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Last week in class and on this blog we discussed how Jane Eyre's ideas (and Charlotte Bronte's as well) on the West Indies and Jamaica were speculative, informed by the available travel accounts, visitors from the colonies, and news reports rather than firsthand knowledge. Neither Jane nor her creator ever had the chance to visit the islands to decide for herself what the places were like. This allowed Bronte to make Jamaica (at the time a subject of the British Empire) into a kind of "blank canvas" onto which she projected her fictional Mason family, and as some critics argue, her prejudices as a relatively privileged member of the British Empire. Is something similar happening in Wide Sargasso Sea? Consider the following exchange between Antoinette and Edward:
Next time she spoke she said, 'The earth is red here, do you notice?'
'It's red in parts of England too.'
'Oh England, England,' she called back mockingly, and the sound went on and on like a warning I did not choose to hear. (Rhys 64-65).
Antoinette and Edward (as they do throughout the novel) are miscommunicating here on several levels. As they ride out to begin their honeymoon Antoinette tries to share her knowledge and observations of the island she loves more than any other place. Edward is also trying to share his memories of another island thousands of miles away that he loves and considers home. Why does she mock him here? What "warning" does Edward ignore?
What do you make of the other passages where England is discussed? How does the idea/ideal of England hold meaning for different characters? How do these passages in which the characters attempt to define/describe/discuss England matter to the novel? How does England function as an imagined place for Antoinette? For Christophine? For Edward?