Wide Sargasso Sea Language and Communication Quotes

This quote refers to the power that gossip has, in part because it's the voice of a community, the "they." The second sentence in the quote is kind of odd because it could be read two ways: either the talk about Christophine and the talk about obeah changed Coulibri, or the talk about Christophine and obeah itself (not just the talk about obeah) changed Coulibri.

Christophine shows here an awareness of how language marks a person's place in society. Even though she can speak "good" English, she knows that to assimilate with the black Jamaican community, she has to speak English in the same way they do.

This quote is more a statement of a wish than a fact, isn't it? Given the corrosive effects of gossip in Antoinette's life – think of everything that was said about her father, her mother, and her brother – her desire is understandable.

The unnamed author here discusses the problems he has getting information about obeah, but the quote also shows how important speech and silence is to the way obeah works. Obeah's magic has a scientific explanation (the "untraceable" powder, a poison), but everyone, white and black, treats it as if it were actually effective magic. Otherwise, why would Christophine be imprisoned for practicing obeah? Talk about what it does is critical to obeah's power on the whole community's imagination, but silence about how it actually works, about the scientific explanation for how it works, contributes to its mystique.

The passage shows how, at a critical point in Antoinette and Rochester's relationship, true dialogue fails, and in a sense, language fails. Instead of being able to approach the conversation as two equals, they are both stymied by their own assumptions about each other. No matter what she says, Antoinette will always be a hysterical, irrational woman to Rochester, and, no matter what he says, Rochester will always be the cold, unfeeling man to Antoinette. Antoinette's taking on a "n***o's voice" here is as much a taunt as her recognition that Rochester has placed her in the same exploitable racial category as Amélie. With all this baggage, how can there ever be a "right" time to talk?

Antoinette relates here her experience that sometimes the past is forgotten to the point that only myths and fictions remain – perhaps myths and fictions survive because they serve the needs of the present. This point touches on the project of the novel as a whole to recover the story of Bertha Mason, the madwoman of Jane Eyre, to look behind Rochester's version of events and get the story from Bertha's perspective.

This quote is from one of the strangest passages in the book (and that's saying a lot). The novel doesn't really help us out with explaining whether the italicized passages are bits of Rochester's interior monologue, bits of Christophine's dialogue echoing in Rochester's head, or something completely different, like the part in the parenthesis above, which sounds like Antoinette. Is Christophine performing some kind of obeah mind meld on Rochester, funneling Antoinette's appeal straight into his head? Or is Rochester just taking an imaginative leap? The structure of the passage invites us to consider how much of Rochester's actions – and reactions – are being "programmed" by Christophine.

As Mr. Fraser's letter indicates, Christophine is considered dangerous really not for any rational reason – "the look of her"? How vague can he get? It's the talk about what she can do that contributes to her power in Jamaican society.

The word "money" is the magic word that pops Rochester out of his odd trance-like dialogue with Christophine. Whether it's because money is all he cares about or because he's had an epiphany about Christophine's true aims is questionable.

Christophine's interest in Antoinette may or may not be purely altruistic, but she seems to have a point here. By virtue of his position in society, Rochester has the medical community on his side, and they have the power to declare Antoinette insane simply by saying so. As a Creole, a woman, and now declared mentally ill, Antoinette is triply subordinated to Rochester's will.

Rochester has learned Antoinette's lesson (in Quote #5 above) about lies a little too well. The "secret" of who she really is doesn't matter; it's her legend that matters. It's hard not to see here a wink at Jane Eyre, where Bertha is just such a "memory to be avoided, locked away." But before we buy into Rochester as the quintessential all-powerful European male too quickly, shouldn't we consider how Rochester seems to be borrowing the techniques of the people around him – Antoinette, Christophine? He seems to be affected by their way of looking at the world – you could say taking the very words out of their mouths, no? What's that all about?