Wide Sargasso Sea: Part 2 Summary & Analysis

Part Two begins with Antoinette’s new husband’s narration. He is never named in the novel. He and Antoinette have just married and are on their way to spend their honeymoon in the Windward Islands at Granbois, an estate that had belonged to Annette. They are stopped in a town called Massacre, and it is raining. He and Antoinette, along with several servants, wait underneath a tree for it to stop. One of the servants is Amélie, whom the husband finds “lovely” but “sly, spiteful, malignant perhaps, like so much else in this place.” The husband asks Antoinette about the name of the town, whether slaves were massacred there. Antoinette seems shocked at the idea, and tells him that no one remembers the event that the town is named for. Three little boys come to stare at them, and when the husband smiles at one of them, he runs away crying.

Antoinette recognizes a woman in the door of a nearby hut, and goes to speak to her. The husband analyzes her appearance critically. He thinks of her eyes as “too large” and “disconcerting... long, sad, dark, alien eyes.” He remarks to himself that he had not had time to notice things like this about Antoinette before their marriage, as they had married only a month after his arrival in Jamaica, and he had spent three weeks of that month ill with fever. He listens to Antoinette and the woman speak French patois, which he thinks of as “debased.” Despite his private complaints that the rain is adding to his feelings of discomfort and melancholy, the husband refuses to take shelter in the woman’s house when Antoinette offers, claiming to not mind getting wet. At this, Amélie gives him a look that he feels is so malicious and intimate that he has to look away.

The husband leaves the shelter of the tree to speak to the two porters also accompanying them on their trip. One of them introduces himself as “the Young Bull,” and tells the husband that this island is wild, and the locals are “not civilized.” He demonstrates by showing that the other porter, who was born in Massacre, does not know his own age. The husband notices that this porter is “by far the gayest member of the wedding party.” The rain stops, and as the group gets ready to depart, the Young Bull sings to himself in English while glancing sideways at the husband, who finds him boastful and foolish. As they ride away from Massacre, the husband remembers waking very early the previous morning while Antoinette was still sleeping, and feeling a sense of contentment as he watched black women walk through the streets selling cakes and sweets.

They ride up into the mountains toward Granbois. the husband understands why the Young Bull called the place wild, and thinks to himself that it is, “Not only wild but menacing. Those hills would close in on you.” The husband finds the colors and scale of the landscape overwhelmingly alien, and thinks of Antoinette as a stranger. As they ride, he imagines writing a letter to his father in England, in which he reports that as part of the marriage arrangement he, the husband, has been paid thirty thousand pounds “without question or condition,” and that, as planned, no provision has been made in the contract to leave any of the money in Antoinette’s name. In this imagined address to his father, the husband remarks that he has sold his soul so as not to have to beg his father or older brother, “the son you love,” for money any longer.

They ride on and arrive at Granbois. Antoinette offers the husband a drink of water from the mountain stream at the boundary of the estate, and the husband remarks to himself that it is the first time he has felt “simple and natural” with her, and that she “might have been any pretty English girl.” He enjoys the water, and finds its color beautiful. They arrive at the house, which the husband describes as “more awkward than ugly, a little sad as if it knew it could not last.”

Antoinette introduces the husband to the servants, whom she has known since childhood. Among them is Baptiste, a dignified man who speaks English well and reproaches a younger girl servant, Hilda, when she begins to giggle during the introductions. the husband observes that Hilda’s dress is spotless, but thinks that her hair, arranged in many small braids, makes her look “savage.” Hilda runs into the house because she cannot cease giggling. Antoinette introduces the husband to Christophine. The husband takes in her clothing and decides to himself that she seems “insignificant.” They stare at each other for a minute, and when the husband looks away first, Christophine smiles to herself.

Antoinette shows the husband to their suite, where they toast their happiness with rum punch, and see that two wreaths of flowers have been laid on the bed for them. The husband wears his for a moment, then drops it on the floor and steps on it. Antoinette explains her connection to Granbois: “This is my place and everything is on our side.” They discuss Christophine briefly, and the husband remarks that if she were taller, and “dressed to the nines,” he might be afraid of her. The husband goes into his private dressing room and writes a real letter to his father. The letter informs him simply that the marriage “has gone according to your plans and wishes,” briefly describes Granbois, and explains the husband’s delay in writing as owing to his fever. The letter also reveals that Mr. Mason died before the husband arrived in Jamaica. The husband puts the letter in a drawer without sending it.

The husband’s narration looks back to his initial courtship of Antoinette, and their wedding. Of Jamaica and Antoinette, he says they both “meant nothing to me.” He describes all of his actions in the courtship as merely playing a pre-scripted role, delivering “a faultless performance,” and remembers that only the black servants seemed to doubt his sincerity. At the wedding ceremony, he suspects that his guests are looking at him with pity or ridicule, and he wonders why, since he has benefitted so much financially from the union.

The husband describes the morning before the wedding, when a panicked Richard Mason, who in the wake of his father’s death is now in charge of arranging the financial particulars of Antoinette’s wedding, informs him that Antoinette is refusing to go through with the wedding. The husband responds with impatience, wanting to know why. He thinks to himself what a fool he would seem, returning to England “jilted by this Creole girl,” and so goes to Antoinette to find out why she’s changed her mind. He speaks softly to her, kisses her, promises her peace and happiness, and she relents.

The husband falls asleep remembering his wedding day, and when he wakes up he finds Antoinette waiting for him, the dinner table set lavishly with flowers and candles. He wonders why he has never realized how beautiful she is, and compliments her dress. At dinner Antoinette asks him if England is “like a cold dark dream,” as it was described to her in a letter by a friend who married an Englishman. The husband replies, annoyed, that the West Indies seem like a dream to him, “quite unreal.” During dinner, moths repeatedly fly into the candles and fall dead on the tablecloth.

After dinner, the husband and Antoinette go for a walk. Antoinette tells him of a night during her childhood, while spending the summer at Granbois, that she awoke to find two very large rats on the windowsill staring at her. She spent the night on the veranda in a hammock, sleeping under the full moon. The next morning, according to Antoinette, Christophine chastised her, telling her that it was “very bad to sleep in the moonlight when the moon is full.” Antoinette asks the husband if he too thinks she has slept too long in the moonlight. He replies by holding her close and singing to her. Antoinette listens to him sing, and joins in, singing the refrain with him, “Shine bright, shine bright Robin as you die.” They return to their bedroom and drink to their happiness.

The next morning, the husband wakes to find Antoinette already up and dressed, and Christophine serving breakfast. Christophine offers the husband coffee, calling it her “bull’s blood,” which makes the husband remember the Young Bull. He observes her attire closely, and criticizes her habit of not lifting her skirt off the ground as she walks, commenting to Antoinette that her dress must get very dirty. Antoinette explains to him that when the women in Jamaica don’t hold up their dresses, it’s a sign of respect. She tells him that it is also meant to indicate status, to show that they can dirty their dresses because they have others. The husband touches a rose on the coffee tray and its petals fall off. Antoinette sends him off to the bathing pools on the estate.

The husband describes the pools and the surrounding jungle as beautiful and untouched, “with an alien, disturbing, secret loveliness,” and yearns to possess the secret of this loveliness. He spends afternoons swimming with Antoinette, and observes that she is “undecided, uncertain about facts- any facts,” for example the presence of poison in certain or other of the snakes in the swimming hole. He also observes that Antoinette throws like a boy when she throws a rock to protect him from a type of crab whose name she can’t remember. He asks her who had taught her to throw, and she tells him simply that it was a boy named Sandi.

The husband describes watching the sunset each evening with Antoinette, when he would wait for the scent of the flowers that bloomed only at night. During one such moment, Antoinette tells him about their neighbors at Granbois, who are either hermits or drunks. The husband asks her if the place is as lonely as it feels to him, and she replies that it is, and that she loves it more than anywhere else in the world, and more than she loves any person. She describes the re-opening of Granbois after her mother’s marriage to Mr. Mason. She tells him that Granbois had been almost completely overgrown, and was transformed largely by the efficient and trustworthy Baptiste. The husband keeps his opinion of the black servants to himself-- Antoinette trusts them, but he does not. Antoinette tries to teach the husband patois songs, which he mispronounces.

During the day, Antoinette is silent and distant, often “chattering” to Christophine in patois. But at night, she opens up and tells him intimate things, like that she never wished to live before meeting him, and he questions his initial hesitation to marry her. The husband describes a period of frequent and passionate lovemaking with Antoinette. One of these nights, she says to him that if he said so, she would die: “Say die and watch me die.” Despite all this passion, the husband knows that he does not love her. One night he is aroused merely by the sight of her dress on the floor, and makes love to her “without a word or caress.” He considers their relationship a dangerous game, during which “Desire, Hatred, Life, Death came very close in the darkness.” Each night he listens to the rain, of which there is very little evidence in the morning.

One day, Amélie delivers a letter to the husband, from someone who identifies himself as Daniel Cosway, the “most unfortunate and poverty stricken” of Old Cosway’s many illegitimate children, the product of one of his affairs with his slaves. The letter tells the husband, in slightly broken English, that Daniel Cosway has heard about his marriage to Antoinette and feels compelled to warn the husband about her. He claims that the husband has been “shamefully deceived” by the Mason family, that they’ve duped him into marrying Antoinette without telling him that madness runs in both sides of her family. The letter describes the Cosways as wicked slaveowners, hated all across Jamaica. He also claims that Old Cosway was an alcoholic who eventually went mad, died “raving just like his father before him.” He explains that Annette was left friendless and destitute after Cosway’s death because she is French Creole from Martinique, and the French and English in Jamaica are enemies “like cat and dog.”

The letter goes on to tell the husband that in the wake of “the glorious Emancipation Act,” the estate at Coulibri went to bush because no one would work for Annette. It describes her as “worthless and spoilt,” and says that the madness latent in her “and in all these white Creoles” came out during this time, that many can attest to seeing her laughing and talking to herself. Daniel Cosway claims that Annette’s madness became worse after her marriage to Mr. Mason, whom she tried to kill and was then shut away, and who according to gossip “love her so much that if he have the world on a plate he give it to her.”

Daniel Cosway then explains that when he heard that the Masons were planning on marrying Antoinette off to an Englishman “who know nothing of her,” he thought about warning him, but didn’t because “they are white, I am coloured.” He writes that upon hearing that the two were to honeymoon at Granbois, near where he lives, he became certain that God had made it his duty to tell the husband the truth, because he is a man who he’s heard is “young and handsome with a kind word for all, black, white, also coloured.” Cosway challenges him to ask “that devil of a man” Richard Mason to tell him the truth if he doesn’t believe what’s in the letter. He ends the letter with a request that the husband come see him, assuring him that Amélie knows where he lives.

The husband is not surprised by the letter, in fact he feels as if he’s been waiting for it. He walks back to the house after reading the letter and tramples some orchids that he remembers recently admiring and likening to Antoinette’s beauty. He feels overcome by the heat. When he arrives at the house, Amélie is informing Antoinette that Christophine plans to leave. Antoinette is upset, and Amélie teases her sarcastically about both Christophine’s and the husband’s dissatisfaction with the “sweet honeymoon house,” at which point Antoinette slaps her. Amélie calls her a “white cockroach” and hits her back, and the two women struggle. The husband tells Amélie to leave and fetch Christophine. She complies, but leaves the room singing, “The white cockroach she buy young man/ The white cockroach she marry.”

As Antoinette waits for Christophine, she ignores the husband and begins to shred her bed sheet in quiet distress. When Christophine arrives, Antoinette asks her why she is leaving, and pleads, “What will become of me?” Christophine tells her to get up and get dressed, that “Woman must have spunks to live in this wicked world.” She cites a mutual dislike between herself and the husband as a reason for leaving, not wanting to cause tension in their marriage, and she insists “I have a right to my rest.” During the conversation, Christophine catches Amélie giving the husband a sly and insolent smile. Christophine tells Amélie in a quiet voice that if she sees her do this again she will mash her face “like I mash plantain.” She goes on to threaten Amélie with sickness: “Perhaps you don’t get up again with the bellyache I give you.” Amélie leaves quietly, clearly frightened of Christophine.

Christophine calls Amélie worthless, and likens her to a centipede. She kisses Antoinette on the cheek and leaves. Antoinette asks the husband if he heard the song Amélie was singing, and he says he didn’t understand it. Antoinette explains that she, and all white people on the island, “all of us who were here before their own people in Africa sold them to the slave traders,” are what Amélie referred to as the “white cockroach.” She tells him that she’s also heard English women call her and her family “white niggers,” so she wonders, “between you I don’t know who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all.” Before the husband has a chance to say anything, she tells him to leave the room so she can dress.

After a while, the husband knocks on Antoinette’s door and receives no answer. He sits down to eat, and sees that Baptiste looks demonstratively mournful as he serves lunch, and he thinks to himself that the people here in the Caribbean are very vulnerable. He remembers that he, unlike them, must have been five or six years old when he was taught to conceal his emotions. When his meal is done he goes into the bedroom to find Antoinette asleep, and is disturbed by the silence of the afternoon. He decides to go out walking.

While walking, the husband thinks of all the people who must have known the truth of Antoinette’s background and not told him-- his father, his brother, Richard Mason, Amelie. He reaches the forest, which he sees as hostile, and walks into it. As he walks deeper into the trees, he wonders how one can ever discover the truth, and concludes that it is impossible, because no one will speak the truth to him. Along the way, he becomes sure that someone is watching him. He comes upon the ruins of a paved road and a house, overgrown, and notices bunches of flowers, tied with grass, left underneath a tree near the house.

This mysterious place calms the husband, but not for long. He soon sees a little girl carrying a basket, approaching the clearing. When she sees him, she screams, drops her basket, and runs away. He tries to call out to her, but this frightens her more. When he attempts to find the path he’d been on, he cannot, and becomes “lost and afraid among these enemy trees.” He hears footsteps and a voice calling to him-- it is Baptiste, who has been looking for the husband for hours. The husband does not recognize him at first, and does not answer.

Once the husband recognizes Baptiste, he follows him back toward the house. He asks Baptiste about the abandoned house in the woods, and Baptiste tells him that a priest once lived there, long ago. The husband asks him about the paved road on which he found the and frightened the young girl, but Baptiste tells him that there was never a road there. The husband asks if there is “something wrong about the place,” but Baptiste says nothing. The husband presses him, asking if there is a ghost or “a zombi” there, but Baptiste insists that he doesn’t know anything about it, and repeats that there was never a road there.

Back at the house, the husband goes into his private drawing room and pulls out a book called “The Glittering Coronet of Isles,” about the West Indies, and turns to a chapter entitled, “Obeah,” to the section about the “zombi,” and reads it to himself. The book says that a zombi is “a dead person who seems to be alive or a living person who is dead,” but that it can also be “the spirit of a place.” It goes on to explain that a zombi is usually a malignant force, to be placated with gifts of flowers and fruit. At this point, the husband remembers the tied bunches of flowers near the abandoned house. The book goes on to explain that black people usually refuse to talk about obeah, and often lie about it when asked, and that white people “pretend” to dismiss it all as nonsense.

The narration switches to Antoinette’s point of view. She is on horseback, on her way to Christophine’s house. Her horse stumbles along the way, so she gets off and walks. When Antoinette arrives at Christophine’s house, she finds her old nurse sitting on a box underneath a mango tree. Christophine offers Antoinette a box, but Antoinette kneels on the ground close to Christophine instead. She breathes in Christophine’s familiar, comforting smell of clean and starched cotton, and remembers watching Christophine washing her clothes at Coulibri. Antoinette looks around, takes in the beauty of the wildlife and the sky, and feels a desire to stay in this place, her home. After a moment she tells Christophine that her husband does not love her, that he barely speaks to her and will not sleep in the same room with her, and asks Christophine what she should do.

Christophine lights her pipe, and after a moment replies, "You ask me a hard thing, I tell you a hard thing, pack up and go." Antoinette balks, asks Christophine where she would go and says that she would be laughed at by all who know her if she left, that there must be something else she can do. Christophine replies that it is the husband who will be laughed at, not her, and tells her that she cannot force the husband to love her, that trying to will only make it worse between them. When Antoinette continues to refuse this advice, Christophine spits over her shoulder and says, "All women, all colors, nothing but fools.” She tells Antoinette that for a rich white girl, she is more foolish than the rest, and tells her again to go.

Antoinette now explains to Christophine that she is no longer rich, that after the marriage she has no money of her own, as it has all been signed over to the husband. Christophine is furious, and blames Richard Mason for the arrangement, calling him, "worse than Satan." She continues, however, to advise Antoinette to leave the house, this time suggesting that she ask her husband nicely for the money to visit a cousin, and when she gets away to stay gone. She tells Antoinette that the husband will eventually come to see where she’s gone, and when he realizes that she can get along without him, he’ll want her back. Antoinette says if she goes, she’ll have to go far away, and says that she’d like to see England.

Antoinette imagines what it might be like to go to England alone. She thinks that she could be a different person in England, and pictures England to be “rosy pink,” the way it appears in the geography book map she studied in the convent. She remembers the page in the geography book that named its towns and regions, all unfamiliar to her. She mentally compares fields of corn to fields of sugarcane, and thinks that England’s hills must be half the size of Jamaica’s. She thinks over what she knows of the seasons in England, wonders what snow is like- "White feathers falling? torn pieces of paper falling?" She then has a sudden vision of the house in which she will live with her husband in England, and feels that she already knows it. She fears that in this house she will finish the recurring nightmare she’s had since childhood, but then stops herself.

Christophine, who has been watching Antoinette closely while she daydreams, interrupts her by asking her if she really believes that England exists. When Antoinette expresses surprise at this question, Christophine replies, "I never see the damn place, how I know?” Antoinette asks her incredulously if she really does not believe that there is a country called England. Christophine answers testily that she hasn’t said she doesn’t believe, but rather that she doesn’t know, because she only knows what she sees with her eyes and she’s never seen it. She goes on to say that what she has heard of England makes it sound like a freezing cold place where people steal your money, and wonders why Antoinette would want to go there in the first place.

Antoinette briefly questions her own trust in Christophine’s good counsel, wondering why she is seeking the advice of someone who might not believe in the existence of England. She presses on, though, saying to Christophine, "You knew what I wanted as soon as you saw me, and you certainly know now." Christophine tells Antoinette to hush, that she cannot make the husband love her, but Antoinette insists, "Yes you can, I know you can...You can make people love or hate. Or... or die." At this, Christophine laughs loudly, and tells Antoinette that everything she’s heard about obeah is “foolishness and folly.” She warns her that “bad bad trouble” will be the result if they use obeah to meddle with this.

Antoinette continues to insist that Christophine use her power to make her husband come to her bed for just one night. She is confident that she will be able to make her husband love her again if this happens. Christophine warns her that even if he sleeps with her, he’ll hate her afterward, that nothing can make him love her. Antoinette replies that her husband hates her already, that he refuses to even call her by her name. Instead, he calls her Bertha. She explains desperately that she cannot go away, that the husband would never allow it. Christophine then explains to Antoinette that she knows why the husband has cooled from her, that it is because someone is slandering Antoinette and her mother to him, and he doesn’t know what to believe. She warns her not to trust anyone in Jamaica.

When Antoinette asks if this extends even to Aunt Cora, Christophine tells her that Aunt Cora is now a resigned old woman, and that "she turn her face to the wall." Antoinette demands to know how Christophine knows this. She is shocked at Christophine’s phrasing, because she remembers that Aunt Cora did in fact turn her face to the wall, when Richard Mason was arranging the financial agreement of Antoinette’s marriage. Antoinette remembers overhearing a quarrel between Aunt Cora and Richard, in which Aunt Cora urged Richard to have Antoinette’s interests protected legally. Richard ignored her, telling her to shut up and calling her an old fool. Antoinette went to her after the quarrel and found her in bed shaking, with her face to the wall. She told Antoinette, "The Lord has forsaken us," and did not speak again except to give Antoinette two of her rings to sell in case of an emergency.

Christophine again instructs Antoinette to “have spunks,” to “do battle for yourself.” She tells her to go to the husband and tell him the truth about what happened at Coulibri, and explain what caused her mother to fall sick with grief. She warns Antoinette to do it calmly, without crying. Antoinette responds that she has already tried this, and that it is too late, and thinks to herself that “it is always too late for truth.” She and Christophine finally agree that if Antoinette first tries to speak to the husband calmly, then Christophine will do what she asks. Christophine’s son Jo-jo arrives, and Christophine warns Antoinette not to speak in front of him, because he will surely tell everyone anything that he hears-- “Nothing but leaky calabash that boy.”

Antoinette and Christophine go into Christophine’s two-room house while Jo-jo prepares Antoinette’s horse for her departure back to the house at Granbois. Christophine hands her something wrapped in a leaf and tells her to listen while she explains what to do. Antoinette tries to give Christophine money in exchange, but Christophine will not take it. When Antoinette leaves, she looks back and sees that Christophine is talking to Jo-jo, and that he seems curious and amused by what she is telling him. She hears a cock crow, and remembers that this signifies betrayal, but cannot discern who the traitor is in this situation. She thinks of the “ugly money” that she offered Christophine, and how she refused to take it, and she thinks of Judas. She leaves with the image of Christophine, with her headscarf tied Martinique fashion, frozen in her mind “for ever like the colours in a stained-glass window.”

The narrative re-enters the husband’s consciousness. On the day that Antoinette goes to see Christophine, Amélie delivers another letter from Daniel Cosway to the husband. The letter begins by asking the husband why he hasn’t written back, and threatens that if the husband does not come to see him, he will show up at the Granbois house, "and bawl out your business before everybody." The husband stops reading and sends for Amélie. As he waits for her, he pictures the white dress that he knows she will be wearing, pictures her hair and her bare feet. As he looks out at the mountains, now familiar to him, he feels that he is in a nightmare.

When Amélie arrives, the husband asks her if Daniel Cosway is a friend of hers. She says no, but she knows him. He instructs her to tell Daniel Cosway not to write him any more letters, that they annoy him, and that if he does give her a letter to deliver to the husband, to give it back to him. Amélie smiles at him in a way that makes the husband feel as if she is about to laugh loudly at him. To stop this, he keeps talking, and asks her why Daniel is writing to him. She teases him, saying that if the husband himself doesn’t know after reading two of his letters, how should she know. Then the husband asks if he is really a Cosway, and Amélie replies that some people say he is and some say he isn’t, but that’s what he calls himself.

Amélie goes on to describe Daniel Cosway as a “very superior man,” who read the Bible and lived like a white man. When the husband asks what she means by this, she explains that Cosway has a house “like white people, with one room only for sitting in,” and that he has portraits of his parents on the wall. The husband asks if his parents are white, and she says no, they are both black. When the husband protests that Daniel Cosway told him his father was white, was Antoinette’s father, Amélie just shrugs. She says it is all too long ago for her. She is plainly uninterested in the past.

Amélie warns the husband that he should go and visit Daniel Cosway before he comes to the house to make trouble for him, that he is a bad man who speaks like a preacher, and perhaps once was a preacher. She also tells him that he has a very wealthy brother in Spanish Town named Alexander Cosway, whose son Sandi, she heard, once married Antoinette. She goes on to express her belief that this marriage never happened, because Antoinette is rich and white, and would never marry “a coloured man even though he don’t look like a coloured man.” As Amélie walks away, the husband again believes her to be on the verge of laughing at him. He hears her say in a very low voice, "I am sorry for you," but when he asks her what she said she denies saying anything.

The narration now jumps to the husband in Daniel Cosway’s sitting room. It is very hot, and there is no breeze, because his house is much further down the mountain than Granbois, almost at sea level. The first thing the husband describes is the large table in the room, covered in a red fringed cloth that seems to make the hot room even hotter. Daniel is telling the husband that he’s been waiting for his reply, and wondering why it was so slow, all the while staring at a framed text hanging on his wall that reads, "Vengence is Mine." He addresses the wall hanging, saying "You take too long, Lord... I hurry you up a bit."

Daniel tells the husband that his name is actually Esau, and that the only things he ever received from his father were curses. He describes his father’s tombstone, which calls him "pious," "loved by all," and "merciful to the weak," as nothing but a tablet of lies, which he hopes will "drag him down to Hell in the end." He reiterates that he is telling the husband all of this so that he will be fairly warned about the family he’s married into. As the husband listens, Daniel relays an encounter between himself and Old Cosway when Daniel was sixteen years old, when, as Daniel claims, Old Cosway put a curse on him. He describes walking five hours to see his father at Coulibri to talk to him about his “rights” as his son, and being received casually, but with disdain.

In Daniel’s memory, Old Cosway cannot remember Daniel’s name, and laughs in his face when he makes a claim on his right to a portion of the Cosway fortune. He accuses Daniel of constantly pestering him for money, which Daniel explains to the husband as having been merely so that he would not have to "go barefoot like a nigger. Which I am not." When Old Cosway denies his paternity of Daniel, Daniel becomes angry and taunts Cosway for his age, his proximity to death, and the youth of his new wife. Old Cosway becomes enraged, curses him, and throws a silver inkstand at his head. Daniel leaves, and never sees or hears from his Old Cosway again, except for a small sum of money that was delivered without a note.

While Daniel is relaying this story to the husband, he drinks rum steadily. The husband asks him why he wanted to see him. Daniel tells him it is because there is no one else who will tell the truth, and that he should be careful who he trusts. He explains that his half brother Alexander would never tell him the truth because he has become “two-faced” in his prosperity. He also names Christophine as untrustworthy, saying that she is the worst of them, and tells the husband that she is on this island because she had to leave Jamaica after being sent to jail. The husband asks what she did to be arrested, and Daniel cannot provide any details. He merely says that she is an “obeah woman,” and she was caught. Daniel claims not to believe in the “devil business” of obeah like many others do. The husband feels a strong desire to leave.

Daniel goes on to imply that Antoinette had a sexual relationship with Sandi, his half-brother Alexander’s son, whom he describes as “like a white man, but more handsome than any white man.” At this, the husband gets up to leave, but Daniel stops him. He tells him again that Antoinette and her family have all lied to him with “sweet talk,” and that if he wants him, Daniel, to keep quiet about it, he will have to pay him five hundred pounds. The husband becomes disgusted and enraged. Daniel sees this, and steps aside to allow him to leave, but not without yelling abuse at him, reminding him that he was not Antoinette’s first, and threatening again to retaliate if the husband does not produce the five hundred pounds. The husband exits the little house, and, dazzled by the light after the darkened room, rides home.

The husband and Antoinette are having dinner, with an “endless procession” of moths again flying into the candles and dying on the tablecloth. They argue. The husband notices that she is wearing the same dress that once aroused him so, but that now it looks sloppy and too large for her. Antoinette demands to know why the husband will not come near her, kiss her, or talk to her. She demands to know if he has a reason, to which he replies, “Yes, I have a reason, my God,” and Antoinette mocks him for his apparent belief in God. He notices that in this moment she resembles Amélie, and wonders if they are related. He asks her if she believes in God, and she replies that it doesn’t matter what either of them believe, because they cannot do anything about it, like the dead moths on the table.

The husband asks Antoinette if her mother is alive, and Antoinette responds that she died not long ago. The husband then demands to know why she told him that her mother died when she was a child, and Antoinette tells him that it is because she was told to say this, and also because it is true: “She did die when I was a child. There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.” The husband then tells her that he’s been in contact with Daniel Cosway. Antoinette quickly tells him that the man who calls himself Daniel Cosway has no right to the name, and is actually named Daniel Boyd, and that she knows exactly what he would have said to the husband: that her mother was mad, her brother born an idiot, and she herself also mad. The husband asks her if it is true, and Antoinette pauses.

The husband becomes uncomfortable and suggests that they talk about it another time. Antoinette demands that they talk now, and asks him in a mocking tone (“imitating a negro’s voice”) if he is frightened to hear the answer to what he’s asked. He asks why they can’t talk about it the next day, in the daylight, and she says she might not be able to tell him in any other place or time, and tells him he has no right to ask about her mother and then not listen to her answer. He relents, but adds that he feels like this place is an enemy to him, that it is on her side. She tells him that he is wrong, that the place is not for either of them, it is “as indifferent as this God you call on so often.”

Antoinette tells the husband about her mother. She tells him that after her father’s death Annette was very poor and very lonely, but that her beauty must have given her hope. She says that they were alone in the loveliest place on earth, that there could never be a place as beautiful as Coulibri. She describes the royal palm trees, which had been cut down, as lost trees, and tells of the poisoning of her mother’s horse. She tells the husband how her mother would stay out in the garden working long after the sun was too hot for her and “they” would tell her to go in. The husband asks who “they” were, and Antoinette names the servants who had remained after emancipation-- Christophine, Godfrey, and a boy named Sass, whose real name was Disastrous, because his godmother liked the sound of the word.

Antoinette says that her family would have died if Christophine had not been there to care for them. She explains that many people died in those days, especially the old, but that no one speaks of it now, that the only thing people remember are lies, because “Lies are never forgotten, they go on and they grow.” The husband asks what Antoinette remembers of herself, and she says that she was happy in the mornings, and in the garden, where “every flower in the world” existed, and she often drank rainwater from the leaves. She tells him that she was not often happy in the afternoons, and never at night, because the house was haunted. She goes on to remember “the day when she saw I was growing up like a white nigger,” that after this day her mother worked feverishly to remarry, for their security.

Antoinette mentions the night that Coulibri was burned, and becomes upset and very pale. She does not go into detail about what happened that night, but merely laments, “They trampled it. It was a sacred place. It was sacred to the sun!” The husband wonders silently how much of her story is true, how much of it distorted or imagined. Antoinette goes on to explain that after that night, she spent a long time with fever at her aunt’s home in Spanish Town, during which time she remembers hearing screams and loud laughter. There, she was told that her mother was ill and in the country. She says that this made sense to her, because her mother was a part of Coulibri, and if Coulibri was gone then it was natural for her mother to be gone as well.

Antoinette tells the husband that a rock was thrown at her head the night Coulibri burned. She recalls that Aunt Cora told her it would heal and not “spoil” her on her wedding day, but she fears that it did spoil her, not only for her wedding day but “for all days and nights.” At this, the husband tries to comfort her by telling her that her days and nights are not spoiled, and urges her to put the past behind her. Even while he is saying this, though, be feels his heart to be “heavy as lead.”

Antoinette goes on to tell of her one visit to her mother at her country house, with a man and a woman caring for her in her madness. Antoinette remembers that her mother was in a fine evening dress, but barefoot, and that the man gave her glass after glass of rum so that she would “forget.” When her mother threw one of the glasses and smashed it, the man told the woman caretaker to clean it up or Annette would walk in it, and the woman replied that if she did it would be a good thing, that then maybe she’d keep quiet. Antoinette describes how her mother walked back and forth and addressed Mr. Luttrell, who at that point was long dead, and that when she sat down the man caring for her forced her to kiss him. After this, Antoinette ran from the house.

Antoinette finishes her story, and says quietly, as if speaking to herself, that she has said all she wants to, and nothing has changed. She laughs, and the husband says, “Don’t laugh like that, Bertha.” She replies that her name is not Bertha, and asks why he calls her that. He answers that Bertha is a name he is fond of, so that is how he thinks of her. He asks her where she went off to earlier that day, and she tells him that she went to see Christophine, and that she will tell him anything now, because she sees that words are no use. She tells him that Christophine has advised her to leave him. He is surprised, but replies that perhaps Christophine is right, that he wants to do what is best for both of them and maybe this will help.

They get up to go in to bed, and the husband again calls her Bertha, despite her protests. When they get into the bedroom, the husband sees that there is white powder on the floor, which Antoinette claims is to keep cockroaches away. He notices that there are six candles lit on the dressing-table, and three on the table near the bed. He feels that the light changes Antoinette, makes her more beautiful than he’s ever seen her. She hands him a glass of wine to drink, and he insists, in his narration, that he desired her before she gave him the drink, that “she need not have done what she did to me. I will always swear that, she need not have done it.” He puts out the candles, and that is all he remembers of the night.

The husband awakes before the sun rises, having dreamt that he was buried alive. He is cold and sick, in pain. He believes he has been poisoned. He gets up and staggers to his dressing room, where he retches and vomits for what “seemed like hours.” When he is finished, he gets up, weak, and returns to the bedroom. He watches Antoinette sleeping, feeling a cold hatred for her despite her beauty. He picks up his wine glass from the night before and dips his finger into it to taste it, discovering that it is bitter. He immediately dresses and runs from the house. He runs through the woods, exhausted, and finally finds himself at the ruined house of the preacher, where he falls to the ground and sleeps through the day.

When he returns to the house, the husband is fed and cared for by Amélie, and they spend the night together. Though Amélie expresses a small amount of apprehension at Antoinette’s being right next door, on the other side of a thin partition dividing the two rooms, the husband says he feels no remorse. The following morning he recognizes the complication he’s created, and feels “satisfied and peaceful, but not gay.” Amélie dresses, and he admires her dress. He gives her a large sum of money, which she accepts without thanks. The husband asks her what she plans to do with her life, saying that she is beautiful enough to have anything she wants. She agrees matter-of-factly, and says that she plans to go to Rio, because there are rich men in Rio. He asks her if she still feels sorry for him, and she says she does, but that now she feels sorry for Antoinette as well.

The husband goes back to sleep, and is woken by Baptiste telling him that the cook is leaving, quitting. He notices that, though Baptiste does not comment explicitly on The husband’s behavior, he no longer calls him “sir” or “master.” Antoinette has gone away from the house, and stays away for several days. The husband is content, spending most of the day in a hammock on the veranda. On the third day, he writes a letter to Mr. Fraser, the magistrate. The letter says that the husband has been reading a book about obeah, and remembers a particular case that the magistrate had mentioned, about a woman. He asks if Mr. Fraser knows the whereabouts of this woman now.

Fraser writes back at once, saying that the woman’s name was “Josephine or Christophine,” and she was imprisoned in connection with obeah before becoming a servant at Coulibri. He says that her whereabouts now are unclear, but that she is considered a “most dangerous person.” He tells the husband that if she lives near him and gets up to “any of her nonsense,” that he should report it to the police immediately, and Fraser himself will make sure that she does not get off lightly. After reading this, the husband thinks to himself, “So much for you, Josephine or Christophine. So much for you, Pheena.”

One afternoon, Antoinette returns to the house, closely followed by Christophine. Antoinette goes to her room without looking at the husband, and rings for Baptiste. Baptiste fetches a bottle of rum to bring her, and ignores the husband when he tries to intercept him. When the husband goes to Antoinette’s room, he discovers that she has blockaded the door with a heavy piece of furniture. He pushes the door open enough to see her lying in bed with the empty rum decanter next to her on a chair. He leaves and waits on the veranda. After a while, Antoinette wakes and begins ringing and yelling for Baptiste and for Christophine. The husband goes in to her room to find her extremely disheveled, with her hair hanging tangled and her face swollen. He is at first too shocked to speak.

Antoinette reaches for another bottle of rum, and the husband tells her not to drink anymore. She snaps back that he has no right to tell her what to do. She accuses him of hypocrisy, of having committed with Amélie the same acts of sexual coercion that went on during slavery, after he’d expressed distaste for these very acts. She accuses him acidly of liking “the light brown girls.” The husband counters that what went on during slavery “was not about liking or disliking, it was a question of justice.” She scoffs, saying that justice is a cold word, a lie. She refers to her mother, demands to know what justice her mother had, and likens the husband to her mother’s abusive caretaker, the “black devil kissing her sad mouth. Like you kissed mine.”

The husband opens the window because it has become unbearably hot in the room. When he turns back, Antoinette is drinking again, and he reproaches her, saying simply, “Bertha.” She rails against him, saying that he is trying to make her into someone else by calling her by a different name, and warns him that this too is obeah. She begins to cry, and tells him that, worse than his infidelity is the fact that he has destroyed this place for her, this place that she once loved. She tells him that she hates him, and before she dies she will show him how much she hates him. She then quite suddenly stops crying, and asks the husband, "Is she so much prettier than I am? Don’t you love me at all?” The husband replies that he does not, not at this moment.

Antoinette laughs a crazy laugh at this, and says that the husband is cold, a stone. She says that it serves her right, because Aunt Cora had warned her not to marry him, “not if he were stuffed with diamonds.” She begins to speak and sing incoherently, and takes another drink from the bottle of rum. The husband tries to take the bottle from her, and she bites him. He drops the bottle. She smashes another bottle against the wall and threatens him with the broken half of the bottle in her hand, "Just you touch me once. You’ll soon see if I’m a dam’ coward like you are." She proceeds to wildly curse the husband, and every part of his body. The husband feels as if he is in a dream. She only quiets when Christophine comes in and tells her to stop crying. She collapses onto the sofa and sobs.

Christophine turns to the husband and asks him sadly why he did what he did with Amélie, why he didn’t at least take her somewhere else to do it. She says that he and Amélie both love money, which must be why they came together. At this, the husband leaves the room and goes out to the veranda. As he wraps his bleeding arm, he looks out to the trees and feels that they are menacing him, have menaced him since his arrival. He hears Christophine singing softly to Antoinette while she cries.

He goes back to his room, where Christophine finds him. They argue. She tells him she hopes he’s satisfied, that she knows what he’s done and there’s no use lying to her. The husband demands to know what happened when Antoinette was with Christophine these last few days. He calls Antoinette “my wife,” and Christophine laughs maliciously at this. She tells him that everyone knows that he has married Antoinette for her money, that he has taken everything she has and now wants only “to break her up,” because he is jealous of her goodness. She says that the first time she, Christophine, saw him, she could tell that he was cold, that he fooled Antoinette into thinking he loved her. The husband thinks silently that she is right, but allows her to go on.

She accuses him of making love to Antoinette until she couldn’t do without it, until she was completely in love with him, when all he wants is to hurt her. Her words begin to echo loudly in the husband’s head, as she accuses him of pretending to believe the lies that Daniel Cosway has told him, so that he can have an excuse to leave her. He accuses her in turn of poisoning him. She corrects him, telling him that Antoinette begged her for something to make him love her again, but that he doesn’t love. She says that she knows he started to call Antoinette by a different name in an effort to control her, and that when that didn’t work he bedded Amélie and let Antoinette hear it, that he meant her to hear it.

The husband again knows that she is right, that he meant for her to hear what happened. Now in addition to Christophine’s words echoing in his mind, he can hear Antoinette’s voice as it sounded or must have sounded when she went to Christophine, telling her what happened between the husband and Amélie, that she stayed up all night listening, "O Pheena, Pheena, help me." Christophine goes on to explain that she gave Antoinette something to help her sleep these last few days, to calm her, but that the husband’s telling her he doesn’t love her has undone all of her good work. She tells him that she thinks he is neither the best nor the worst, but that he can love Antoinette again if he waits and tries.

When he shakes his head, Christophine repeats that everything Daniel Cosway told him is a lie, and that she would have warned him but there was no time. She reminds him that it is not Antoinette who traveled to England to convince the husband to marry her, it is he who came here to beg her. She asks him what he is going to do with her money now that he doesn’t love her. At this mention of money, the husband stops feeling “dazed, tired, half hypnotized,” and is ready to defend himself. Christophine asks him why he can’t just leave Antoinette half of her dowry and go back to England, if he doesn’t want her. The husband asks exactly what sum she has in mind, and she replies that he can fix it up with the lawyers, and she, Christophine, can take care of Antoinette. The husband thinks to himself that Christophine means that she will also take care of the money.

The husband asks Christophine if she and Antoinette would both stay here at Granbois, and she says no, they will return to Martinique. She says that Antoinette will marry someone else and forget him. At this, a pang of jealousy and rage shoots through the husband, and he laughs at Christophine. He tells her coldly to leave, that all that has happened is her fault. She tells him that he has no power to tell her to do anything. In response, he reads aloud to her the part of the magistrate’s letter that tells the husband to report Christophine to the police, that she won’t get off lightly this time. He says that he knows that she gave Antoinette the “poison” that she put in his wine, that he’s saved the wine glass and will use it against her.

Christophine relents, but demands to know what he will do with Antoinette. He says he will consult doctors and her brother and follow their advice. She spits on the floor in outrage, tells him that she knows he means to pretend that she is mad, that she will end up like her mother, who, she says, was abandoned to the care of a man who "take her whenever he want, that man, and others." She says that if he is willing to do this for money, then he is “wicked like Satan self!” He shouts back that he did not choose any of this, that he would give his life to undo it. She says this is the first word of truth he’s spoken so far. When the husband next looks at her, it looks as if there is a mask on her face, “and her eyes were undaunted.” The husband feels respect for her strength.

He asks Christophine if she wants to say goodbye to Antoinette, and she tells him that she has given her something to sleep, and she will not wake her up to misery, that that is for him to do. He tells her stiffly that in that case she can write to Antoinette, and Christophine replies, “Read and write I don’t know. Other things I know.” She leaves the house without looking back.

Agitated after his confrontation with Christophine, the husband paces his room and speaks aloud to himself a letter he wants to write to his father. In it, he accuses his father of setting up this marriage in order to get rid of him, that his father and his brother had no love at all for him. He says that their plan succeeded because he, the husband, was young, conceited, and foolish. the husband thinks to himself that he is no longer young, and sits down to write a real letter to his father. In this letter, he merely informs his father that “unforeseen circumstances” have dictated that he and Antoinette return to Jamaica very soon, that his father can likely guess what has happened, and that the less he speaks of it to anyone else, the better. He then writes a letter to his lawyers in Spanish Town, requesting that they set up a house with two separate wings and discreet servants.

While he is writing, a cock outside crows persistently. the husband throws a book at it, but it merely walks further away and keeps crowing. Baptiste comes into the room, and the husband requests more rum-- he is drunk. He asks Baptiste what the cock is crowing about, and Baptiste replies indifferently that it is for a change in the weather. The husband sees Baptiste looking toward Antoinette’s room, and shouts at him that she is asleep. Baptiste scowls and walks away. The husband realizes that he will never be able to buy discretion from Jamaican servants, that as long as he and Antoinette are in Jamaica they will be gossiped about constantly. He draws a picture of an English house surrounded by English trees, with a woman on the third floor.

The next day is cool and misty. He watches the royal palm trees with respect, imagining that they will stand tall and defy the hurricanes that are coming soon, while the bamboo will merely lie on the ground and let them rage past. He thinks of his own revenge as a hurricane, and wonders why there is no pity for him, who is “tied to a lunatic for life.” He remembers Christophine telling him that Antoinette loves him, thirsts for him, and thinks to himself that Antoinette thirsts for anyone, that she makes love like only a mad girl can, not caring who she’s loving. He thinks about locking her away, to prevent her from seeing anyone again. He then thinks that if he watches and sees Antoinette display any real emotion, “one human tear” when they leave Granbois for good, then he’ll drop all of this and take her in his arms gently, because “she’s mad but she’s mine, mine.”

On the morning of their departure, the husband and Antoinette are dressed and packed for the journey, and Baptiste, along with some remaining servants, are waiting by the horses to see them off. Antoinette’s face is blank, and the husband wonders if she remembers or feels anything. He remembers her telling him the names of the mountains, and that a green sunset is called an Emerald Drop, and it brings good fortune. He is caught by surprise by the sadness he feels looking at the house for the last time. He feels its shabbiness, feels that it is crying to be saved from desolation. He blames the forest for the house’s inevitable destruction, addresses the house in his mind, “Don’t you know this is a dangerous place? And that the dark forest always wins?” Though Baptiste addresses him politely, the husband feels his contempt and dislike strongly.

The husband is filled with a bewildering and sudden certainty that everything he’d imagined to be true about Antoinette these last few days was false, that “only the magic and the dream are true-- all the rest’s a lie.” He looks at Antoinette staring blankly out to the sea, and wishes that she would sing to him as she once did. He imagines what he should say to her-- to not be sad, to chatter and laugh as she used to, to tell him stories. He remembers their nights together tenderly, and wishes for them both to give everything they have to each other. He says to her, “I have made a terrible mistake. Forgive me.” When he sees that she looks at him with hatred, he feels in himself “a sickening swing back to hate”. He vows to himself that his hatred will be stronger than hers, that she will be left with nothing.

A servant boy begins to cry “loud, heartbreaking sobs,” and the husband thinks that he could have “strangled him with pleasure.” The husband asks Baptiste why the boy is crying, but Baptiste ignores him. Antoinette tells him, in a detached voice that the husband hardly recognizes, that upon their arrival the boy asked to be taken with them when they left Granbois. She explains that the boy wants no money, merely to be with the husband, because he loves him very much. Baptiste has told the boy that the husband won’t take him, and this is why he sobs. Antoinette says the boy has tried very hard to learn English. The husband becomes angry at her for speaking for him, and making promises to the boy, and says he will certainly not bring the boy with them.

They leave, and the husband notices that when Antoinette says goodbye to Baptiste she very nearly cries, but recovers her cold composure at once. He feels exhausted and empty, but sane. He feels tired of the place and its people. He feels hate for the mountains, the hills, the rivers, and the sunsets “whatever colour.” Above all, he feels hate for Antoinette, for “she left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.” The boy follows them some distance as they leave, crying still. The husband marvels that a boy would cry like that, “for nothing.”