What is the meaning of Wide Sargasso Sea?

The title of the novel refers to the Sargasso Sea, a vast area of the northern Atlantic Ocean which is home to sargassum, a kind of seaweed. The Sargasso Sea is legendary for being an oceanic black hole, where ships get ensnared by huge forests of floating seaweed, or drift helplessly when the wind ceases to blow.

What does fire symbolize in Wide Sargasso Sea?

Fire is the ultimate destructive and redemptive force in the novel. The fire at Coulibri is an act of retribution and defiance on the part of the nearby black community, but it destroys the life that Antoinette has known as a child.

What does Wide Sargasso Sea say about race?

Wide Sargasso Sea reveals to us a hierarchical structure in Jamaica due to race. This hierarchical structure is essentially how much white blood people contain. The purer you are on either spectrum, be that black or white, the more respect you obtain from either side.

What is the secret in Wide Sargasso Sea?

The secret of Wide Sargasso Sea lies in the paradox that “Desire, Hatred, Life, Death came very close in the darkness. . . . Not close. The same” (79).

Is Wide Sargasso Sea a classic?

Wide Sargasso Sea turned Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel inside out. As the book celebrates its 50th anniversary, Hephzibah Anderson explains its enduring power.

What happens at the end of Wide Sargasso Sea?

In this dream, she lights candles and sets the house ablaze. One night, she wakes from this dream and feels she must act on it. The novel ends with Antoinette holding a candle and walking down from her upstairs prison.

Who started the fire in Wide Sargasso Sea?

In response to Tia’s call, Antoinette jumps toward her out on the mansion’s ramparts, and Sargasso ends. The fire that consumes her is directly linked to the one set by that group of newly freed ex-slaves. It is an act of resistance, not madness.

What is Grandbois in Wide Sargasso Sea?

For the ‘honeymoon island’, Grandbois, is a Caribbean Eden, the world of childhood innocence. Although Christophine was ‘given’ to Antoinette as a slave, there is no sense of the slave relationship; Chris- tophine is Annette’s closest support and Antoinette’s surrogate mother.

What is the main theme of Wide Sargasso Sea?

The Oppression of Slavery and Entrapment The specter of slavery and entrapment pervades Wide Sargasso Sea. 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.

What is the significance of slavery and entrapment in Wide Sargasso Sea?

Both Antoinette and Rochester must marry because of their families, which creates a feeling of entrapment for both. The idea of slavery is destructive from the beginning of the novel, with the burning down of Coulibri by the former slaves. Entrapment runs throughout the novel through the isolation the characters feel.

Why does Rochester call Bertha?

Rochester refers to Antoinette as “Bertha” as a way of ensuring that she surrenders into his idea of a woman, as opposed to who she truly is.

Why does Rochester call Antoinette Bertha in Wide Sargasso Sea?