Wide Sargasso Sea

Antoinette Cosway, the narrator of this section, is living at Coulibri Estate in 1830s Jamaica up the road from Spanish Town, the capital at the time. She lives with her mother, Annette, her younger brother Pierre, and her nurse, Christophine. Her father, Old Man Cosway, a former plantation owner, is dead. He fathered other children on the island with enslaved black women, but Antoinette has been taught not to acknowledge the half-black members of her family. Antoinette is white.

Coulibri Estate looks wild and overrun with vegetation, now that enslaved black people have been freed by the British Emancipation Act. While most of the black servants leave the Cosways, Christophine stays. Godfrey, an old man whom Annette despises for supposedly pretending to be deaf, also stays. A third, a boy named Sass, stays only because his mother has abandoned him, but eventually, he departs, too.

The end of slavery has impoverished the Cosways. They become subjects of ridicule to the black people on the island, where whites are greatly outnumbered. They call the Cosways “white [cockroaches]” and tell them to “go away” (13). Some new white people, however, are arriving—wealthy émigrés from England looking to capitalize off of the depressed Jamaican economy.

Antoinette makes one friend: another little girl named Tia. Tia is the daughter of Maillotte—a friend of Christophine. Tia and Antoinette meet every morning “at the turn of the road to the river” (13). They undress and go swimming in a nearby “bathing pool” (13). One day, Tia bets Antoinette three pennies that she can’t do a somersault underwater. Antoinette accepts the challenge and does a somersault in the pond. She emerges, choking on water. Tia seizes the pennies, claiming that Antoinette didn’t do a good job of performing the trick. Antoinette calls Tia a “cheating nigger” and dismisses her and the pennies, saying that “[she] can get more if [she wants] to” (14). Tia reminds Antoinette that she’s poor now, not like the white people now arriving with “gold money” (14). She refers to Antoinette and her family as “white [niggers]” and says that they are now beneath black people (14). Tia then leaves, taking Antoinette’s clean, starched, and ironed dress with her, forcing Antoinette to wear Tia’s dress home, to Annette’s disgust.

At home, Antoinette spends most of her time with Christophine, who sings songs of longing and lament though they are set to cheerful melodies. Annette, notably, has begun talking aloud to herself. She soon marries a man whose surname is Mason. He is among the white people who have recently arrived in Jamaica from England. Conditions improve on Coulibri Estate after he becomes master of the house. It is much cleaner, there are new servants, and Sass returns to work.

While Mason expects strict divisions between the slaves and their masters, Annette takes a different view. She disapproves of him referring to any black servant as “nigger” or even “negro” (19). Despite her relative respect for black people, Annette tells Mason that she wants to leave Coulibri Estate, believing that it isn’t safe for Pierre, who has mental and physical disabilities that impede his speech and cause him to “[stagger] when he [walks]” (10).

One day someone sets fire to the back of the Cosway-Mason house, where Pierre sleeps in his crib. His nurse, a woman named Myra, had left him alone, which sends Annette into a shocked rage that she takes out on Mason. The entire house is consumed in flames. Annette, Mason, Antoinette, and Aunt Cora, who is visiting, flee the house. Christophine leaves carrying Pierre. Mason stops Annette from trying to run back into the house to save her parrot. A crowd of black people gather round the white family and chase them off of Coulibri Estate. Antoinette sees Tia among the crowd. Tia suddenly throws a sharp rock at Antoinette. When the rock hits Antoinette, both girls cry at the same time. The family makes its way to their carriage. Pierre has been badly burned and dies soon thereafter.

After Pierre’s death, Annette goes away to the country and descends further into madness. Meanwhile, Antoinette stays with Aunt Cora, who cuts her hair, nurses her back from an illness, and bandages the wound on her forehead left by Tia’s hurled rock. Antoinette one day goes with Christophine to visit Annette, who is now staying in a “tidy pretty little house” (28). There are two black servants in the room and a white woman whose face Antoinette cannot see due to how deeply the woman bows her head. Antoinette notices that Annette’s hair has been braided though “one plait [is] much shorter than the other” (28). Annette pushes Antoinette away when she goes to hug her, saying “No,” first softly and then loudly. Antoinette leaves with Christophine. They return to Aunt Cora’s house and say nothing to each other about what they’ve just witnessed.

Aunt Cora enrolls Antoinette at a convent school. Initially, Antoinette is reluctant to leave for school without Aunt Cora, who grows impatient with this clinginess, but eventually she starts to go on her own. One day, Antoinette encounters a pair of bullies. One is a light-skinned black boy with curly red hair, freckles, and “the eyes of a dead fish” (29). He is accompanied by a very dark-skinned girl who has greased, braided hair. The scent of the girl’s hair oil nauseates Antoinette. They proceed to taunt Antoinette for having a mentally-ill mother with “eyes like zombie” (29). They tell Antoinette that she’s crazy, too, which is why her aunt is sending her to the convent. The bullies follow Antoinette to the convent’s gate, where the girl pushes Antoinette’s books to the ground. A tall older boy spies the three children from across the street. He makes his way over, which prompts the two bullies to run off. The boy is Sandi, the son of Old Man Cosway’s illegitimate son Alexander Cosway. He stoops to help her pick up her books.

Antoinette rings the bell to the convent. She waits for someone to answer and is then ushered in by a pair of black nuns. She begins to cry. A third nun with “large brown eyes” comforts her (31). Antoinette tells the nun that she doesn’t like walking to the convent alone. The nun promises to write to Aunt Cora, telling her that Antoinette wishes to be accompanied. The nun then sends for a 15-year-old girl named Louise to take Antoinette to Mother St. Justine, whose nickname is “Mother Juice of a Lime” due to her lack of intelligence (31). Louise is sympathetic to the elder nun, however. While cross-stitching roses into a patchwork, Mother Justine narrates stories about female saints, particularly St. Agnes.

Christophine has gone to live with her son in Spanish Town, and Mason is away most of the time. Aunt Cora leaves for England to tend to her delicate health. Mason visits Antoinette when she is 17 and marvels at how tall she now is. He invites her to live with him, Aunt Cora, and her stepbrother, Richard. He insists that she not remain at the convent, where she now lives. He has also invited friends from England to spend the following winter with them, which means Antoinette will not be bored, he says.

That night, Antoinette dreams that she is back at Coulibri Estate, wearing a white dress and following a strange man who beckons her to follow him. She is afraid but obeys. He leads her through the garden on the estate until she can go no further. Each second in the dream “is a thousand years” (36). She wakes in a fright. Sister Marie Augustine comes to her room and comforts her. The nun encourages Antoinette to think of “calm, peaceful things” (37). Morning, the sister says, will arrive soon.