The Oppression of Slavery and Entrapment
The specter of slavery and entrapment pervades Wide
Sargasso Sea. The ex-slaves who worked on the sugar plantations
of wealthy Creoles figure prominently in Part One of the novel,
which is set in the West Indies in the early nineteenth century.
Although the Emancipation Act has freed the slaves by the time of
Antoinette’s childhood, compensation has not been granted to the
island’s black population, breeding hostility and resentment between
servants and their white employers. Annette, Antoinette’s mother,
is particularly attuned to the animosity that colors many employer-employee
interactions.
Enslavement shapes many of the relationships in Rhys’s
novel—not just those between blacks and whites. Annette feels helplessly imprisoned
at Coulibri Estate after the death of her husband, repeating the
word “marooned” over and over again. Likewise, Antoinette is doomed
to a form of enslavement in her love for and dependency upon her
husband. Women’s childlike dependence on fathers and husbands represents
a figurative slavery that is made literal in Antoinette’s ultimate
physical captivity.
The Complexity of Racial Identity
Subtleties of race and the intricacies of Jamaica’s social
hierarchy play an important role in the development of the novel’s
main themes. Whites born in England are distinguished from the white Creoles,
descendants of Europeans who have lived in the West Indies for one
or more generations. Further complicating the social structure is
the population of black ex-slaves who maintain their own kinds of
stratification. Christophine, for instance, stands apart from the
Jamaican servants because she is originally from the French Caribbean
island of Martinique. Furthermore, there is a large mixed-race population,
as white slave owners throughout the Caribbean and the Americas
were notorious for raping and impregnating female slaves. Sandi
and Daniel Cosway, two of Alexander Cosway’s illegitimate children,
both occupy this middle ground between black and white society.
Interaction between these racial groups is often antagonistic. Antoinette
and her mother, however, do not share the purely racist views of
other whites on the island. Both women recognize their dependence
on the black servants who care for them, feeling a respect that
often borders on fear and resentment. In this manner, power structures
based on race always appear to be on the brink of reversal.
The Link Between Womanhood, Enslavement, and Madness
Womanhood intertwines with issues of enslavement and madness
in Rhys’s novel. Ideals of proper feminine deportment are presented
to Antoinette when she is a girl at the convent school. Two of the
other Creole girls, Miss Germaine and Helene de Plana, embody the
feminine virtues that Antoinette is to learn and emulate: namely,
beauty, chastity and mild, even-tempered manners. Mother St. Justine’s praises
of the “poised” and “imperturbable” sisters suggest an ideal of
womanhood that is at odds with Antoinette’s own hot and fiery nature.
Indeed, it is Antoinette’s passion that contributes to her melancholy
and implied madness.
Rhys also explores her female characters’ legal and financial dependence
on the men around them. After the death of her first husband, Antoinette’s
mother sees her second marriage as an opportunity to escape from
her life at Coulibri and regain status among her peers. For the
men in the novel, marriage increases their wealth by granting them
access to their wives’ inheritance. In both cases, womanhood is
synonymous with a kind of childlike dependence on the nearest man.
Indeed, it is this dependence that precipitates the demise of both
Antoinette and Annette. Both women marry white Englishmen in the
hopes of assuaging their fears as vulnerable outsiders, but the
men betray and abandon them.
