In the book Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette’s childhood is heavily overcast by threat. What are the threats from outside and within her household? To whom and to what does she turn for protection? | Wide Sargasso Sea Questions & Answers

In The Wide Sargasso Sea the main character, Antoinette, finds herself facing threats both internal and external in her childhood. As the book opens her father has died from alcoholism, leaving her with her mother who is suffering from the early stages of some sort of dementia. The setting is the late 1830's Jamacia and all of the slaves have been freed leaving many of the plantation owners destitute. This is also the case with Antoinette's family. The first threat, then, is poverty. Because of their situation they are ostracized by the Jamacian elite, so the other threat is isolation from their peers. Antoinette is also isolated from others her age. She has a former slave girl named Tia that was her best friend, but then one day Tia turns on her and refuses to spend any further time with her. Finally a man named Mr. Mason courts and marries Antoinette's mother. he restores the house to its former glamour and hires all new servants. This angers the former slaves who riot outside the home, setting it on fire. They barely escape with their lives. This is a direct conflict of their culture versus the native culture, man versus man. Tia throws a rock at her as she flees from the fire and it knocks her out. When she recovers she learns that her brother has died and that her mother has finally succumbed to total dementia. She is completely left without any family or friends. She is shipped off to a convent by Mr. Mason.

Wide Sargasso Sea

In the book Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette's childhood is heavily overcast by threat. What are the threats from outside and within her household? To whom and to what does she turn for protection?

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