Summary
Rochester receives a note from a man named Daniel Cosway,
one of Alexander Cosway's bastard children. The note informs Rochester of
Antoinette's depraved background: her father was a detestable, wicked
slave owner and her mother a spoilt woman who died a dangerous lunatic.
Daniel Cosway writes that he considers it his Christian duty to
warn Rochester about his new wife. Daniel advises Rochester to visit
him in the nearby town of Massacre.
After reading the letter at the bathing pool, Rochester
walks back to the house, sweating and trembling, and he crushes
an orchid along the way. He overhears Amelie and his wife arguing.
When Amelie makes a snide comment about Rochester, Antoinette slaps her;
the two fight until Rochester intervenes, and then Amelie leaves the
room, singing about a "white cockroach." In her anger, Antoinette
tears up a bed sheet with scissors.
When Christophine enters, Antoinette asks her if what
Amelie has said is indeed true—that Christophine is leaving. Christophine confirms
that she is going to work with her son, leaving the estate and its
unfriendly master. Amelie reenters the room, smiling mischievously
at Rochester, but Christophine threatens Amelie. After both servants
exit, Antoinette tries to explain to her husband how painful it
is to be rejected by both the blacks and the English, but he cannot
understand.
Later that day, as Rochester walks in the forest, he begins
to think that his father, his brother, and Richard Mason have deliberately
tricked him into marrying a lunatic, that "they all knew." As he
prepares to head home, he encounters a girl who screams at the sight
of him and runs away. Left alone in the chilly and dark forest, Rochester
loses his way. Finally, Baptiste appears and leads Rochester back,
dismissing his questions about zombies and the seemingly haunted
road. Finding Antoinette's door bolted, Rochester goes to his room,
where he drinks alone, reading a chapter on obeah in a book called The
Glittering Coronet of Isles.
Analysis
The introduction of Daniel Cosway deepens Rhys's exploration
of inherited suffering. With a white father and a black mother,
Daniel represents the racially split counterpart to Antoinette's
culturally split identity; he is even more dramatically torn between
the races than his fully white sister. Like Antoinette, whose mother
disowns and rejects her, Daniel is also rejected, as a bastard son.
He also suffers the indignities of his parentage and is powerless
to change his inherited stigma. As rejected children, Daniel and
Antoinette share their sense of isolation, displacement, and anger.
Although Daniel claims he is motivated by a charitable
Christian kindness, his letter betrays a deeply rooted spitefulness.
Attacking everyone from his own family members to distant acquaintances, Daniel's
letter bears the stamp of one who is alone and threatened. Not knowing
what to believe, and unequipped to trust his own instinct, Rochester
clings to the worst suggestion in Daniel's message, confirming his
suspicion that he has been "had." Rochester, too, feels that the
world is against him, and he begins to view Antoinette and Christophine
as his enemies. Furthermore, Antoinette herself, like Daniel and
Rochester, feels mistreated. She feels abused and abandoned by everyone,
from Christophine to Amelie to Rochester. Like Mr. Mason before
him, Rochester is unsympathetic to Antoinette's plight—that is,
her peculiar relationship to the black community that both embraces
and reviles her.
