Wide Sargasso Sea - Settings

1. WIDE SARGASSO SEA Different settings

2. JAMAICA NEAR SPANISH TOWN …. COULIBRI ESTATE …

3. JAMAICA The first part of the novel is set in Jamaica, in a Estate near Spanish Town in the south of the Caribbean island . At some poin after 1934 . The novel starts a few years after Britain passed the Emancipation Act in 1933 . This led to the ruin of many slaveholders . On the other hand , freed slaves , were still stuck in the place , altthoug they were not slaves any longer . So they started hating their former owners even more. At that moment many English investors arrived at the island looking for good deals .

4. “Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible – the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest trees, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched. One was snaky looking, another like an octopus. Twice a year the octopus orchid flowered, then not an inch of tentacle showed. It was a bell-shaped mass of white, mauve, deep purples, wonderful to see. The scent was very sweet and strong. I never went near it.” COULIBRI ESTATE In this quotation there is a clear reference to the Bible , in particular to the garden in Eden . However we can perceive that although Antoinette likes their garden in Coulibri Estate, it is obvious that at that moment the garden is not what it used to be . She feels that things in the garden had gone wild. That order and disorder , beauty and decay are mingled . She describes the flowers as snakes and as an octopus as if she feels afraid of them .

5. DOMINICA NEAR MASSACRE…. GRANBOIS - THE COSWAY ESTATE …

6. DOMINICA The second part of the novel is set at Granbois , in a Estate near a town called Massacre in Dominica. The control of Dominica changed during the years between the French government and the British one . The name of the town is suposed to refer to a massacre of indigenous from the island ., but in the novel nobody can assert that .

7. “The road climbed upward. On one side the wall of green, on the other a steep drop to the ravine below. We pulled up and looked at the hills, the mountains and the blue-green sea. There was a soft warm wind blowing but I understood why the porter had called it a wild place. Not only wild but menacing. Those hills could close in on you. Everything is too much, I felt as I rode wearily after her. Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near …” THE COSWAY ESTATE In this quotation we can see the way Rochester fells when they were arriving at Cosway Estate . He feels overlwhelmed by all the things he can see . He feels threatened by the beauty of the place.

8. “”Oh England, England”, she called back mockingly, and the sound went on and on like a warning I did not choose to hear.” Soon the road was cobblestoned and we stopped at flight of stone steps. There was a large screw pine to the left and to the right what looked like an imitation of an English summer house – four wooden posts and a thatched roof. She dismounted and ran up the steps. At the top a badly cut, coarse-grained lawn and at the end of the lawn a shabby white house. “Now we are at Granbois .” I looked at the mountains purple against a very blue sky.”” THE COSWAY ESTATE In this quotation we can see that Rochester is always missing everything about Enlgalnd . He compares everything to it . He cannot appreciate the beauty of the Caribean .

9. "Is it true," she said, "that England is like a dream? Because one of my friends who married an Englishman wrote and told me so. She said this place London is like a cold dark dream sometimes. I want to wake up." "Well," I answered annoyed, "that is precisely how your beautiful island seems to me, quite unreal and like a dream .“ “ But how can rivers and mountains and the sea be unreal?” “More easily”, she said, much more easily. Yes a big city must be like a dream.” “No, this is unreal and like a dream,” I thought.” THE COSWAY ESTATE In this dialogue Antoinette and Rochester argue about which of the two countries is more unreal and dream like . Antoinette feels and dreams tha t England is just a dream so Rochester gets a bit angy when he hears Antoinette´s ideas .

10. “If she was a child she was not a stuid child but an obstinate one. She often questioned me about England and listened attentively to my answers, but I was certain that nothing I said made much difference. Her mind was already made up. Some romantic novel, a stray remark never forgotten, a sketch, a picture, a song, a waltz, some note of music, and her ideas were fixed. About England and about Europe . I could not change them and probably nothing would. Reality might disconcert her, bewilder her, hurt her, but it would not be reality. It would be only a mistake, a misfortune, a wrong path taken, her fixed ideas would never change. THE COSWAY ESTATE This quotation shows that no matter what Antoinette could be told about Europe and England in particular she would not change her mind it . She would be delighted anyway .

11. I will be a different person when I live in England and different things will happen to me […] England, rosy pink in the geography book map, but on the page opposite the words are closely crowded, heavy-looking. Exports, coal, iron, wool. Then imports and Character of Inhabitants. Names, Essex, Chelmsford on the Chelmer . The Yorkshire and Lincolnshire wolds . Wolds? Does that mean hills? How high? Half the height of ours, or not even that THE COSWAY ESTATE Here we see how Antoinette develops her image of England . In this quote she focuses on some different points about England. She even thinks herself as somebody different living there .

12. ENGLAND THORNFIELD HALL

13. THORNFIELD HALL The third part of the novel takes place in Thornfield Hall, England . This is Mr. Rochester´s home. However , as Antoinette is locked up in the attic of the house there are not so many descriptions of the place. Antoinette believes that she is living in a cardboard world . And she cannot believe that she is in England .

14. “Then I open the door and walk into their world. It is, as I always knew, made of cardboard. I have seen it before somewhere, this cardboard world where everything is coloured brown or dark red or yellow that has no light in it. As I walk along the passages I wish I could see what is behind the cardboard. They tell me I am in England but I don't believe them. We lost our way to England. When? Where? I don't remember, but we lost it” THORNFIELD HALL Here we can see that although Antoinette is now actually in England, she still thinks of it as an imaginary place. She cannot believe that she is really in England because all she has seen of England is the interior of the house and a brief visit to a random meadow. At this moment she is living at Thornfield . She even thinks that they got lost while travelling there .

15. RATIONALE: I have chosen to work with the different settings in Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys because while reading the book I tried to imagine those different places , especially those in the Caribbean countries. The main aim was to provide some extra geographical and historical characteristics of the different settings that appear in the novel, and particularly to try to understand how the characters feel about those places where they live during the different parts in the novel. It is difficult to find pictures of the places , because they seem to be small ones . However I think that it is quite clear to understand the way the protagonists feel about them while reading the quotations from the book. I chose to work with Power Point because in my opinion it is a very effective tool to prepare presentations like this one, in which you have to include different kinds of images and even audios.