Wide Sargasso Sea Themes
Parental Neglect But she pushed me away, not roughly but calmly, coldly, without a word, as if she decided once and for all that I was useless to her. I was old enough to look after myself. Why do you pester and bother me about all these things that happened long ago? ( Antoinette is a nuissance to her) My mother never asked me where I had been or what I had done But why are you wearing Tia’s dress? Which one of them is Tia? (Antoinette cannot even recognise what is not her child’s belongings, she doesn’t know Antoinette’s friends or what is going on in her life) She run wild. she grow up worthless. And nobody care. (Annette is not even aware that Antoinette only has 2 dresses.) All that evening my mother didn’t speak to me and I thought ‘she is ashamed of me, what Tia said is true.’ I was there that time too but they had forgotten me and soon I wasn’t thinking of them (on Antoinette and Mr. Mason’s honeymoon they neglect Antoinette) ‘No.’ quietly. Then ‘No no no’ very loudly and flung me from her. (Antoinette loved Pierre but she does not love Antoinette. Antoinette’s survival is no consolaton to her. She still does not want Antoinette.) I seldom saw my stepfather. He seemed to dislike Jamaica, Spanish Town in particular, and was often away for months. (Mr. Mason tries to escape and in doing so abandons Antoinette) I will never be a disgrace to your or my dear brother the son you love. None of the furtive shabby manouvres of a younger son. I have sold my soul or you have sold it, and after all is it such a bad bargain? (Rochester’s brother has inherited everyting and Rochester experiences parental neglect because he has been materially neglected. Rochester’s father only loves Rochester’s brother. Rochester’s brother doesn’t care about his morality. He sells Rochester’s soul for him. Rochester is merely a bargaining piece in a settlement deal.) A short youth mine was (Because he was neglected and forced to fend for his own when he was forced into marriage) No one would tell me the truth. Not my father nor Richard Mason, certainly not the girl I had married. “I can’t rememer their names-it’s too much to expect of me” (Mr Cosway cannot remember Daniels’s name. Daniel has to beg him from money. Mr.Cosway does not want to acknowledge Daniel as a son.) She didn’t want me. I know that you planned this because u wanted to be rid of me. You had no love at all for me (Rochester’s father planned the mariage to get rid Rochester out of the way and not be bothered by any financial obligation to him. Rochester thinks his father did not love him and he did not care what marriage he settled him into.) Unforseen circumstances, at least unforseen by me, have forced me to make this decision. (Rochester is convinced that his father knew the trouble that he would face in this marriage but neglected to tell him because he didn’t care.) That boy Sass! When his mother pranced off and left him here- a great deal she cared. Mental Decline He drank himself to death (ladies gossiping about Old Mister Cosway) As for those two children- the boy an idiot out of sight and mind and the girl going the same way in my opinion ‘Jewel case? Nothing so sensible!’ (Annette loses control. Wants to go back into the flames for her parrot) ‘Look the crazy girl , you crazy like your mother’ (girl teasing Antoinette when she was walking to the convent) Next morning Christophine was angry. She said that it was very bad to sleep in the moonlight when the moon is full. (because she will get madness. The moon is a symbol for lunatics. Luna- lunatic) Daniel Cosay’s letter: There is madness in that family Dead drunk from morning till night and he die raving and cursing. This young Mrs. Cosway is worthless and spoilt, she cant lift a hand for herself and soon the madness that is in her, and in all these white creoles, come out. She shut herself away, laughing and talking to nobody as many can bear witness. The madness gets worse and she ahs to be shut away for she tryto kill her husband- madness not being all either. It is my Christian duty to warn the gentleman that she is no girl to marry with the bad blood she have from both sides. Is your wife’s mother shut away, a raging lunatic and worse besides? Is your wife herself going the same way as her mother and all knowing it? Money is good but no money can pay for a crazy wife in your bed. Plenty people fasten bad words on you and your mother. (Christophine tells Antoinette that there are rumours about her and her mother being mad.) ‘I know what he told you. That my mother was a mad and infamous woman and that my little brother who dies was born a cretin, an idiot, and that I am a mad girl too.’ (Antoinette to Rochester about what Daniel Cosway said) And that her mother was mad. Another lie? They drive her to it. They tell hr she is mad, they act like she is mad. (Christophine says that Annette was driven to madness because she they treated her as if she was and isolated her from reality) It is in your mind to pretend she is mad. I know it. The doctors say what you tell them to say. (Christophine says that Rochester will go to doctors who will say that Antoinette is clinically mad because it is in his favour, and like her mother, Antoinette will go mad because the doctors and everyone around her will treat her like if she is) I’ll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She’s mad but mine, mine. My lunatic. My mad girl. She lifted her eyes. Blank lovely eyes. Mad eyes. A mad girl. (Rochester believes that Antoinette has lost sanity) I smashed the glasses and pates against a porthole (proned to outbursts) I saw that my wrosts were red and swollen (Antoinette attacked Richard Mason and had to be tied up to be subdued) You are too far gone to be helped Racial Segregation They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks. (Antoinette and her family are not included among the European whites who were respectable wealthy plantation owners) She still rode about every morning not caring that the black people wtood about in groups to jeer at her, especially after her riding clothes got shabby (they notice clothes.) (The blacks are hostile towards her, especially when they notice she is financially constrained.) The Lord make no distinction between black and white, black and white the same for Him. I never looked at a strange negro. They hated us. They called us white cockroaches. (The blacks hated Antoinette because she is white- them vs us. They are called white cockroaches because they are white but they are poor and have no status. Like cockroaches they are scavengers and associated with death and decay.) Keep them then you cheating nigger. (Antoinette put racial differences between her and Tia aside because Tia is her only firend but when Tia takes Antoinette’s money and they are no longer friends Antoinette sees Tia in the stereotypical way of a cheating ‘nigger’.) Plenty white people in Jamaica. They got gold money. They didn’t look at us, nobody see them come near us. Old time white people nothing but white nigger now, and black nigger better than white nigger. (Tia tells Antoinette she is not like real white people because real white people have money but Antoinette is poor. Tia tells Antoinette that black niggers are better than white niggers because she is white only in skin colour but equivalent in class status and wealth as the black niggers. Black niggers are better because they have a communtiy and belong somewhere. Antoinette has no sense of belonging) Why should a very wealthy man who could get his pick of all the girls in the West Indies, and many in England too probably… (The gossiping ladies believe Antoinette is lowly because she is not European white and Mr. Mason could marry somebody better, ‘better’ being somebody of true english decent and of a respectable class) It isn’t nonsense, they lived in England and he was angry if she wrote to us. He hated the West Indies. (Antoinette’s Aunt Cora’s husband did not like the West Indies, felt that England was superior.) They’re too damn lazy to be dangerous. (Mr. Mason has a stereotypical view of the negroes) The black people did not hate us quite so much when we were poor. We were white but we had nt escaped and soon would be dead for we had no money left. (the blacks have enmity for them which is exacerbated by the marriage because they are rescued from poverty. Antoinette says they were white but this was not enough to save them because they were poor.) They are children. (Mr. Mason’s stereotypical opinion of negroes thinking that because he is white and European he is superior) So I looked away from her at my favourite picture, ‘The Miller’s Daughter’ , a lovely English girl with brown colours and blue eyes and a dress slipping off her shoulders. (Antoinette wants to be an English girl because they are thought to be superior.) my mother, so without a doubt not English, but no white nigger either (Antoinette can see herself as a white nigger because she has grown up in poverty but Annette has fallen from grace so she is not truly a ‘white nigger’) But look the black Englishman! Look the white niggers! (Mannie is loyal and helps Antoinette’s family. For this he is seen as a traitor to the blacks who call him a black englishmand. Again Antoinette and her family are called white niggers because they do not command the respect and authority that the rich whites do.) ‘So black and white, they burn the same, eh?’ The boy was about fourteen and tall and big for his age, he has a white skin, a dull ugly white covered with freckles, his mouth was a negroe’s mouth and he had small eyes like bits of green glass…Worst and most horrible of all his hair was crinkled, a negroe’s hair, but bright red, and his eyebrows and eyelashes were red.