Wide Sargasso Sea

One thing in the book that I really like is that in the first part Antoinette is the narrator.  Then in most of the second part, with the exception of Antoinette’s small part, her husband is the narrator.  I like that as readers we are able to read their lives from both of their perspectives.  Even though I like hearing the story from Christophine I do not like him because I believe he just married Antoinette for her money and properties.  Antoinette even feels the distance between the two of them.  She tells Christophe “he does not love me, I think he hates me.  He always sleeps in the dressing-room now and the servants know.  If I get angry he is scornful and silent, sometimes he does not speak to me for hours and I cannot endure it any more, I cannot.  What shall I do?  He was not like that at first” (Rhys 65).  So, he took Antoinette’s money and land, and then he starts to treat her badly and becomes distant.  It just does not seem fair that he gets to take everything that was given to her in order for her to survive and then for him to treat her poorly.  I understand marriages have their troubles, but those troubles should be worked out if they are married.  And if he is not happy in the marriage he should let her have her money and properties back and he should leave! 

            He explains later in the novel that he hates Jamaica.  He said he “hated its beauty and its magic […] above all [he] hated her.  For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness” (Rhys 103).  So he left her behind, hired a woman to take care of her, and he left for England.  This act of Christophine leaving Antoinette proves that he was primarily in the marriage for her money.  If he really loved her he would have stayed with her and not left a woman who is a stranger to be paid to look after her.  So, her money and properties that she inherited were taken from her by her husband and then she is left with a strange woman to take care of her…this does not seem fair.