Wide Sargasso Sea

Annette is mother to Antoinette and Pierre, who dies after being severely burned in a fire at Coulibri Estate. Annette is originally from Martinique. She was Mr. Cosway’s second wife. Cosway also had children with enslaved black women at the estate. Annette discouraged her children from acknowledging their half-siblings, a convention among white Creoles.

Annette is an upper-class white woman who treasured her role among the white Creole landed gentry, though this class was falling in status which is partly symbolized by the tattered riding outfit that she wears. Annette wavers between demonstrating contempt for black people, particularly the elderly Godfrey, and showing attachment to them, as she does with her servant and fellow Martinican, Christophine. Annette later marries the English Mr. Mason and quarrels with him about using pejoratives to refer to black people.

Annette descends into madness as a result of watching the privileged world of the planter class collapse around her after the passage of the Emancipation Act. She begins talking aloud to herself and later tries to kill Mason. As a result of her dangerous and erratic behavior, her husband moves her into a sanitarium in the country.

The character of Annette is comparable with other fictional white plantation mistresses, particularly from American novels like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Margaret Walker’s Jubilee. She shares their emotional fragility, snobbery, co-dependency, and inability to cope with and adjust to new realities. Antoinette later reveals that “Bertha” was one of Annette’s given names. In Part Two, Antoinette husband begins to call her by this name after he learns about the Cosways’ history of madness.

Mr. Mason is an Englishman who arrives in Jamaica shortly after the British government passes the Emancipation Act. He arrives to profit from the economic devaluation of the white planters’ landholdings. Mason marries Annette and becomes Antoinette and Pierre’s stepfather. He also has a son of his own named Richard who attended school in Barbados.

Mason believes in strict stratification between masters and black servants and speaks disparagingly of the remaining servants on the plantation; he doesn’t understand why his wife disapproves of the racial slurs he uses to identify them. When Mason moves onto Coulibri Estate, his sense of orderliness helps conditions improve. The estate is once again well-maintained and profitable. After a mob of black people burn down the estate, forcing Mason and his family off of the estate, he places Annette in a sanitarium and spends most of his time outside of Jamaica, finding the island distasteful. After his death, Antoinette inherits half of his wealth.

He is distant but does express some affection and care for Antoinette. When she is 17, he invites her to live with him in England, concerned that she may be lonely in the convent where Aunt Cora has sent her. Mr. Mason’s beliefs in racial and class divisions, his dislike for the Caribbean and for Creole ways, as well as his wealthy background make him a parallel figure to Antoinette’s husband.

Aunt Cora is Annette and Antoinette’s relative, a former slave owner who lives in Spanish Town. She was married to an Englishman who hated Jamaica. Aunt Cora went to England to be with her husband, who tried to isolate her from her Creole family. If Aunt Cora wrote to them, Antoinette said, her husband would become angry. After he died, Aunt Cora returned to Jamaica. Mason resents Cora for remaining wealthy even after the Emancipation Act, while he spends money to repair Coulibri Estate. He characterizes Aunt Cora as “[a] frivolous woman,” implying that she has not fulfilled her obligation in assisting her family through hard times (18). Antoinette quietly thinks to herself that Mason simply doesn’t understand Creole people, which is why he judges Aunt Cora so harshly and perhaps resents her independence.

Antoinette depends on Aunt Cora while growing up, particularly when Annette becomes increasingly unstable. Antoinette and Pierre stay with Aunt Cora is Spanish Town while Coulibri Estate is being repaired. Meanwhile, Mason and Annette go to Trinidad. When Annette is committed to the sanitarium and Mason leaves Jamaica, Antoinette stays with Aunt Cora, who later puts her niece in a convent school, partly due to Antoinette’s neediness after being separated from her mother.

Like Christophine, Aunt Cora is a surrogate mother figure. Both women see the importance of Antoinette having her own means of income, despite the legal impediments for women in the 1830s. Before she succumbs to a debilitating illness on the eve of Antoinette’s marriage, Aunt Cora gives Antoinette two valuable rings, asking that she promise not to show them to her fiancé. Aunt Cora dislikes Antoinette’s intended husband and expresses her disapproval to Antoinette’s stepbrother, Richard Mason. 

Christophine began as Annette’s maid when she was a young woman. She was Mr. Cosway’s wedding present to Annette, bestowed shortly after she arrived in Jamaica from Martinique. Later, Christophine became Antoinette’s nurse and helps to raise her.

Christophine is a “blue-black” woman with “a thin face and straight features” (12). She ties a yellow handkerchief around her head “in Martinique-fashion”—that is, “with two high points in front” (12). Otherwise, she “[wears] a black dress” and “heavy gold earrings” (12). She has three children, including a son who lives and works in Spanish Town. She had all of her children by different men, not marrying any of them. While working for the Cosways, she never sees her son in Spanish Town. After leaving Coulibri Estate, however, she briefly moves in with him, but she returns to Antoinette and resumes her role when Antoinette marries.

Christophine has one friend— “a woman called Maillotte” (12). Christophine speaks good English when she pleases, as well as her native French and patois tongues. After meeting the now elderly Christophine at the Cosways’ summer estate during his honeymoon, Antoinette’s husband expresses disapproval over her use of language. His prejudices about black people lead him to characterize Christophine as lazy and unkempt. Christophine decides to leave Antoinette after sensing her husband’s disapproval, claiming that she doesn’t want to drive a wedge between the newlyweds. She announces that she will move into a house on Dominica near Granbois that Annette gave her. She will invite her son, Jo-Jo, to live with her.

Christophine is also an obeah doctor, meaning that she practices voodoo. Daniel Cosway tells Antoinette’s husband that Christophine was once jailed for performing black magic rituals. Desperate to save her marriage, Antoinette asks Christophine to perform a magical rite that will get her husband to love her again. Eventually, Antoinette’s husband threatens to have Christophine imprisoned, effectively banishing her from his wife’s life. 

Christophine is a strong and powerful woman, imbued with keen insight into human nature. Arguably, this is part of the reason why the husband wants to distance her from his wife. She is Antoinette’s confidante and a more dependable maternal figure than Annette. Christophine, like Aunt Cora, senses that the husband is a poor match for Antoinette, but she also has a general antipathy toward men. 

Antoinette’s husband—the only unnamed character in the novel—narrates the first and third sections of Part Two. He is an Englishman who marries Antoinette at the encouragement of her stepbrother, Richard Mason. Though Rhys never names the character—an absence that allows Rhys to employ him as a generalized symbol of masculine oppression and of imperial dominance—he is likely Mr. Edward Rochester, a character from Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre.

Aunt Cora describes Antoinette’s husband as “[s]tiff” and “stupid as a foot […] except where his interests are concerned” (69). He has a difficult relationship with his father, complicated by his feelings of having been cheated out of a substantial inheritance which went instead to his elder brother. This explains his interest in Antoinette, who becomes a wealthy woman when Mr. Mason dies. After they marry, he gains control of Antoinette’s money. 

The husband initially dislikes Dominica, where he spends his honeymoon, finding the island too lurid to seem real. Though he gradually warms to the island and its people, he prefers the landscape and mores of England. He is against slavery, but he deems black people inferior. While honeymooning, he has an affair with Amélie, a servant girl. Though he is repulsed by Amélie’s African features, he is attracted to her gaiety, which contrasts with Antoinette’s anxious and melancholic manner. He makes an enemy of Christophine, whom he dislikes for her imperiousness and interference in his marriage. He also fears her and her reputation for practicing voodoo.

When his wife’s mental health seems to deteriorate, he arranges to move his wife back to Spanish Town, claiming that he will consult with her stepbrother to provide her with proper care. Instead, he takes her back to England and essentially imprisons her. The husband is entranced by Antoinette’s beauty but simultaneously detests her West Indian origins, her manners, and her dismissal of racial and gender boundaries. 

Daniel is Antoinette Cosway’s half-brother by her father. His mother is Christophine’s friend, Maillotte. Antoinette claims that his true name is Daniel Boyd and that he “hates all white people” (77). The ambiguity around Daniel’s name, as well as his racial identity (he has two portraits of “coloured” people on his wall, whom the servant Amélie says are his parents) allow him to symbolize the absurdity of racial hierarchies (72). His mother was a slave whom the old man eventually freed. He then provided her with a property that comprised a hut and a garden.

Daniel writes to the husband and tells him the Cosway family’s secrets. Daniel warns the husband against loving Antoinette. Daniel’s brother is the wealthy Alexander, who is also mixed-race and who was their father’s favorite. Daniel resents his father’s memory. He expected the old man to treat him well because he was a free man of color and his son, but Cosway felt no sense of obligation, refusing to give Daniel money for new shoes so that he would not have to walk barefoot like most other black people.

Daniel’s mother dies, and Cosway later sends Daniel some money after an unpleasant visit, but they never meet again. Daniel still lives comfortably compared to most black people in the islands, prompting Amélie to say that he lives like white people. He was educated in Barbados, where he learned how to count and read. He writes in the patois that one would normally speak. At one time, he was a preacher in Barbados. 

Daniel is resentful of Antoinette’s legitimacy and covets the social prestige that white people enjoy. He is also sexist and describes women as materialistic “demons incarnate,” though he is oblivious to his own covetousness and envy of his brother’s wealth (75). Sexism informs his mistrust of Christophine and Antoinette. 

Amélie is a servant who waits on Antoinette and her husband during their honeymoon stay in Massacre, Dominica. Amélie is a young, mixed-race woman. Amélie is a foil for Christophine; she is younger, lighter-skinned, and lacks Christophine’s sense of fidelity to Antoinette. Amélie admits to Antoinette’s husband that she feels sorry for his wife, but she also resents Antoinette’s privilege and expresses her own wish to benefit financially. After their sexual encounter, she tells Antoinette’s husband about her plans to live temporarily with her sister—a dressmaker in Demerara, Guyana. From there, she will go to Rio de Janeiro, where she hopes to meet a rich man. Amélie has big dreams but is ignorant about the world. While she is free in Dominica, despite being a domestic servant, Brazil did not abolish slavery until 1888, and so her dream of a life like Antoinette’s would have been unlikely in Rio.