Wide Sargasso Sea Part Two, Section Seven Summary & Analysis

Summary

Rochester wakes early the next morning feeling suffocated, having dreamt that he was buried alive. Cold and sick, he staggers to his dressing room and vomits, and he continues to vomit the rest of the day. He believes he has been poisoned. He enters Antoinette's room and hatefully watches her sleep. Detecting a smile on her lips as she dreams, he covers her face with a torn sheet, as though he were covering a dead person.

Rochester runs outside to the forest and finds himself near the ruined house he had seen on his earlier forest walk. He sleeps for several hours, waking when it is already late and chilly. He heads back to Granbois, where he shuts himself in his dressing room. The servant Amelie comes to care for Rochester, bringing him food and wine and cradling him as though he were a child. She tells him, "I am sorry for you," then begins to laugh merrily. Rochester pulls Amelie down onto the bed with him. Not until the next morning does he consider Antoinette, who has been listening to his sexual play with the servant through the thin partition between their rooms.

As Amelie dresses the next morning, Rochester offers her money, which she accepts without a word of thanks. She details her plans to leave Granbois and travel to Rio to find rich men. After Amelie exits the room, Rochester hears Antoinette leave the house on horseback.

Antoinette does not return for three days. On the third day, Rochester writes a letters to his friend in Spanish Town inquiring about Christophine, who had earlier been arrested for practicing obeah. Rochester learns that Christophine has disappeared after being released from jail, and that the local police are on the lookout for any trouble.

As Rochester sits in his hammock at dusk, Antoinette returns home and goes immediately upstairs to her room, without uttering a word to her husband. He follows her inside the house and tries to enter her room, pushing her blocked door partially open. He sees her lying in bed, furiously ringing her hand-bell as she summons Baptiste and Christophine (Rochester has already spotted Christophine in the kitchen).

When Antoinette opens the door, she looks crazed and unkempt. She grabs for a bottle of rum and accuses Rochester of being no better than the slaveholders he condemns, having slept with a servant and sent her away. Antoinette cries when Rochester calls her "Bertha," accusing him of trying to transform her through obeah magic. She says she hates him for ruining the one place she loved. When Rochester grabs Antoinette's wrist, she sinks her teeth into his arm. Ferocious and wild-eyed, she curses him, and then begins sobbing when Christophine enters the room. Rochester walks to the veranda and hears Christophine comfort his wife, speaking softly and singing.

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