Wide Sargasso Sea: Setting 1 key example

The first two parts take place on respective islands in the Caribbean Sea: Jamaica and Dominica. Jamaica is a much bigger island than Dominica and lies further west. Dominica is part of the Windward Islands. Both Jamaica and Dominica became parts of the colonial British West Indies after having been possessions of other empires. The island of Jamaica was captured by the British in 1655 after having been under Spanish rule—during which time the island was called Santiago. Dominica, on the other hand, had originally been colonized by the French. The island became an English possession after the Seven Years' War. Due to these distinct colonial histories, the cultures and languages of the two islands vary.

The first part opens at Coulibri Estate, the Cosways' plantation in colonized Jamaica. In her childhood, Antoinette rarely leaves Coulibri's immediate surroundings, and the family becomes increasingly isolated and immobile. While Coulibri is being renovated and after Coulibri burns down, Antoinette spends some time at her Aunt Cora's house in Spanish Town—a city now known as Kingston. Eventually, she moves to a convent in Spanish Town, where she spends some of her teenage years.

The second part opens in Massacre, a town on the west coast of Dominica—just north of Roseau, Rhys's birthplace. Antoinette and the husband leave Jamaica immediately after the wedding ceremony and briefly stop in Massacre before going up into the hills to Granbois, a small estate that had belonged to Annette. Aside from brief outings and visits that Antoinette and the husband make, the rest of the second part takes place at Granbois.

In the two first parts, which make up the majority of the novel, the narrators devote substantial attention to the colorful flora, lush foliage, and rich fragrances of their surroundings. Although Rhys's impetus for writing Wide Sargasso Sea was to give the creole madwoman in Jane Eyre a voice, her descriptions of the setting make the novel feel like a love letter to Dominica. During these parts, especially the second, England looms in the background—both as a contrast and as Antoinette's fate.

Antoinette has an ambivalent relationship to this foreign, faraway place; she both invokes England's name with a mocking tone and compares it to a dream. When Antoinette questions the husband about the place he comes from, he remarks to himself that "reality might disconcert her, bewilder her, hurt her." Nevertheless, she wants to go to England and is shocked when Christophine suggests that it might not exist. According to Christophine, if it does exist, England can't be any good: "Why you want to go to this cold thief place?" Later, in her final conversation with the husband, Christophine delivers a reminder that applies to colonialism more broadly: "She don’t come to your house in this place England they tell me about, she don't come to your beautiful house to beg you to marry with her. No, it’s you come all the long way to her house."

The third part is set in a house in England. Although Rhys never names the house, just as she never names the husband, the reader is meant to understand that Antoinette has ended up at Thornfield Hall. As predicted by the husband, she is disconcerted and bewildered: "They tell me I am in England but I don’t believe them. We lost our way to England."