Wide Sargasso Sea: Allusions 5 key examples

When Antoinette first brings up the gardens in the first part, she makes a rather conventional allusion, likening the garden at Coulibri to the Garden of Eden: "Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible—the tree of life grew there." However, she immediately qualifies her comparison, noting that "it had gone wild." Although she mainly compares it to the Garden of Eden on the basis of appearance, it seems an apt comparison on another level as well. In Genesis, God expels Adam and Eve from the garden because they give in to temptation and eat the forbidden fruit. Similarly, the Cosway family is eventually driven away from Coulibri because of their misdeeds. The local Black population, a large portion of which consists of formerly enslaved people, is resentful against former plantation owners like the Cosways. Even more broadly, the European drive to colonize the Americas by way of slave labor can be likened to the greed and disobedience of Adam and Eve. In the 15th and following centuries, European explorers often compared the New World to the Garden of Eden.

Following the biblical allusion, Antoinette expands on her description of the garden using vivid visual and olfactory imagery:

The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched. 

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There is a duality to this description. On the one hand, Antoinette develops the garden as beautiful, lush, and fragrant. On the other hand, it feels menacing and beyond reach. She relies on simile to describe the orchids in further detail.

One was snaky looking, another like an octopus with long thin brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root. Twice a year the octopus orchid flowered—then not an inch of tentacle showed. It was a bell-shaped mass of white, mauve, deep purples, wonderful to see.

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By comparing the one orchid to a snake, she echoes the biblical allusion from earlier. She describes the second orchid more fully, using a simile to compare it to an octopus. This gives insight into the girl's imaginative mind, and again shows that she sees the world around her in simultaneously playful and frightening ways. 

Ultimately, Antoinette's descriptions of the garden reveal that the estate has been neglected. This neglect serves as a reminder of the Emancipation Act of 1833. Without slave labor, it became impossible for the Cosways to uphold Coulibri's former glory as a sugar plantation. Even as a child, Antoinette herself understood this, and she drives the point home right after the garden description: "All Coulibri Estate had gone wild like the garden, gone to bush. No more slavery—why should anybody work?"

In this portion of dialogue, Mr. Mason claims to know more about the local Black population than Annette or Cora, who have lived in the Caribbean for most of their lives. Rather than seizing on his arrogant naïveté in a direct manner, Aunt Cora elegantly points out the flaw in his argument by reformulating a famous line from the fourth act of King Lear.

In the play, the Earl of Gloucester has his eyes gouged out by Lear's middle daughter Regan and her husband, the Duke of Cornwall. Wandering blindly around the heath, Gloucester reflects on the injustice and hopelessness of the world: "As flies to wanton boys are we to th'gods: / They kill us for their sport." In this quote, he suggests that the gods play with human lives as though they were young boys playing with flies. Mr. Mason claims that the Cosways' Black neighbors, many of whom are their former slaves, are children who wouldn't hurt a fly. Although she doesn't necessarily see the Black population as children, Aunt Cora leans on the Shakespeare quote to remind Mr. Mason that children do play with, and thereby hurt, flies.

Aunt Cora's line is one of a few Shakespeare allusions in the novel. In the second part, the husband recalls a particularly passionate period during their honeymoon when Antoinette tells him that she would die "now, when [she is] happy." This recalls a line from the second act of Othello, in which Othello tells his wife "If it were now to die / 'Twere now to be most happy." Additionally, at the end of the second part, the husband quotes a line from Macbeth as he wallows in self-pity: "Pity like a naked new-born babe striding the blast."

Remembering the "hot classroom," Antoinette recalls "the pitchpine desks" and "the heat of the bench striking up through my body along my arms and hands." Even if the classroom is hot, she sees "a cool, blue shadow on a white wall" outside. The cool shadow on the wall offers a sense of relief, and the wall implies protection. When inside the walls of the convent, Antoinette knows that she's safe.

This convent was my refuge, a place of sunshine and of death where very early in the morning the clap of a wooden signal woke the nine of us who slept in the long dormitory. We woke to see Sister Marie Augustine sitting, serene and neat, bolt upright in a wooden chair. The long brown room was full of gold sunlight and shadows of trees moving quietly. I learnt to say very quickly as the others did, "offer up all the prayers, works and sufferings of this day."

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The wooden clap, composed nuns, straight lines, strong light, and whispered prayers capture the morning routine at the convent. Overall, the reader gets the impression that life at the convent is predictable and simple. The end of the passage quotes the Morning Offering, a Catholic prayer. Antoinette continues to intersperse her memories and thoughts with lines from prayers. The rhythmic quality of these prayers contributes to the orderly, peaceful atmosphere. 

The rest of the morning routine evokes safety and serenity. Antoinette's description of the environment is intermingled with more snippets from prayers.

The smell of soap as you cautiously soaped yourself under the chemise, a trick to be learned, dressing with modesty, another trick. Great splashes of sunlight as we ran up the wooden steps of the refectory. Hot coffee and rolls and melting butter. But after the meal, now and at the hour of our death, and at midday and at six in the evening, now and at the hour of our death. Let perpetual light shine on them.

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The first three sentences further develop the morning routine at the convent. Then, suddenly, the register changes, as the Hail Mary prayer cuts into her narration. The final line about perpetual light comes from the Prayer for the Dead. In this part, Rhys reproduces the way that prayers and recitations can interrupt or intermingle with the flow of one's internal monologue. An important Roman Catholic prayer, the Hail Mary praises Mary, the mother of Jesus. Throughout the convent section, Antoinette thinks about her mother.

Antoinette's time at the convent is the only part of her life in which she has a clear routine and has access to a consistent community. The bright, clean imagery gives a sense of her peace there, whereas the biblical diction imbues the narrative with some degree of discipline and ambivalence. Narrowing in on this duality, the lines from the Hail Mary draw a connection between the peace she finds in the convent with the peace she will find in death.

Almost right away, the reader feels that the relationship between the husband and Antoinette is ill-fated. To begin with, the second part opens to heavy rain, which adds to the husband's "feeling of discomfort and melancholy." Because he serves as narrator in this section, his emotional state has a direct bearing on the reader's mood. Additionally, the town's violent name sharpens his sense of alienation. The dialogue also contributes to the gloomy foreshadowing. Amélie, for example, laughs at the husband while she wishes him happiness in his "sweet honeymoon house." A little later, a porter who calls himself the Young Bull tells him, "This is a very wild place—not civilized. Why you come here?"

As they leave Massacre and begin to ascend the hills, the husband hears something that sharpens the foreshadowing.

A cock crowed loudly and I remembered the night before which we had spent in the town. Antoinette had a room to herself, she was exhausted. I lay awake listening to cocks crowing all night.

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The crowing rooster has biblical associations. In the Gospels, Jesus predicts that Peter the Apostle will abandon him before the crowing of the rooster in the morning. Peter says that he will stand by Jesus's side even if it means dying with him. After Jesus is arrested, however, Peter denies knowing him three times. After the third time, he hears a rooster crowing. Reminded of Jesus's prediction, Peter weeps bitterly. Based on this, the sound is often associated with betrayal and considered inauspicious. 

Later in the second part, Antoinette hears a rooster after she has visited Christophine. Rather than simply remarking on the sound as the husband did earlier, she explicitly identifies it as a symbol of betrayal.

Nearby a cock crew and I thought, "That is for betrayal, but who is the traitor?"

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Knowing that Christophine is a practitioner of obeah, Antoinette has asked her former nurse for a love potion. When she wonders who the traitor is, the possibilities include Christophine, the husband, and herself. She feels guilty for bringing money into her relationship with Christophine, as well as for inviting her to practice obeah on her husband. This self-probing distinguishes her internal monologue from that of the husband. Typically taking it for granted that he's the victim in a given situation, he rarely wonders whether he's doing the right thing. Antoinette, on the other hand, is open to the possibility that the traitor is herself. She doesn't reach a clear conclusion, however, raising the rather broad question "And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?"

The couple's honeymoon is bookended by a rooster crowing. When the husband sits down to write a letter to his father explaining their departure from Dominica, he hears "a cock [crow] persistently outside." Haunted by the sound, but not curious whether it may be a signal of his betrayal of Antoinette, he throws a book at the rooster. He asks Baptiste what "that damn cock crowing about," and Baptiste responds that it is "crowing for change of weather."

The first two sentences in Antoinette's portion of dialogue are reminiscent of a pair of Othello's lines from the second act of Othello: "If it were now to die / 'Twere now to be most happy." When he speaks these lines, Othello has just been reunited with his wife Desdemona. Overjoyed to see her again, he claims that he would be fine with dying in this moment. Similarly, Antoinette feels so happy and safe in her marriage that she claims this would be a good time to die. This sheds light on her fragile emotional state. Accustomed to feeling vulnerable, she responds to contentment with a suicidal urge.

Naturally, the husband does not agree to take Antoinette's life, but he does agree to make her die in a metaphorical sense. Death is a common euphemism for orgasm. Through his idiomatic language, he conveys that they have a lot of sex during this period. They make each other "die" "in sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight."