As I first started reading Wide Sargasso Sea, I noticed a recurring motif; decay. As Antoinette wanders around Coulibri, one notices many signs of decay throughout the area. First of all, there is the image of the dead horse:
Then one day, very early, I saw her horse lying down under the frangipani tree. I went up to him but he was not sick, he was dead and his eyes were black with flies. I ran away and did not speak of it for I thought if I told no one it might not be true. (18)
Also, she talks of her once beautiful garden that has now decayed:
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 tree ferns, 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 with long thin brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root. (19)
I believe these images of once beautiful things decaying correspond to multiple things in the first part of the book. Most importantly, in my opinion, this decay mirrors what is happening to the mother. She was once presumably quite sane but has now begun to slip into insanity. Also, in the situation in the house and in Jamaica there is the decay of seeming order into danger. The family’s ties to humanity have decayed, with the mother becoming nothing short of a recluse. The slaves in the house, who are supposed to be bound to the family, now seem to be against them. For Antoinette, she has to deal with the fear of everything falling apart around her, which I assume will come into play later in the novel.
1 comment:
Yes--the decay suggests a culture in very recent decline, or disrepair, which is precisely how the white Jamaicans see themselves (abandoned by England and English law). But for Antoinette, these aren't necessarily negative signs (although some, like the horse, will haunt her): as she says, she doesn't "remember the place when it was prosperous," and doesn't have the same nostalgia for the old days that her mother understandably does. The cruel blow for Annette, though, comes in the fact that Mason shows up and briefly reinvigorates the place--gives her the illusion that the decay will be stopped, and she can regain her earlier glamor.
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