Wide Sargasso Sea: Part 1 Summary & Analysis

The complexity of Caribbean racial dynamics is introduced. Antoinette does not explain that Annette’s Martinique background divides her from white society because Martinique is a French colony. This makes Annette Creole, while the Jamaican ladies that Antoinette mentions are of English descent. Instead, Antoinette addresses the reader as if we are insiders who would understand these distinctions naturally. This mode of address is a central feature of her narration, and it means that many key truths are implied rather than stated directly. Here we are similarly left to deduce that her father is dead, and that the deteriorating roads are a consequence of a diminished workforce in the wake of Emancipation.

Mr. Luttrell’s discontent and suicide are the first things that Antoinette explicitly associates with the Emancipation Act, setting the tone for her troubled understanding of freedom. The parallel superstitions of the white and black populations regarding Mr. Luttrell’s abandoned estate indicate the close, if fraught, relationship between these two cultural groups. The tension between Antoinette’s family and the nearby population of former slaves is introduced, as well as the family’s relatively recent poverty. Annette in particular is increasingly vulnerable, having now lost the protection and support of both her husband and the only other white man she trusted.

Godfrey’s reaction to the killing of the horse introduces the difficult position of the black servants who’ve chosen to remain in the employ of former masters in the novel. Rather than declare his loyalties one way or the other, Godfrey attempts to remain neutral. Annette’s desperation increases after this crime, as her means of independent mobility is taken form her with the loss of the horse. Antoinette’s belief that she might be able to make something not true by not speaking of it is also introduced. The complicated connection between words and truth plays a major role in the novel.

Annette’s helpless retreat into herself foreshadows her later descent into madness, and marks a shift in her relationship with Antoinette. Antoinette is perplexed by the alienation she feels from her mother, and lacks even the means to understand its cause, because she is kept in the dark about the truth of Pierre’s condition. The garden and the natural world are introduced as a refuge for Antoinette as well as a symbol for the tension between order and freedom that pervades the novel. The garden, like Antoinette, is being left in neglect by its caretakers. While it is free to grow beautiful and wild, it is also permeated with decay.

Christophine is introduced as a foil, or contrast, to Annette. Though they are similar in some respects, particularly their Martiniquais heritage, Christophine is strong and able (and black) where Annette is weak and changeable (and white). Christophine nurtures Antoinette and keeps her company when Annette shuts her out, and while Annette’s relationships with her servants are often fraught, as we saw with Godfrey, the girls who work for Christophine fear and revere her. Christophine’s mysterious power over others is referenced here, but not yet explained.

Annette’s distrust of her servants is reiterated and emphasized—she can’t understand why they would choose to keep working at Coulibri after being set free, unless their goal was to take advantage of her. Christophine’s powerful status in the house is further emphasized as the sole servant who remains in Annette’s good graces. The rift between Annette and Antoinette grows, and hair is introduced as a symbol of female security and comfort.

Antoinette feels the sting of racial hatred personally for the first time, and seeks refuge in the garden, her place of freedom and escape. The term "white cockroach" implies the way that the native blacks who were enslaved and now freed see the whites as an infestation, something that doesn't belong.

Tia and Antoinette briefly provide a model for cooperation between their respective cultural groups. However, when money is brought into the equation, the girls quickly fall out. This childish bet and disagreement reflects the socio-economic disparity between whites and blacks that is at the center of racial tension in the area, and drives the growing discontent among the black neighbors surrounding Coulibri. The girls, in their argument, even repeat language and opinions clearly drawn from adults in their respective communities. The fact that Tia steals Antoinette’s dress as well as her money highlights the symbolic significance of appearance and attire with respect to female power and security in the novel.

Antoinette’s disheveled appearance mortifies Annette because it highlights the family’s poverty and exclusion from the ranks of polite society, to which the Luttrell’s belong. The symbolic significance of clothing expands further into an argument between Annette and Christophine about the poor nature of Annette’s parenting as indicated by Antoinette’s inadequate wardrobe. As Christophine dresses Antoinette in a dress that is too small for her, a further humiliation, it is clear that the Luttrell’s reaction to Antoinette’s attire sparks an even larger topic of discontent—Christophine sees in their disdain the very nature of the new white power in Jamaica.

The incident with the Luttrell’s pushes Annette and Antoinette even further apart. It also moves Annette to seek security and belonging through the only method available to her—courtship and marriage. She takes action, in the form of ordering new dresses to be made, to make herself and Antoinette appear to be a part of the society to which she aspires to belong, though she does so as a last resort, selling off her jewels, which must be close to her last source of money. Meanwhile, in her alienation from her mother, Antoinette again finds refuge and order in nature, and sees nature as being better—less cruel—than people. In this part of the novel Antoinette's nightmare is introduced, and associated with newcomers and courting.

Annette attains the security and inclusion that she sought through marriage. Information that Antoinette has not shared in her narration enters the novel through gossip and hearsay. It is unclear whether Antoinette does not know the truth about her father before now, or whether she leaves it out of her narration for the same reason that she doesn’t speak of the poisoned horse to her mother, in hopes that not speaking of it might erase its truth. The idea is introduced that Christophine’s power in the community might come from obeah, a voodoo-like folk magic. Antoinette mentions obeah in her narration without explaining its significance. Again, she is addressing the reader as an insider, assuming the reader has enough contextual knowledge to just understand (though of course the reader doesn't, creating a bit of a sense of being lost and alienation in the reader that mirrors Antoinette's own alienation from the white and black societies around her).

Antoinette returns to her home to find it a completely alienating environment. This change is emphasized by her new fear of Christophine, whom she has grown up trusting and being nurtured by. Her fear is based on overheard gossip, however, and she struggles to determine what is true. It is unclear to both Antoinette and the reader whether the evidence of obeah that she sees in Christophine’s room is real or imagined.

The disenfranchised black population is growing increasingly embittered at the new show of opulent wealth at Coulibri now that Mr. Mason has renovated it. Annette, who has lived among these people for many years, knows that the family is in danger, but Mr. Mason ignores her appeals. It is clear that he, an Englishman, lacks the cultural fluency to understand the black people of Jamaica or even take them seriously. He also doesn't take his wife—or, maybe more broadly, the opinions of women—seriously. And Annette, though desperate to leave Coulibri, must acquiesce to her husband’s wishes. She has no power to refuse or sway him.

Mr. Mason continues to display his ignorance and his unwillingness to understand the black people who live and work among them, as well as his disregard for the wishes and fears of his wife and sister-in-law. Meanwhile Antoinette, Annette, and Aunt Cora can easily read the signs of danger, recognizing the abandoned huts as an indicator of some unusual activity in the village, and Mr. Mason’s insulting and prejudiced remarks as potentially quite damaging to their safety.

Antoinette’s suspicion that the true nature of Pierre’s possible cure would mean merely making him “exactly like other people” amounts to a questioning of whether the rewards of belonging in a community are worth the cost, harkening back to her claim that anything the natural world has to offer, even pain and sickness, is “Better, better than people.” The whispering outside Pierre's window raises the suspicion of the angry black neighbors gathering secretly outside the house—though it's unclear if she really hears these whispers or they are just manifestations of her nervousness.

The previously hinted at discontent in the black community comes to a head, and the depth of Mr. Mason’s capacity for denial is revealed, as he maintains his insistence that the family is not in danger even in the face of a violent mob. It is clear that many, but not all, of the servants have left the house to join the crowd, a further illustration of the split loyalties among black servants remaining in white employ post Emancipation.

As Mr. Mason proves paralyzed and ineffectual in this crisis, the women of the family take action. Aunt Cora comforts Antoinette and takes charge of the family’s escape, while Annette risks her own safety to save Pierre. When it is clear that Pierre is badly injured, Annette’s rage at Mr. Mason’s failure to protect the family overtakes her ability to act rationally.

Amid the confusion of the family’s attempt to escape the violence brought onto them as a result of racial and economic disparity, the image of Coco the parrot dying in flames briefly unites the two sides of the conflict. Both whites and blacks recognize the dying parrot as a bad omen. Aunt Cora’s cool-headed navigation of their escape and encounter with one particularly angry man from the crowd illustrates her role as one of the few strong and independent women in Antoinette's life.

The lines of the conflict are blurred as chaos reaches a fever pitch. Black women from the village are in the crowd weeping for Antoinette’s family, denying their own involvement in the attack. After Antoinette watches the destruction of the garden, her one place of freedom and refuge, she throws herself desperately into a brief fantasy of harmony and safety when she runs toward Tia, seeing a kindred soul in Tia despite their earlier disagreement. Lines are quickly redrawn, however—and the violent reality of the situation made clear to Antoinette—when Tia hits her with a rock. The final image of the scene, with Antoinette seeing a weeping Tia as a mirror image is profound: a mirror image is both the same and opposite, both familiar and completely inaccessible.

Antoinette’s next moment of consciousness is marked by confusion. Despite Aunt Cora’s nurturing presence, Antoinette feels displaced and disoriented without her mother and her brother. The loss of the family home has coincided with the destruction of her family, and her disconnection from herself. Her disconnect with her identity is symbolized by the loss of her hair, and echoed by her recollection of the parrot’s question, “Qui est la?” or “Who is there?”

Again, Antoinette elects not to speak of troubling truths to those around her. The song that she requests that Aunt Cora sing to her, or at least the specific excerpts of the song that Antoinette remembers, suggests a complicated and troubled attitude toward freedom.

Annette has been driven mad by grief. But Antoinette relays the events of her visit to her mother without emotional commentary or analysis—as readers we are left to conclude the fact of her mother’s madness by the presence of the two caretakers and Annette’s treatment of Antoinette. The silence between Christophine and Antoinette on the ride home is a further indication of the trauma of the event, as Antoinette is rejected by her mother. She has no family any longer.

In a move that is by now typical of Antoinette’s narration, clearly stated information about emotionally difficult events enter the novel through the talk of strangers. Annette’s madness, and her acts of violence against her family, are now subjects of gossip in the town. The dynamics of belonging and otherness in this scene are shifting and complex. Children who are black and of mixed race menace Antoinette, but are close enough to her socially to know details of gossip about her family. Sandi, on the other hand, is technically a member of Antoinette’s family, though he also belongs to the black community. It would seem that both cruelty and mercy here transcend racial boundaries.

Antoinette is comforted by order and beauty upon arriving in the alien environment of the convent—she calms down when she observes the pleasant look of the nun, and the beauty of Louise de Plana. She also welcomes the presence of the convent’s well-kept gardens, a much more orderly version of the gardens in which she has grown up seeking solace. The nun, as well as fellow students like Louise de Plana, represent a new kind of woman in Antoinette’s life: calm, unmarried, and in control.

The point that Antoinette takes away from her lessons is that the major feature of saints is their wealth, beauty, and handsome suitors. Antoinette seems to have a hard time taking the nuns’ teachings at face value, as she questions the existence of a supposedly eternally preserved rose formerly belonging to a saint.

Though the nuns are celibate, it is clear that they are training their students to be good wives in polite society. The premium placed on appearance and manners even affects some of the nuns themselves. Antoinette becomes caught up in these values as well, fixating on the de Planas as models of ideal femininity. She idolizes Louise and comes to associate her closely with her own mother.

The nuns and fellow students gradually replace Antoinette’s family as the closest and most nurturing people in her life. Her education at the convent school connects the narrative of Wide Sargasso Sea even further to Jane Eyre, in which the orphan Jane is educated at a boarding school, and goes on to teach and find companionship at a school run by a clergyman.

Though comfortable at the convent, Antoinette struggles to really connect with and believe in the doctrine of the church. Eventually, the contradictions she finds within Catholic teachings lead her to abandon prayer altogether. This brings Antoinette again to the compromise that seems at the center of the notion of freedom in the novel—one can be happy and free or safe, but not both.

Mr. Mason’s news means that Antoinette’s time of safety and inclusion in convent life is coming to a close, and she has no choice in the matter. Her feeling of suffocation and dismay is augmented by the mention of a suitor—the prospect of marriage is thereby linked to a loss of freedom, to suffocation. This sensation is so distressing to Antoinette that she cannot even speak of it, again half-hoping that her refusal to verbalize it might erase it from reality.

Antoinette’s recurring nightmare foreshadows many of the details of her marriage to her future husband, who will eventually hate her, bring her to an unfamiliar place, and imprison her in his attic. In both the dream and real life, barring her final suicide, Antoinette makes no effort to escape. And when she shares the dream, she is told by those who are preparing her for life as a wife that it is the dream that is evil, rather than the suffocating truths of marriage which she senses in the dream.

Antoinette’s unwillingness to allow her mother’s death into the narrative until a full year after it has happened is a testament to the trauma of the event. The funeral is characterized by Antoinette’s feeling of disconnection from the proceedings, from the truth and circumstances of her mother’s death, and from the solace promised to her by prayer. The ultimate failure of religion (and by extension the failure of inclusion in a religious group) to provide order and answers is expressed with finality in Sister Marie Augustine’s sad and inadequate answer to Antoinette’s question.