Wide Sargasso Sea

Rhys depicts numerous social bifurcations in the novel—between blacks and whites, light-skinned black people and dark-skinned black people, men and women—but the division between white Creoles and the English is most prominent and explains how Antoinette lost both her home and her sense of identity.

Before the passage of the Emancipation Act, the relationship between white Creoles and the English was akin to that of distant relatives. Aunt Cora, who temporarily acts as Antoinette’s caretaker, married an Englishman who refused to allow her to return to the West Indies while he was alive, due to his aversion to the islands. He, Mr. Mason, and Antoinette’s husband all express the feeling that the West Indies are undesirable. They are disgusted by the presence of so many black people and are startled by the brightness and colors of the island which contrast with the drabness of England. They are also irritated by what they perceive as bastardization of European tongues.

For the white Creoles, the presence of the English makes them feel less “white”—that is, the Creoles’ distance from European culture and their immersion in the languages and traditions of indigenous and black people, who are regarded as savage by the English, make the white Creoles anxious about their racial identity.