Wide Sargasso Sea: Tone 1 key example

The first part opens with Antoinette in the position of narrator, as she looks back on her childhood at Coulibri Estate. Throughout this part, the tone is melancholy and dreamy. At times, it seems as though Antoinette is lost in thought; Rhys seems to assert that the woman's hazy associations from her childhood are on equal footing with concrete events. Antoinette lulls the reader into her half-dreaming state as she wanders between memories, nightmares, associations, emotions, prayers, and questions. As she reconstructs Coulibri and her childhood, Antoinette balances her nostalgia with regret, mourning, and interrogation. The first part simultaneously feels like a love letter to this place and an examination of her early trauma.

The second part is mostly narrated by the husband, and the tone feels more hardened and resolute. Like Antoinette, he moves between different layers of thought in his narration, including emotions, observations, drafts of letters, passages from books, and flashbacks. Nevertheless, he is more straightforward and definitive than Antoinette, and expects clear answers from his surroundings. He has a respect for fact and believes in a singular reality. While she accepts that there's a lot she doesn't and will never understand, he's plagued by secrets, ambiguity, and equivocation. While in the West Indies, he remains determined to make up his mind about the people, objects, and nature in his surroundings.

Antoinette briefly takes over as narrator in the second part. Here, the reader gets access into her unraveling mind. The tone is still melancholy and dreamy in these parts, but it has become more desperate than it was in the first part. In certain moments, the reader struggles to determine what temporal layer or setting Antoinette is operating in as she narrates. In her increasing madness, she eventually grows numb. This stands in juxtaposition to the development in the husband's tone. Whereas Antoinette often responds to upsetting situations with absentminded pondering and closing in on herself, the husband often responds with hostility.

The beginning of the third part is briefly narrated by Grace Poole, a character from Jane Eyre. In line with Grace's scene-setting purpose, her tone is matter-of-fact and explanatory. When Antoinette takes over, the tone is bewildered and lost. Trapped and confused about where she is, she encounters her surroundings with questions and fear. She only takes heart at the very end, when her dream shows her what she is supposed to do. The novel thus ends with a more heartened tone, just before Antoinette sets the house on fire and takes her life.