Wide Sargasso Sea

Antoinette’s unnamed husband narrates the first third of Part Two. The second third is narrated by Antoinette. The husband resumes as narrator in the final third.

At the start of Part Two, the husband and Antoinette are on their honeymoon in Massacre, a village north of Roseau, Dominica. They ride horses up a mountain toward a small estate that Antoinette’s family once owned. The husband finds the landscape lurid, lush, and too colorful. Antoinette dismounts from her horse and points out that they’ve arrived at a small river that forms the boundary of Granbois—the location of the estate. She finds “a large shamrock-shaped leaf,” holds it under water that pours from a bamboo spout in the cliff and drinks, then invites the husband to drink the “mountain water” (42).

When they arrive at “a shabby white house” sitting at the far end of a “course-grained lawn,” Antoinette announces that they have arrived at Granbois (42). She introduces the husband to the servants, including the mixed-race Amélie and Christophine, Antoinette’s elderly former nurse. The husband quietly suspects that Christophine disapproves of him.

The newlyweds enter the house and drink rum punch, toasting to their happiness. The husband surveys the house and notices two wreaths of frangipani flowers on the bed. He tries one on, jokingly, and then drops it to the floor. He then accidentally steps on it while walking toward the window.

Later, the husband writes a letter to his father back in England, describing his arrival in Granbois, Antoinette’s attachment to the estate, and the recent death of Richard Mason’s father. He also writes about having a “fever for two weeks” after arriving in Spanish Town (45). While in Jamaica, he stayed with the Frasers, friends of the Masons. In the letter, he describes Granbois, which he translates as “the High Woods,” as a “cool and remote place” (45).

Thinking about his wedding to Antoinette, the husband quietly admits to himself that he does not love his wife. He performed a role as a groom, and the black servants were suspicious of him. The morning before the wedding, Richard Mason entered the husband’s room, frantic because Antoinette was calling off the wedding. The husband went to talk to her and found out that his fiancée’s second thoughts are the result of her not liking the way that he laughed after telling Antoinette that their marriage would soon ease all of her fears. He made a deal with her: He will trust her if she trusts him.

Antoinette and the husband drink champagne in a brightly-lit dining room. The husband compliments Antoinette’s dress—inspired by Empress Josephine—and admires the golden and auburn highlights in her hip-length hair. She asks him about London and wonders if a city like that can feel real. He wonders the same about her precious island of Dominica.

Antoinette tells the husband that she and Aunt Cora spent summers at Granbois. She recalls an instance when she woke up in the middle of the night to see a pair of rats staring at her. She pulled the sheet up over her head and fell asleep. When she awoke, the rats had disappeared. Antoinette then went out on the veranda and lay on a flat hammock that she now points out to the husband. It was a full moon, and Christophine warned her about sleeping in its glare, believing that it can cause madness.

The next morning, Christophine enters the bedroom where Antoinette and her husband sleep. She comes in with a tray of coffee, cassava cakes, and guava jelly. Christophine invites the husband to drink her coffee, which she calls “bull’s blood” and derisively compares to the “horse piss [that] the English madams drink” (50). When Christophine leaves, the husband expresses displeasure with her “language” and the way in which she let “[t]he skirt of her flowered dress” trail along the floor, dirtying it (50). Antoinette counters that it is a sign of respect and evidence that the wearer owns more than one dress—a fact that black women are eager to show off. The husband also doesn’t like how Christophine “dawdles about” (51). Antoinette argues that “every move she makes is right so it’s quick in the end” (51). To the husband’s surprise, she then says that she will remain in bed all morning. She suggests that he enjoy their pools— “the champagne pool” with its waterfall and “the nutmeg pool” beneath it, “shaded by a big nutmeg tree” (51). She warns him to watch out for the red ants.

Antoinette joins the husband in the pools in the late afternoon. He watches as she throws a stone at a monster crab. He marvels at how she “[throws] like a boy” (52). She then mentions that Sandi—a boy that her husband doesn’t know—taught her how to throw. Every evening, the couple watches the sun set from what Antoinette calls an ajoupa and the husband calls “the summer house” (52). Antoinette tells him that there are four hermits on this island. She also tells her husband that she loves the island unconditionally, while also admitting that she doesn’t know any of the islands nearby. She then asks him if the rest of the world is more beautiful. He replies that it’s merely “different” (53).

Later at the house, the husband observes how Antoinette hands money to the black servants, barely counting it. He also notices how the servants bring meals later than usual and give them sidelong [looks]” and “sly knowing [glances]” (53). Antoinette trusts the servants, but he does not.

During the day, Antoinette admires herself in the mirror. She also hugs and kisses Christophine, which repulses the husband, and teaches him Creole songs. At night, she speaks of having wanted to die before she met him. She asks him why he wanted to marry her. Happiness, she says, frightens her.

Antoinette and the husband spend most of their days making love. The husband uses his free moments to befriend some of the islanders. He and his wife talk about England, too, but she is unwavering in her disapproval of a country that she has never seen.

One day, Daniel Cosway sends Antoinette’s husband a letter. In it, Antoinette’s half-black brother narrates the Cosway family’s dark history. He argues that Antoinette has fooled her new husband by lying about her family’s history of madness and feeble-mindedness. Antoinette, he warns, is beautiful like her mother and has bewitched her husband with her beauty.

After the husband reads the letter, he goes to Antoinette, who is in bed. She orders the servant Amélie to get Christophine. Amélie announces that Christophine will be leaving her position and soon exit the honeymoon house. She then mocks Antoinette and says, judging from the zombie-like look on the husband’s face, that perhaps he, too, is ready to leave. Antoinette slaps the servant girl for her impertinence. Amélie fights back, saying that Antoinette no longer has any right to harm her physically without expecting to get hit in return. The husband breaks up the fight between the women. Christophine then comes in, confirming that she will leave move into the house that Annette bought her long ago. Her son will live with her and assist her with work on the property. She knows that the husband doesn’t like her and says that she doesn’t want to cause any division between him and Antoinette. She chastises Amélie for her disrespectful attitude, and when Amélie leaves the room, she derides the girl as a worthless servant.

Antoinette sends the husband out so that she can get dressed. He waits for 30 minutes, hears nothing from his wife, then asks the servant Baptiste to bring him food. He drinks rum punch and feels sluggish afterward. When he checks on Antoinette, he finds her asleep. He goes for a walk but gets lost in the brush. Baptiste rescues him. The servant expertly cuts a path through the woods and back to the house with his machete. He tells the husband that Antoinette was worried but, when the men return, the husband finds her room dark and locked. Left alone again, he drinks more rum and reopens the book he was reading. He reads a chapter on zombies.

Antoinette’s voice takes over the narration. She is riding her horse to Christophine’s home— “a two-roomed house” with a shingled roof (65). She desperately tells her former nurse that her husband doesn’t like her, doesn’t even speak to her, and that the servants know that he “always sleeps in his dressing-room now” (65). She asks Christophine what she should do, and the old woman advises Antoinette to pack up and leave. Antoinette refuses. She adds that her husband now possesses all of the income that she inherited, leaving her penniless. Christophine advises that Antoinette sweetly ask her husband for money to visit a cousin in Martinique, though this would be a lie. Antoinette wonders instead about asking him for money and using it to go England and reinvent herself, but she knows that her husband will not give her anything.

Antoinette tells Christophine that her husband no longer calls her by her name. Instead, he calls her Bertha, which was one of her mother’s given names. She confesses that she has come to ask Christophine to cast a spell on her husband to make him love her again. Christophine explains that her husband has heard too many stories about her and her family and can’t distinguish what is truth and what is fiction. She warns Antoinette that she can’t trust anyone around her. Antoinette mentions Aunt Cora, but Christophine reminds her that the woman is now old and fell ill on the eve of Antoinette’s wedding.

The narrative briefly flashes back to the time during Antoinette’s engagement, when Aunt Cora argued with Richard Mason over Antoinette’s impending marriage. Aunt Cora didn’t like her niece’s fiancé. She found him stern and thought he was only interested in money. She resented, too, that Richard insisted on marrying Antoinette off without ensuring her legal protection. Richard insisted he trusted Antoinette’s intended with his life, but Aunt Cora countered that he was trusting him with Antoinette’s life, not his. In private, Aunt Cora gave Antoinette two valuable rings—one of which was “plain gold”—and made her promise to hide the rings from her husband (69).

Back at Christophine’s house in the present, Christophine gives Antoinette an object wrapped in a leaf and promises Antoinette that she will visit her soon.

The husband resumes narrating the final section of Part Two. He receives another letter from Daniel. He sends for Amélie and asks her to tell Daniel to stop writing to him. He asks her why Daniel sends the missives, but she doesn’t know. He asks if Daniel’s surname is Cosway, and Amélie says that Daniel calls himself by that name and that he lives like a white man—meaning in much greater comfort than other black people.

The husband visits Daniel, who says that his true name is Esau. He tells the husband the story of his birth and how he was ostracized and disinherited by his father Cosway, though Cosway treated Daniel’s brother, Alexander, as a favorite. He says that Sandi, Antoinette’s cousin, is Alexander’s son. He then taunts the husband with insinuations about a possible romance between Antoinette and Sandi. Finally, Daniel demands that the husband give him 500 pounds to keep quiet about these Cosway family’s secrets, reminding the husband that he is Antoinette’s brother.

Outside, the husband retrieves his horse and “[rides] away as quickly as [he can]” (76). When he returns to his wife, she confronts him, asking why he despises her. He notices how much she resembles the servant Amélie and wonders if they are related. He thinks it is probable in such a “damned place” (77). He questions Antoinette about her past and her family and asks why she told him that her mother died during her childhood when, in fact, Annette died only recently. Antoinette insists that her mother’s descent into madness was a form of death. He tells her about the letter he received from Daniel.

Antoinette relents and agrees to tell the husband the truth about her mother. She begins Annette’s life story at Coulibri Estate, describing it as the most beautiful place on Earth. Antoinette recalls being happy in the house as a girl most of the time, except at night. She sensed that the house was haunted after sunset. Displeased with some of Antoinette’s habits, Annette told her daughter that “[she] was growing up like a white nigger” (79). When the estate fell into disarray after the Emancipation Act, Annette worked feverishly on the plantation to remedy their poverty, but when people visited, she suspected that they were quietly mocking her and her family with “their cool, teasing eyes” (79).

Antoinette confesses that she thinks that the wound from the rock that Tia threw spoiled her for her wedding day and “all the other days and nights” (80). The husband tries to reassure her that she isn’t spoiled, but she doesn’t listen; she continues with her story.

Her mother grew to hate Mr. Mason. She refused to let him touch her and threatened to kill him, so Mr. Mason rented her a cottage in the country and hired caretakers to look after her. He spent most of his time in Trinidad, and Annette, meanwhile, lived in her own mind. She became fixated on her former life.

Antoinette admits that recently she visited Christophine, who advised her to leave the husband. He goes to embrace her, but she pulls away. He encourages her to go rest. She asks if he’ll come to her room to say goodnight. He promises that he will. He calls her by the name Bertha and insists that “on this of all nights, [she] must be Bertha” (82). He tells her that they are allowing “ghosts” to disturb them and wonders if they will ever be happy (82).

The husband awakes later that night, wanting to vomit. He feels that he’s been poisoned (he is unaware of the spell that Christophine has cast on him at Antoinette’s request). He goes into Antoinette’s room and gazes at her. His narration implies that he rapes his wife while she sleeps, which is indicated by his sense of needing to “be quick” because she could “wake at any moment” (83). When he finishes and puts his clothes back on, he sees Hilda, a young servant, sweeping. He puts a finger to his lips to signal silence; she mimics his gesture. He then runs out of the house and to the orange tree where he falls asleep.

He returns to the house, and Amélie greets him with a meal of bread, cold chicken, fruit, and wine. He is taken with Amélie’s sense of gaiety, which contrasts with the anxiety that he perceives in Antoinette. He has sex with Amélie and regrets it in the morning. He becomes hyperaware of Amélie’s African features.

Amélie tells the husband about her plans to go to Demerara, Guyana, where her sister lives, and then to Rio, where she hopes to meet rich men. Before leaving his room, Amélie tells the husband that she feels sorry for him, but she also feels sorry for Antoinette. After she departs, the husband lies in bed and listens for the sound of horse’s hooves, signaling his wife’s departure from the house.

The husband falls asleep again and is awakened by Baptiste, who brings him coffee and announces that the cook has left. Baptiste assures that husband that he will not leave.

Not long before, the husband wrote to Mr. Fraser, the magistrate in Spanish Town, telling him that he was thinking of writing a book on black magic which was a ruse to get Fraser to tell him something about Christophine. Fraser writes back to the husband that she is someone to watch carefully—especially since she didn’t return to Martinique as expected—and that he should inform the police at once if he finds out that she is performing witchcraft.

Around sunset, the husband asks Baptiste to mix him a rum cocktail. Suddenly, Antoinette calls out for Baptiste and Christophine. Baptiste and the husband go to her. When they arrive in her bedroom, they see that she looks a fright. She speaks in a whisper and then says that she’s thirsty. She seizes a bottle of rum and drinks. The husband warns her against drinking more. Antoinette dismisses him and calls for Christophine. Antoinette then accuses him of not liking “the black people so much” while seeming to prefer “the light brown girls” (88). She also accuses him of having been unfair to white planters. The husband says that slavery was never about liking or disliking anyone; it was “a question of justice” (88). Antoinette counters that her mother had no justice and now “[sits] in the rocking-chair speaking about dead horses and dead grooms and a black devil kissing her sad mouth” (88).

Antoinette tells the husband that he has ruined Granbois for her by sleeping with Amélie in the house. She grabs the bottle of rum again, and he tries to take it from her. Retaliating, she bites his arm. The bottle falls to the floor and Antoinette smashes another. She takes the broken glass and threatens him with it. Christophine enters. The husband goes onto the veranda and bandages his bleeding arm with a handkerchief. After Christophine calms Antoinette and gets her to sleep, the husband reenters their bedroom, which still reeks of rum, to go to bed.

The husband asks Christophine what Antoinette told her, assuming that she has accused him of ill treatment. Christophine dismisses him and says that he only married Antoinette for her money, which he quietly admits to himself. She also accuses him of wanting to “break [Antoinette] up” (92). As Christophine speaks, her words echo in the husband’s mind. He accuses Christophine of trying to poison him, but she says she only gave Antoinette something that would make the husband love her. He counters that all she has done is make his wife drunk and stirred her ill temper.

Christophine explains what she has done to help Antoinette: She has given the young woman something to help her rest for as long as she needs—that is, until the husband loves her as he did before, which is the only thing that can restore her fully. If he does not, she warns, the spirits “will tear [Antoinette] in pieces—like they did her mother” (95). Christophine asks if he will do this, but he doesn’t answer. She says that he should leave the West Indies and “return half of Antoinette’s dowry” (95). The husband dismisses Christophine as a “ridiculous old woman” and demands that she leave the house and not return (95). He tells her about Mr. Fraser’s letter and the possibility that he could write to Hill, the white inspector at Granbois, who will send the police if Christophine is performing “any of her nonsense” (96). He says that he will return to Spanish Town and consult with Antoinette’s brother and the doctors there to help his wife get well.

Christophine leaves, still insisting that she only gave Antoinette a potion to help her sleep. The husband suggests she write to Antoinette. Christophine replies that she’s illiterate but knows other things.

Unable to sleep, the husband writes to his father and to lawyers in Spanish Town. He asks the lawyers to arrange for him and his wife to stay in a furnished, rented house some distance from town and staffed with servants. He and Antoinette plan to be in Jamaica in a week.

As he and Antoinette prepare to leave Dominica, the husband looks at his wife who gazes silently out at the water. He thinks that she seems like “silence itself” (101). He recalls the songs that she used to sing about the wind, sea, sun, and rain, and about how much she loved the sound of the rain. He then confesses to Antoinette that he “made a terrible mistake” (102). He accuses her of deceiving him into marriage and acknowledges that they now hate each other, but he will refuse her the passion inherent in hatred. Instead, he will become cold to her.

A boy standing near Baptiste begins to sob. The husband asks Baptiste what’s wrong with the child. Antoinette says that when they first arrived at Granbois she told the boy that he could go with them when they departed. The husband becomes angry with her for making promises in his name, particularly to “[a] half-savage boy” (103). Antoinette says that the boy understands English and has worked hard to learn. The husband dismisses it as not being “any English that [he] can understand” (103). Antoinette apologizes and says that the boy wanted nothing more than to be near the husband. The husband says goodbye to Baptiste, sensing that he is as relieved to be rid of him as the husband is to be rid of the island.