content warning: discussion of racism and colonialism

In Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, the protagonist Antoinette treads a liminal path in which she wrestles with her Creole ancestry: her European heritage, being the daughter of a plantation owner, and her Caribbean roots, being born in Jamaica. I was struck by the certain kind of strength and perseverance required to juggle the two worlds in tandem, neither of which Antoinette is wholly a part of. A myriad of texts and movements reflect on this psychological constraint and lack of an innate sense of belonging, including the depiction of the Windrush generation in Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, and Anna’s isolation in Rhys’ novel Voyage in The Dark as she migrates from Dominica to London.

Wide Sargasso Sea is not merely a novel about Antoinette’s husband, Mr Rochester’s, indifference and ignorance towards his wife’s Creole heritage. At the beginning of the novel, Antoinette exclaims that she is of Spanish Town, Jamaica. This serves more as a reminder of Antoinette’s identity to herself than anyone else. Antoinette has to protect her identity before it is rewritten in Western terms. The novel is undeniably tragic and poignant in the sense that we witness Antoinette spiral into insanity, yet I couldn’t help but question whether the real tragedy is the fact that Antoinette has to navigate Mr Rochester’s preconception of her, that of her Jamaican counterparts, and ultimately of herself. The need to validate her identity in the face of Western preconceptions of ‘otherness’, to the questioning of who the ‘native’ is- seen in the fact that the black Jamaicans don’t view Antionette as ‘black’ enough- dehumanizes her. That is the real tragedy. Yet there is a faint glimmer of light here as Antoinette is strongly ‘rooted’ in her identity because she has had to persevere to protect it. Mr Rochester, threatened by his lack of connection to Dominica, shuts out Antoinette and indeed her identity. Her identity is one which he is not ‘native’ to, and so he dismisses it just as he dismisses Antionette’s madness. This reveals his own insecurities within himself.

Despite Antoinette’s imprisonment in Mr Rochester’s attic following the failure of their marriage, this is not the focus of the novel. It’s focus is the strength required to overcome being defined by otherness. Antoinette has constantly had to carve out her identity in a climate where she is deemed the ‘other’. The strength to retain one’s identity within a climate of Eurocentrism is one that should not be underestimated.

When I read Bronte’s Jane Eyre, I was dissatisfied with the savage portrayal of Antoinette. Imagine a beautiful, dazzling -indeed, so dazzling that it is almost illusory- Caribbean landscape. As the novel progresses, it is no surprise that the landscape becomes more threatening from Mr Rochester’s perspective, which reflects his detachment from the Dominican landscape. This is the drought of that pearl glazed, dazzling seashore. We become more imbued with Mr Rochester’s unreliable view as he becomes more distanced from Dominica and the Creole landscape and culture. This includes Daniel Cosway’s letter to Mr Rochester, detailing that the Cosway family have not told Mr Rochester about their past. The depiction of Antoinette as mad is a complete dismissal of the colonial figure because of their discomfort with it. Except this is just the crux of what Rhys is asking for. The colonised, the colonizer, the native and the non-native, white and black… these binaries don’t have to be isolated, but the reader can educate themselves about black history to alleviate the pressure that the colonial subject endures in retaining their identity. Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest is portrayed as a brute, a noble savage, but it is somehow perplexing that he could speak so eloquently. Antoinette and Caliban have an affinity to their respective islands and cultural landscape which no other character has. Indeed, it is ignorant to view Caliban simply as a noble savage or Antoinette as ‘the madwoman in the attic’, rather than the full blazing technicolour of their individual identities. So, as Antionette writes her name in fire red at the beginning of the novel:

‘I will write my name in fire red, Antoinette Mason, nee Cosway, Mount Calvary Convent, Spanish Town, Jamaica’,

this is not just an assertion of her identity but an assertion of the strength that it takes to preserve it.

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