Rochester from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. This section of the work is narrated mostly by Antoinette's new husband, a man who remains nameless throughout the text but who is clearly based on the character of Mr. The second part of the narrative opens after the marriage has taken place. He implies that one of these men will marry Antoinette. Mason comes to the convent and announces that he has friends coming from England for the winter. Then, when Antoinette turns seventeen, Mr. During this time Antoinette is largely alone her mother is confined to the home of a care-taking couple, her aunt returns to England, and her stepfather travels frequently and visits rarely. Aunt Cora enrolls Antoinette in a convent school, where she spends several years learning how to be a lady. She learns that her brother has died and that her mother has had a mental breakdown. One night, a mob sets the house on fire, and the family is forced to flee forever.Īntoinette wakes up several weeks later at the home of her Aunt Cora in Spanish Town. Mason, however, fails to realize how dire the situation has become. She is acutely aware of the fact that the freed blacks still harbor immense hatred toward the white aristocracy that enslaved them. Still, Antoinette's mother repeatedly expresses a desperate wish to leave Jamaica. Mason uses his wealth to restore the crumbling Coulibri plantation, and this in turn seems to improve Annette's mental state. For a while things seem to be improving for the Cosways: Mr.

She accepts, and the two wed in spite of the malicious gossip of the servants and local islanders. Mason, proposes to Annette after a short courtship. One of these men, an Englishman by the name of Mr. One day, for the first time in a long time, visitors come to Coulibri. Since her mother frequently rejects her, Antoinette spends most of her time alone or with her black nurse, Christophine, one of the few servants who has not chosen to desert the struggling family. The family's estate, Coulibri, is quickly falling into ruin, and Antoinette's mother, Annette, is rapidly sinking into a deep depression. The first part of the novella is told from the point-of-view of Antoinette Cosway, a young white girl whose father, a hated former slaveholder, has died and left his wife and children in poverty.

Wide Sargasso Sea begins in Jamaica after the Emancipation Act of 1833, under which Britain outlawed slavery in all its colonies.

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