Themes in Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Themes in Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

The main themes in Wide Sargasso Sea are slavery and entrapment, the

complexity of racial identity and womanhood or feminism. In all of

these themes the main character who projects them are Antoinette and

Christophine. The theme slavery and entrapment is based on 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.

The second theme refers to 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. 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 depe...

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...a's colorful brightness. A

nightmare that is also a premonition, the dream takes place among

"tall dark trees" that lead to an enclosed stone garden. Following a

sinister and faceless man, Antoinette finds herself in a foreign place

that portends her future captivity in England.

Antoinette compares the garden at Coulibri Estate to the biblical

Garden of Eden, with its luxurious excess and lost innocence. In her

own words, the garden has "gone wild," assaulting the senses with its

brilliant colors, pungent odors, and tangling overgrowth. The flowers

look vaguely sinister; Antoinette describes one orchid as being "snaky

looking," recalling the biblical fall and man's decline into greed and

sensuality. The decadent Creole lifestyle as portrayed in the

novel-predicated upon exploitation, wealth, and ease-finds its natural

counterpart in the fallen garden.