Wide Sargasso Sea Race Quotes

Here Antoinette describes the hostility she encountered from blacks after the Emancipation Act was passed. With the death of her father, the former slave owner Mr. Cosway, her family is not only ruined, but exposed to the open threats and abuse of the area's black community, as the little girl's use of the term "white cockroach" indicates.

Ironically, the same taunting girl in Quote #1 above is Tia, who becomes Antoinette's only friend. Antoinette strongly identifies with Tia because both are in racial groupings that are considered inferior to the dominant white, European colonial class. But this identification has a flip side: Tia is depicted here as having a closer connection to the natural world that Antoinette thinks of as a haven. Tia's close connection to the natural world is actually playing on a racial stereotype that views blacks as being primitive, as closer to nature than to civilized man.

In this tiff, it appears that Annette and Mr. Mason are just throwing around some racial stereotypes. Annette thinks blacks are malicious, and Mr. Mason believes them to be lazy. Or you could read it another way. Annette could be disputing Mr. Mason's condescending belief that blacks are "lazy," incapable of action. Instead of this one-sided view, Annette is trying to get Mr. Mason to see that blacks are actual human beings, psychologically complex and fully capable of acting on their own desires.

At this point, the novel seems to be agreeing with Mr. Mason's stereotypical view of blacks as primitive and animalistic. But remember that this is from Antoinette's point of view – she's telling the story. And a page or two later, Antoinette notices that some of the women rioters are crying in sympathy with her family's fate, so the rioters aren't all feral "howling." At the very least, the depiction of blacks at this point reflects Antoinette's conflicting feelings about race.

This quote is one of many in which Rochester reveals his almost paranoid concern with the way blacks perceive him. Since Amélie's expression is filtered through Rochester's narrative, it's hard to read her expression without thinking about what it reveals about Rochester's own feelings. Is he paranoid? Or is she really giving him this look? Does the fact that the look is "intimate" and causes Rochester to feel "ashamed" actually reveal more about Rochester's attraction to Amélie, an attraction that he can't admit to himself at this point but will, we know, act on later on in the novel?

Like Mr. Mason in Quote #2, Rochester expresses here a similar belief that blacks are lazy. Like her mother Annette, Antoinette is being placed in the position here of a guide or an interpreter, as somebody who can read the true significance of what blacks say and do. Of course, like her mother, Antoinette is ignored.

This quote is representative of Daniel Cosway/Boyd's bizarre and contradictory letter. First off, he spouts a lot of racist baloney about Creoles that was unfortunately common belief at the time – the belief that they are somehow "degenerate" because of their exposure to the Caribbean climate. But then he tries to pump himself up. He's no ordinary colored, but an educated one, such that whites are astonished at how "quick" or clever he is. But he knows that if he pumps himself up too much, Rochester will just think he's fibbing, so he actually pins a racist stereotype on himself. As a colored man, he can't possibly be smart enough to make up a story, can he?

Christophine here expresses a canny sense of how her world works. Since the békés (or whites) hold political power, they are able to, in some sense, control what counts as reality. (The back-story here is that Christophine was sentenced to prison by a white magistrate for practicing obeah.) On the other hand, if the békés don't "say it foolishness," i.e., if they do believe in obeah, then obeah works, at least to the extent that an obeah practitioner like Christophine can frighten people into giving her what she wants (of which there are numerous examples throughout the book). Thus, even though she starts by admitting the power of the béké's word, she ends the quote by telling Antoinette, a béké, what to do.

It's difficult to be completely sympathetic with Antoinette when we see her racism in a moment such as this one. Despite her obvious sympathy and identification with the blacks in her world, she still maintains many racist attitudes, a possible contributing factor in her rejection of Sandi Cosway.

Here, Rochester is so convinced of Antoinette's status as racially inferior to him that everything he sees confirms what he already believes. Like the scene with Amélie's "intimate" gaze, Rochester reads a physical similarity between Amélie and Antoinette that justifies his treatment of them. That he can have sex with them without calling it "love" is supported by the fact that both relationships involve financial transactions: he gives money to Amélie, but receives money (as dowry) from Antoinette. No wonder Amélie says that she will try to feel sympathy for Antoinette – you could say Antoinette gets the short end of the stick.