses to believe she is in England despite everything she is told. She recalls the ocean voyage to her current destination and remembers asking one of the crew members to help her. The man responded by summoning Rochester, and Antoinette became overwrought and had to be given a sedative. She insists that the ship must have gotten lost on its way to England.

One morning Antoinette awakens aching all over but with no memory of what transpired on the previous day. Grace tells her that a man, her stepbrother Richard Mason, came to see her. Antoinette at first insists that she knows no such person but then recalls writing a letter to Richard in which she begged him to rescue her. She runs around frantically searching for the missive, which she had hidden away, but Grace tells her it is no use: Richard will never be coming back. Antoinette evidently attacked him with a knife after he said he could not "interfere legally" between her and her husband.

Antoinette then races about the room in search of the red dress she brought with her from Jamaica, the dress she was wearing the last time she saw Sandi. She wistfully remembers the way he kissed her when they said 'goodbye' to one another. The sight of the dress lying on the floor makes her think of fire spreading across the room, which in turn reminds her of something that she must do. She says that she will do it "quite soon now."

That night she dreams for the third time that she has stolen the keys from Grace and ventured into the main part of the house. She takes a candle with her and goes to "a large room with red carpet and red curtains" where she lights more candles. In her dream, she becomes anxious when she thinks that someone is going to find her in the room, which then suddenly turns into Aunt Cora's room. Antoinette becomes angry and knocks all of the candles down. They catch the curtains and fire begins to spread. Still dreaming, she goes up to the top story of the house and stands on the battlements where scenes of her past life flash before her eyes: Jamaica, Coulibri, the parrot Coco, Tia, Christophine, and Rochester all flash before her eyes.

She wakes up from the dream and calls out. Grace Poole comes over to see what is the matter but Antoinette pretends to be sound asleep. As soon as she hears Grace snoring again, Antoinette gets up, takes the key, lights a candle, and steps out into the passage. She is going to reenact the dream and burn down the house, thus bringing Wide Sargasso Sea to the same conclusion as Jane Eyre.

Analysis

Grace Poole's account is important because it is the only part of the narrative from the point-of-view of a relatively unbiased third party. Grace has never met Rochester and knows little or nothing about what happened between him and Antoinette in the Caribbean. It is not clear whether her brief moments as narrator are conversational fragments overheard and filtered through the consciousness of Antoinette; this is certainly possible, as Grace at times seems to be speaking to another servant named Leah. Grace's monologue reiterates several of the work's major themes, most notably the idea that money is the root of evil. "I don't serve the devil for no money," Grace says, but Mrs. Eff insists that Rochester is "gentle, generous, [and] brave," although his stay in the West Indies has altered him almost beyond recognition.

Grace explains that Rochester's father and brother have died and as a result he has inherited all of the family fortune; however, as she points out "he was a wealthy man before that." Ironically his marriage to Antoinette - a union he entered for purely fiscal reasons - has turned out to be unnecessary. Only by depriving Antoinette of her financial independence was Rochester able to assert his own independence from his father and older brother, and now that he no longer needs her money it is far too late. Antoinette has paid for his transgressions, both with her dowry and with her sanity.

The final section of the novella overlaps for the first and only time with the storyline of Jane Eyre, and by this point, Antoinette has effectively become Bertha, the madwoman originally created by Charlotte Brontë. Although her portrait of Antoinette remains sympathetic, in this part of the work Rhys reverts largely to Brontë's characterization. If Antoinette was not mad before, being confined in the attic has certainly rendered her so. She no longer seems to know who or where she is, and Richard Mason even fails to recognize her when he comes to visit. Moreover, Antoinette has become violent and unruly, just as Brontë portrayed her. The conclusion, in which she prepares to burn down the house, comes as no surprise.

Nevertheless, Wide Sargasso Sea stands as a literary masterpiece even apart from its connection to Jane Eyre. In what is perhaps her most significant addition to Brontë's work, Rhys again raises the possibility of an incestuous relationship between Antoinette and her half-brother in the final pages of the novella. In one of her only lucid moments, Antoinette mentions Sandi in a way that could easily be construed as sexual. She explains that he used to come to see her when "that man" (probably Rochester) was away, and that the last time he did so she was wearing a dress of bright red fabric, the color symbolically associated with passion and lust. The two shared a "life and death kiss" before parting, Antoinette says, and this too suggests an element of romance between them.

Like the rest of the work, the depiction of Antoinette in the final pages of the work retains certain autobiographical elements from the life of Jean Rhys. In her letters Rhys writers that she identified strongly with the madwoman she created. Indeed, she certainly knew what it was like to live an isolated existence. At the time of Wide Sargasso Sea's publication in the 1960s, Jean Rhys was living as a recluse in a remote corner of England and drinking herself into a stupor. Because of her increasingly antisocial behavior during this time, she was actually ordered by the court to seek out the care of mental health practitioners. Scholars and biographers have long pondered Rhys's prolonged absence from the literary scene while simultaneously noting that her period of seclusion led to the creation of her greatest work. Critics Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar have suggested that the figure of the madwoman in the attic that haunts the pages of nineteenth-century literature figures as an emblem of the woman writer. Perhaps this is quite literally true in the case of Jean Rhys; that is, perhaps Rhys, like Antoinette, was seeking a safe haven where she could allow her imagination to run free.

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• Summary and Analysis of Part 1, Section 3
• Summary and Analysis of Part 2, Section 1
• Summary and Analysis of Part 2, Section 2
• Summary and Analysis of Part 2, Section 3
• Summary and Analysis of Part 2, Section 4
• Summary and Analysis of Part 2, Section 5
• Summary and Analysis of Part 3
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