Summary
On a cool, cloudy day, Rochester senses the approaching
hurricane season. He wonders if anyone pities him for being married
to "a drunken lying lunatic." He does not love Antoinette but wants
to control her, at least make her his madwoman.
He thinks of her as a shameless, crazy whore "gone her mother's
way," and he aims to hurt her by taking her away from the island
she loves. He has already arranged their trip to England.
On the day of their departure, Antoinette remains expressionless.
Once so rapturous about the tropical landscape, she now seems indifferent.
She no longer sings the island songs or recites its lore, but instead
looks silently at the sea. Rochester, on the other hand, feels some
sadness as they leave Granbois. Looking at Antoinette, he asks her
silently to forgive him, but retracts when he sees hatred in her
eyes. He stares at her in order to force the hatred out of her eyes, making
her eyes appear blank and lifeless.
A young boy carrying baskets suddenly begins to sob as
they prepare to leave. Rochester recoils at the boy's raw emotion.
When he asks the servants what is wrong, none respond. With an indifferent tone,
Antoinette tells Rochester that the boy loves him and that she herself
promised the boy that Rochester would never leave him. Rochester
is enraged that she made a promise in his name. Still sounding indifferent,
Antoinette apologizes for her misconduct. She remains unmoved even
as she parts from Baptiste—proof for Rochester that she is fully
crazy. He is anxious to lock her away in England so that she can
become "a memory to be avoided."
Analysis
In this section, descriptions of the island bear increasing
similarity to England, mirroring Rochester's movement back to his
own terrain. Just as Rochester wills all emotion out of Antoinette's
eyes, so he wills all tropical elements out of the landscape. He
commands the "brazen" sun to leave the sky as he repeats the words
"no sun, no sun." He thus forces his own impressions on the landscape,
which begins to appear more cool and gray. In a sense, Rochester
has gained as much mastery over the land as he has already gained
over Antoinette. Indeed, he explicitly conflates Antoinette with
the land when he describes her as a tropical tree broken by the
wind; he serves as the wind that has forcibly uprooted her from
her native soil. Rochester has asserted control over the tropics.
That Antoinette appears lifeless seems to confirm her
earlier description of "two deaths": she is a living corpse, a hollow
shell. It is as if Rochester has appropriated obeah magic to his
own cruel purposes. By thinking and wishing Antoinette dead, he
has made her lifeless. Rhys thus manifests the dangerous power of
the unconscious mind, as well as the close link between fantasy
and reality.
An emblem of feeling, the sobbing boy shows how cruel
Rochester has become. The boy exposes his emotions with an openness
that the Englishman scorns. Rochester, shut off from the world of
feeling, cannot comfort the boy or even communicate with him. The boy
"hasn't learned any English that [Rochester] can understand," even
though Antoinette says that the boy has been trying hard to learn
it. The boy's inability to communicate with Rochester highlights
the cultural and linguistic blocks between the Englishman and the
natives. It is this misunderstanding that makes Rochester pitiless and
harsh.
