Wide Sargasso sea door Jean Rhys

I DESCRIPTION

Time

For this book it is not possible to say exactly in what time and what years the story is situated, because this is not mentioned. Of course, there were some signs from which I can conclude in what time the story must have played and how long the story took.
When the book begins Antoinette says: ‘Still waiting for this compensation the English promised when the Emancipation Act was passed.” (page 15)
The Emancipation Act is a law which slavery forbids and obliges the freedom of the black people. This law dates from the year 1833. (source: ‘encyclopedie voor zelfstudie)
So the story must have started a short time after 1833, maybe a year, maybe a couple of year.
Making this assignment (doing the characterisation) I discovered that there ìs mentioned a exact date, namely the date of Antoinette’s birth.
Quotation: Antoinette Mason, née Corsmay, Mount Calvary Convent, Spanish Town, 1939. (page 44)
The story doesn’t begin with Antoinette’s birth, but when she is about five/ten years (that is really nit told in the book) , so in the middle-forties.

The time the story takes is about twenty years. I can from the following facts:
- When the story begins Antoinette is a little girl. Her age isn’t told, but I think she is about ten years old.
- At the end of the story Antoinette is not old and not young and not old.
Quotation: “First when I answered your advertisement you said that the person I had to look after was not a young girl. I asked if she was an old woman and you said no.” (page 145)
These signs are so unclear, that I am only able to make a rough estimation.
Making this estimation I considered the fact that more that one and a half century ago a life from being young till being not old and not young took less time than now.
It is very remarkable that in the book is never mentioned what year it is, or it is morning or evening.
Not saying anything about the time suits very good in the rough atmosphere of the Caribbean and with the idea’s of the main- character, Antoinettte, because she thinks that nature and feelings are much more important than thinks like time and money.

Nearly the whole story is told in the past tense. Just one sentence at the end of the story is in the present perfect tense: Antoinette says: “Now at last I know why I was brought here”(page 155/ 156)”.
So you can say that the whole book is told in retrospect.
Antoinette, the first I person tells her story from her prison at Tornfield Hall. (see quotation) From which point Mr. Rochester tells his part of the story the reader doesn’t know.

The book is divided in three parts. Between these parts there is a “gap in the time”. (in the plot a skipped line shows this). Though this book has a fragmentary character (there are two fragments told of the live of the main-character).
The story is told predominantly chronological except from one flashback: When Mr. Rochester is on honeymoon with Antoinette he looks back on the time when their marriage is prepared for them.

Place

The first part of the story is situated in Coulibri Estate near Spanish town. These are places in Jamaica. Here is Antoinette during her youth.
Later, when Antoinette is married to Edward they are in Granbois Estate, also in Jamaica.
During the last part of the story they are in Thornfield Hall, in England.

Quotations; impression of Jamaica:
1’There is the tree of life in the garden and the wall green with moss. The barrier of the cliffs and the high mountains. And the barrier to the sea.”
2 ‘And I could hear the bamboo shiver and creak through there was no wind. It had been hot and dry for days.”

Quotation; impression of England:
‘Under the oleanders…I watched the hidden mountains and the mists drawn over their faces. It’s cool today; cool calm and cloudy as an English Summer.”

There is a great contrast between the landscape and climate Jamaica and England.
* In Jamaica it is warm and sunny, in England it is cool and cloudy.
* In Jamaica there are a lot of mountains, it is a rough landscape, in England everything the mountains are hidden and everything is calm.

In the book there are pretty much descriptions of the nature. The nature plays an important part. (see: interpretation)

Plot

Antoinette Corsway lives with her mother and brother at Coulibri Estate, near Spanish town. Their servants have left them. Only Christophine and Goffrey stayed with them. They are very poor. Antoinette’s mother doesn’t may much attention to their children especially not to Antoinette. Because of this, Christophine takes care of her and her brother.
The mother of Antoinette marries Mr. Mason, a rich Englishman. The black people who live near them begin to hate them more than they used to do, because they are wealthier now. The mother of Antoinette doesn’t trust the situation and tells Mr. Mason she wants to leave. Mr Mason doesn’t want to leave the place and tells her that she over-reacts.
One night furious ex-slaves set their house on fire, everybody just escapes from the flames. A servant left Pierre alone and when they took him out of the house, it was too late. He died on the way to Spanish town. After these events Antoinette’s mother gets out of mind, she screams inherently to her husband that she hates him. Antoinette stays at her aunt Cora’s for a while. When she visits her mother she really acts like a lunatic.
Antoinette goes to a boarding school in a convent. Antoinette sees this quiet place of the nuns as a refuge from her live. Mr. Mason visits her a couple of time. The last time he comes he tells her that she can be hidden for the rest of her life.

After the death of Mr. Mason, Richard Mason, his son, arranges a marriage between Antoinette and Edward Rochester. Mr. Rochester gets all the money she inherits from old Mason: a sum of thirty thousand dollars.
Antoinette and Mr. Rochester spend their honeymoon at Granbois Estate. It seems that they get along pretty good; Antoinette loves Edward, Edward doesn’t really love her, but he seems happy although she and the country is very unreal to him.
One day Edward receives a letter from someone who says he is Daniel Corsway, Antoinette not-recognised half-brother. He says that the people of family of Antoinette; the Corsway’s are all mad. He tells that mother is insane already and that Antoinette will follow her.
Edward believes him and begins to hate his wife. Antoinette feels that he doesn’t love him and asks Christophine to make a magic drink for her with would make Mr. Rochester love her. Christophine makes the drink. After drinking this Mr. Rochester loves Christophine again and they make love. The next morning he discovers that the whine he drunk is bitter, he thinks Antoinette wanted to poison him. Being furious on her he makes love to Amèlie, a servant with mixed blood. When Antoinette finds this out she act like a lunatic; she attacks Edward, get very drunk and is screaming inherently. Edward is now convinced of the madness of Antoinette. They leave Jamaica and take on the request of a servant called Baptiste a little boy with them.

They now live in Tornfield hall. Antoinette, now incurable mad, is locked up in a garret on . A woman called Grace Poole continually looks after her. When Grace has been drinking Antoinette escapes. One of this moments she sees another woman (Jean Eyre). When Richard Mason comes and visits her she attacks him with a knife. The last time Antoinette escapes she sets the house on fire and kills herself.

Characters

Main Characters:

Antoinette Corsway

Antoinette is in the beginning of the book a young girl and at the end she is not young and not old.
Nearly her whole live Antoinette is in Jamaica; this is also the country in which she is born. She loves it; the nature in Jamaica is beautiful.
Antoinette must be beautiful, because I heard other people say pretty often that she is very pretty.
Quotation: Aunt Cora says: “she is pretty like pretty self, just like her mother” (page 33)
It is very remarkable that Mr. Rochester has contradictory thoughts about her exterior.
In the beginning of their honeymoon, he regrets the marriage and so he doesn’t like her look.
Quotation: “She wore a tricone hat which became her. At least it shadowed her eyes which are too large and can be disconcerting.” (page 56)
Later, when he has drunk the love-drink he is happy (for a short time) and then he describes Antoinette as beautiful.
Quotation: “I never realized how beautiful she was.” (page 115)

Antoinette is a Creole girl; a white person who is living born in one of the colonies. This makes her too wild and uncivilized to be a ‘real’ European and too white to be integrated in the society of the Negro’s.
Quotation: Edward says: “Creole of pure English blood she may be, but not English or European either.”
This Creole’s are hated by the black people, because the sorrow they have done to them in the slavery. The English people don’t really respect them. They think they are uncivilized.

This grows up without a mother to care about her, without a loving person to look after her.
Quotation: ”She run wild and nobody care.”
Also later she does not get the love of her husband she needs. Therefore her hole live she is searching for the love she will never find.

In her childhood there is obviously something missing, this may be one of the reasons she mentally never really grows up: she is like a child during her whole life.
She hasn’t got an own desire, she is never certain what to do.
Quotation: Edward says about her: She is uncertain about facts- any fact.
She never takes own initiative, because she cannot do anything herself; her whole live she is lived; she doesn’t really live herself: Her marriage is arranged by other people. When she discovers that her husband don’t love her she need Christophine to (try to) rescue her marriage. When it doesn’t work our Edward decides that they are going to England.

Antoinette is always afraid of everything, even of happiness, when she is young ánd when she is older, and makes remarks about that like children do.

Quotations
1 Telling about her youth she says one time: “I wished I had a big Cuban dog to lie by my bed and protect me.” (page 31)
2 She says to a nun: “I am so afraid” (“afraid of what”) “I don’t know, afraid of everything.” (page 62)
3 Later she says once to Edward: “I am not used to happiness, it makes me afraid.” (page 77)

Antoinette is in the beginning of the story unhappy. When she marries Mr. Rochester she is pretty happy, because she loves him and she has the idea that he protects him. This happiness doesn’t take long, because soon she discovers that Mr. Rochester doesn’t love her. After Mr. Rochester makes love to Amélie, she really hates him and she goes out of mind. At the end of the story she is an incurable lunatic, which need to be locked up to prevent she is doing harm to herself and other people.

As I just described, the personality of Antoinette develops during the book. Reading the book you discover more and more about her. These two elements make Antoinette a round character.
Antoinette is one of the I-persons of the book. You see a part of the book though her eyes. She is really a watcher: She always looks around and describes very exactly what she sees.

Edward Rochester:

Edward is during the story a man, probably not old and not young. Mr. Rochester is English. He loves England. During the story he is in Jamaica. This man prefers England to Jamaica. He feels like a stranger there.
Quotation: “I feel much like a stranger here. I feel that this place is my enemy.” (107)
This man really loves money: he married to Antoinette just because of the money. When you marry to someone who you don’t even know well just because of the money, you must really love it.
Mr. Rochester is a really suspicious person; he often doesn’t trust the situation and he hasn’t got much faith in people.
Quotation: “People say they are harmless. I wouldn’t like to believe them.” (page 73)

Mr. Rochester is, like Antoinette, a round character and he is also is one of the I persons of the book.

Secondary Characters:
All the secondary characters are flat characters.

Anette Corsway:
She is a woman who seems not to care about Antoinette.
Quotation: ‘But she pushed me away, not roughly but calmly, coldly, without a word, as if she had decided once and for all that I was useless to her.” (page 44)
She is a very beautiful Creole. When her house is set fire and her son dies, because of that she goes mad.

Pierre Corsway:
Pierre is Antoinette’s ‘lunatic’ brother.
Quotations:
1 “Pierre who staggered when he walked and couldn’t speak distinctly.” (page 16)
2 “He still had a crib and he slept more and more, nearly all the time. He was so thin that I could lift him easily.” (page 31)

Daniël Corsway:
Daniël Corsway is the sun of the father death of Antoinette. The father of Antoinette had an affair with a black girl. The father of Antoinette never recognised his son as his son; he just sends some money now and then.
Daniël hates his father for this and therefore he wants to revenge him on the members of his family.

Aunt Cora:
When Antoinette’s house is burned down she stays at her for a while. Aunt Cora is, besides Christophine who really seems to love her.

Mr. Mason:
Mr. Mason is the man the mother of Antoinette marries to in her second marriage. He is pretty old: people say that he is too old for Antoinette’s mother. He is the stepfather of Antoinette and he tries very hard to be like a real father to he, but Antoinette not seems to want him to be that to her.
Quotation: “I would never like him very much. I still called him Mr. Mason in my head.” (page 129)

Christophine:
Christophine is a Martinique girl. She was the second wife of Antoinette's father. (the dead Mr. Corsway). Antoinette’s mother doesn’t take care about Antoinette, so Christophine looks after Antoinette. She is one of the little servants, which stay with the family Corsway after the Emancipation Act.
This person is not very young and not very old. She is sort of a mystery; I, as a reader don’t know a lot about her. Christophine is a black-magician. She has a strong personality.

Amélie:
She is a servant at Brainbois Estate. Amélie is a girl of mixed blood. She often talks to Mr. Rochester and says that she is sorry for him.
Mr Rochester thinks Amélie is very pretty. When Mr. Rochester finds out that there is put something in his whine and he thinks he is poisoned he makes love to Amélie. So Amélie is the girl with which Edward betrays Antoinette.
Tia:
A black girl with who Antoinette plays sometimes in her youth

Servants:
Goffrey, Myra, Babtiste, Caro

I INTERPRETATION

Central Theme and Title

There are two problems discussed in this book.
The first problem is the marriage between two complete different people, with complete different backgrounds and complete different idea’s. This contrast between the two persons of this book makes the marriage between Edward and Antoinette very difficult. Such a marriage will only succeed when both sides really want it to work out and when the both love their partners very much. Mr. Rochester doesn’t love Antoinette.
Quotation: Edward thinks ‘Or I would touch her face gently and touch tears. Tears- nothing! Words- less than nothing. As for the happiness I gave her, that was worse than nothing. I did not love her. I was thirsty for her, but it was not love. I felt very little tenderness for her, but that is not love. I felt very little tenderness for her, she was a stranger to me, a stranger who did not think or feel as I did.” (page 78)
The marriage is not a thing that they decided together, because they really wanted it. Mr. Rochester marries to Antoinette because of her money, Antoinette because there was someone else and because Richard Mason she barely needs love. These are enough reason why this marriage never will succeed.
The second problem, and the most important, is the tragic story of a young girl who can’t prevent her fate. Antoinette, this girl is just formed by the miserable situations she is in.
She belongs to a community of Creoles: blank people who are born in the Colonies. The white people don’t respect them: they are wild and uncivilised and the black people hate them because of the sorrow they have done to them before the Emancipation Act.
Quotation to underline this: Tia, a black girl says once to Antoinette: That`s not what I hear. I hear you all poor like beggar. You ate fresh fish- no money for fresh fish. Plenty white people in Jamaica. Real white people, they got money. You nothing but white nigger now and black nigger better that white nigger. (page 21)
She has also a lunatic mother who doesn’t care about her. Her husband also doesn’t love her.
Quotation: Christophine says: “She run wild, she grow up worthless. And nobody care.”
I think Christophine is perfectly right. She was (with her care and her love-drink) Christophine’s last hope. She also couldn’t help her and prevent that Antoinette gets as insane and miserable as her mother did.

The title of the book is Wide Sargasso Sea.
The Sargasso Sea is a sea between the West Indian and the Caribbean Islands that is full of floating Sargassum (seaweed). Earlier, people thought that ship would get stuck in this Sargassum. (source: Encyclopedie voor zelfstudie)
The idea is that Antoinette represents such a ship, and the Sargassum represents the problems. Antoinette (the ship) gets provoking slowly more and more into trouble (into the Sargassum); sometimes it goes a little bit better (she can sail a little bit further), but she never gets out of the problems (the ship can’t conquer the Sargassum), because the problems are too huge (the sea is far too wide and there is far too much Sargassum) . Eventually she will get so stuck that she will go down under just like the ship in the Sargassum.
When you read the title you would say it has nothing to do with the book. When you look at the historical meaning of this sea and link this to the book, you understand the deeper meaning of this title.
I think the title is very well chosen, because it indirectly represents exactly what the book is about and according to me there is no better thing a tittle can ‘do’.
Characters:

In this book it up to the reader whether Antoinette or Edward is the culprit of the bad ending of the book: the failure of the marriage between them and so the failure of Antoinette’s life. Though the entirely different perspectives you have a pretty good image of both Edward and Antoinette and both their motives seem reasonable. The reader has a dilemma.
I think the writer has more sympathy for Antoinette because she lets Christophine condemn Edward.
Quotation: “Everybody know that you marry her because if her money and you take it all. And then you want to break her up, because you jealous of her. She is more better than you, she have better blood in her and she don’t care for money- it’s nothing for her. Oh I see that first time I look at you. You young but already hard. You fool girl. You make her think that you can’t see the sun for looking at her.
And the, you make love to her till she drunk with it, no rum could make her drunk like that, till she can’t do without it. It’s she can’t see the sun any more. Only you she see. But all you want is to break her up.” (page 125/126)
I can be wrong, but I think that she shows her own opinion in this way. I came to this idea because Christophine comes just like Jean Rhys from Dominica.
This makes the writer not objective. That’s not so strange because she lived herself by that time in Dominica (pretty near to Jamaica; in that time a country with a comparable political and social situation) and saw the Creole girls, daughters of slave owners, be unhappy with her own eyes. (see: literary context)

Place

The place is in connection with both of the problems discussed in the book (the themes).
To begin is the difference between the homeland of Antoinette and Edward the most important differences between them and so one of the causes of the failure of their marriages.
Antoinette is born in Jamaica. She loves the county; it is her home.
Quotation: “I was alone in the most beautiful place in the world, it is not possible that there can be anywhere else so beautiful as Coulibri.”
Edward is born in England. He loves this place and sees it as his home.
Quotation: “It’s cool today; cool calm and cloudy as an English summer. But a lovely place in any weather, however far I travel I’ll never see a lovelier.”
There is a dialog between Antoinette and Edward in which they talk about this difference.
Quotation:
“ ‘Is it true?’ she said, ‘that England is like a dream? Because one of my friends who married an Englishman wrote and told me so. She said that this place London is like a cold dark dream sometimes. I want to weak up.”
‘Well,’ I answered, ‘that is precisely how your beautiful island seems to me, quite unreal and like a dream.’
‘but how can rivers and mountains and the sea be unreal.’
‘More easily’, she said, ’much more easily. Yes a big city must be like a dream.’ ” (page 67)

When Mr. Rochester is in Jamaica he doesn’t feel like home; he seems not to be happy in Jamaica. Especially not when he has read the letter about the madness of Antoinette.
Quotation: “ Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near. And the woman is like a stranger.”
I think that the fact he doesn’t feel at home; has the idea that something is wrong about the place he is, is one of the reasons why he is more anxious to believe in the madness of Antoinette. So this is one of the reasons of the failure of Antoinette’s life.
When Mr. Rochester has made love to Amélie Antoinette is hysterical, she has lost everything, even her love for ‘her’ country.
Quotation: “Do you know what you have done to me? It’s not the girl, not the girl. But I loved the this place and you have made it into a place I hate. I used to think that if everything else went out of my life I would still have this, and now you have spoilt it. It’s just somewhere I have been unhappy, and all the things are nothing to what has happened here. I hate it now like I hate you.”
After Antoinette acting hysterical, Mr. Rochester is absolutely sure of he being mad and he takes her to England; this is the place she doesn’t belong, like Mr. Rochester doesn’t belong in Jamaica. In England, Mr. Rochester locks her up like an incurable lunatic; she is lost.

Form

The language of the book is very ‘smarmy’, everything goes provoking slowly. This is typical for what is happening to Antoinette; she gets slowly, but more and more lost.
There are two narrators (I-persons) in the book; namely Antoinette Corsway and Richard Mason. There is a change of the perspective in the book. More about this: see assignment about the theme about of the two books we have chosen.

Literary context

The book is written in 1966. It is a novel. Jean Rhys is recognised to a literary tendency called realism; she wants to tell the true about the society. In her books there is often a lot of social criticism; she criticises the society. In the book you see elements of this criticism because the writer attacks the male-dominated society (example: Antoinette’s stepbrother, Mr. Rochester decide for her, she has nothing to say ) in which women are the victim.( Antoinette is definitely the victim)
This novel is a work of literary re-creation. The book is based on Charlotte Brontië’s book Jean Eyre.
For many years, Jean Rhys has been haunted by the figure of the first Mrs. Rochester- the mad wife in Jean Eyre. She was so fascinated by this character that she decided to write a book about her story. From her personal knowledge of the West-Indies, and her reading of their story, Miss Rhys knew about the mad Creole heiresses in the early nineteenth century, whose dowries were only an additional burden to them: products of an inbred, decaded, ex-patriate, resented by the recently freed slaves whose superstitions they shared, they languished uneasily in the oppressive beauty of their tropical surroundings, ripe for exploitation. It is one of these girls, who is the main-character of the Wide Sargasso Sea.

Biography of the writer

Jean Rhys was born in 1894 at Roseau, Dominica, one of the Windward Islands, and spends her childhood there. Her father was a Welsh doctor and her mother was a Creole.
She came England when she was sixteen. After her father died she drifted into a series of hopeless jobs-chorus girl, mannequin, artist’s model- and only began to write when the first of her three marriages broke up. She was living in Paris and was taken up by Ford Madox Ford, who wrote an enthusiastic introduction to her first book, published in 1927, a collection of stories called the Left Bank. This was followed by Quarted (1928, original Postures), after that leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930),Voyage in the dark (1934) and Good Morning, Midnight (1939). None of these was particularly successful, partially, perhaps, because they were decades ahead of their time in theme and tone, dealing as they did with women and underdogs, exploiting their sexuality. With the outbreak of the war and subsequent failure of Good Morning, Midnight, her work went out of print and Jean Rhys literally dropped completely from sight. It was generally thought that she was dead. Nearly twenty years she was rediscovered, largely due to enthusiasm of Francis Wyndham. It was during those reclusive years that she gad accumulated the stories collected in Tigers are Better-Looking. In 1966 she made a sensational reappearance with Wide Sargasso Sea, which won the Royal Society of Literature award and the W.H. Smith Award in 1966- her only comment on the later being: ‘It has come too late”.
Her final collection of stories, Sleep It Off Lady, appeared in 2976. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1966 and a CBE in 1978. Jean Rhys died at the age o eighty-four, in 1979.

Remark

This chapter I have based on the, according to me, very good introduction of the book, written by Francis Wyndham. I can’t quote his words, because I changed too much of his words and I also changed the sequence in which he wrote them.

III PERSONAL JUDGEMENT

As I said, the author based this book on Jean Eyre, by Charlotte Brontië.
I’ve read the simplified edition of Jean Eyre and I liked the story very much (it is right now not my intention to explain why), so I can understand why Jean Rhys was so impressed by this novel. That I read this simplified edition of Jean Eyre is a reason why I was kind of curios to the book. In Jean Eyre it is very unclear what happened in the past, but it is certainly represented as one big fault in Mr. Rochester’s life of which he couldn’t really prevent the consequences. (I read this in the simplified edition and searched for quotations in the original book, but I couldn’t find them) Mr Rochester is in Jean Eyre a good man, kind of strange, but because Jean has sympathy with him (falls in love with him) you also like him. He is represented as a man with a lot of experience in life and Wide Sargasso Sea proves this.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, makes the past of Mr. Rochester and ‘the mad wife’ not just the unknown past, but a ‘real’ history, with Antoinette Corsway being in the limelight. I think Jean Rhys transforms Antoinette Corsway from just a type, who represented the danger in Jean Eyre, to a real person, with thoughts and feelings.
She tells the story of Antoinette’s whole life and so tells about everything that made Antoinette become mad. Antoinette is, before she is incurable mad already an over-sensitive and afraid girl, who never grew up, but I think that Mr. Rochester shouldn’t give in to all his hate for Antoinette and that locking her up in England is not the solution for Antoinette’s problem. I think this decision was selfish of him. Taking Antoinette (and her problems) was the nonmaterial prize of the material prize (money) he is given for the marriage. Of course the marriage was due to miscarry, but whén someone could do anything against the failure of the marriage and Antoinette’s life, it would be Mr. Rochester, because he is not traumatised like Antoinette. He sacrificed Antoinette’s life for his own life and I blame him for that.
Of course I can understand why he does it; I would neither want to live with someone I didn’t love, didn’t understand and who is told to be mad, but Mr. Rochester should be wiser and try more efforts to make something of the marriage.
The marriage is certainly an mistake of Mr. Rochester but I think he did could do something to prevent the disastrous consequences.

Although the book is based on Jean Eyre I think it is absolutely a complete book of its own; you need not read Jean Eyre to understand Wide Sargasso Sea.
So I will now give my opinion about the book itself.
The beginning of the book was kind of boring. Antoinette tells about her youth, she describes the surroundings; the nature and the house she lives in very exactly. This descriptions take such an important part of this beginning, that, after a while, it doesn’t grip anymore .
I think this is a pity, because though this the story gets going very slowly.
Continuing the book the story became more interesting and less long-winded. The descriptions go on , but they are now alternated by expressions of the feelings of the characters and exciting events. There are also more dialogs in the end of the book than in the beginning. Dialogs, I think, make stories always more interesting.

There are three climaxes. The first is when the house of Antoinette and her family is set on fire by the ex-slaves and that Antoinette and her family is very afraid. (page 35-37)
The second climax is when Mr. Rochester faces Antoinette after he slept with Amélie. Antoinette knows that he betrayed her goes out of her mind.
The third climax is when Antoinette burns down Thornfield Hall and kills herself.
There could be three more climaxes in the book. First the marriage of Mr. Rochester and Antoinette and secondly when Mr. Rochester and Antoinette leave Jamaica and to finish when Antoinette is locked up in Thornfield Hall.
The writer doesn’t tell about these events; she just skips them. I don’t know why she skips them and I think it is a pity that they are not included, because they would give the story and extra emotional value.

The end of the book was of course not satisfying; the life of Antoinette doesn’t turn out well; she goes crazy and she is so unhappy that she even kills herself. Although there happens a lot of horrible things happen they were not shocking at all to me. I can’t feel Antoinette’s pain. I am just sorry for her, but no more.
I think this is caused by the fact that there is a certain distance between the reader and the characters. This is, according to me, caused by the fact that the story has a complete other setting; it plays in a complete other time I, as reader, live in. The mystical atmosphere of the Caribbean in the beginning of the twentieth century and the way of thinking of the people in this time and place is quite unreal to me.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t think the book is good. It gives a great picture of the political and social situation and the difference between black, Creole and white people. The author managed quite well to describe an extraordinary story of a sensitive girl in a special form. The book is petty thin, but tough very complex. Reading it I had the idea that everything could have a special value (especially the nature and the secondary characters). This made the book not so easy to read, but now (when I finished my assignment about this book) I can really appreciate it.

Looking through the eyes of
The things told about the political situation (which is the cause of this events) are interesting to me than al those descriptions.
They are told from the experience of the little girl Antoinette, so they are not very sophisticated, but though it is not very difficult to gather from the things which are mentioned how the situation was and if the writer would let her tell more about that this wouldn’t fit in this experience of a little girl (a child doesn’t have an opinion about ‘aduld stuff’ like politic).