Antoinette in Eden

There are quite a few episodes in part one of Wide Sargasso Sea that seem to symbolize a kind of Eden that shelters Antoinette from the outside world. One is the out-of-the-way place that Antoinette plays in with Tia, and another is the garden at Coulibri. There is also the convent where she is given refuge after the family is driven out of Coulibri. All are isolated from society, and in these places race and class become less important issues, allowing people to focus on emotions.

The description of Antoinette's and Tia's friendship seems to fit the idea of a safe haven, or a kind of Eden, very closely. The girls meet at a bathing pool--"deep and dark green under the trees, brown-green if it had rained, but a bright sparkling green in the sun. The water was so clear hat you could see the pebbles at the bottom of the shallow part. Blue and white and striped red" (21). This setting is very beautiful, even magical, much like the garden at Coulibri where Antoinette also goes to seek refuge, which has a wall "covered in green moss soft as velvet" and was "large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible" (a specific reference to the actual garden of Eden) (20; 17). By the pool, Antoinette and Tia cook bananas and Tia sleeps. Antoinette sits in quiet contemplation, much as she does when she escapes to the garden to be by herself. She says "when I was safely home I sat close to the old wall at the end of the garden...and I never wanted to move again. Everything would be worse if I moved. Christophine found me there when it was almost dark, and I was so stiff she had to help me to get up" (21). Obviously, both places are places where she can think and be comforted. 

Unlike in the garden, however, the pool is also a playful place where Antoinette sometimes engages in childish competition with Tia. They are sheltered from the constraints of their society--in fact, neither of them every goes to the other's house, but at the pool they are able to be playmates. However, playful as this was initially, it becomes less fun once Antoinette calls Tia a "cheating nigger", bringing race, and serious and adult concept, into the conversation. Once this has been brought into their safe space, their backgrounds and their families close in on them and the safety of the place is ruined. This is similar to the time when Tia throws the rock at Antoinette; when both girls literally have their families and the entire cultural clash between the two races behind them, they are not friends.

The convent is not an Eden in its natural beauty, but it provides the same sort of refuge from cultural constraints, and it is interesting that while in the convent, race is hardly mentioned. Antoinette says that the first nuns that she met at the convent were "coloured women", but after that it is not clear who is colored and who is not. Even though it seems like most of the girls at the convent are white Creole, they seem to respect the black nuns and there is no distinction between white nuns and black nuns. At the convent she is able to have fun, even though she says that it was a "place of sunshine and death" (51). She describes the convent as such: "Everything was brightness, or dark. The walls, the blazing colours of the flowers in the garden, the nuns' habits were bright, but their veils, the Crucifix hanging from their waists, the shadow of the trees, were black. Thatwas how it was, light and dark, sun and shadow, Heaven and Hell..." (52). Although this seems like it would not really make a good refuge, it is actually similar to the other two places. In the garden at Coulibri Antoinette often felt sad and it was overgrown and wild. At the pool, darkness sometimes broke in when the outer world invaded. And yet all three places were refuges, and Antoinette was always hesitant to leave them. In fact, leaving them often meant going into a more uncomfortable place, like when she must leave the pool to go home in Tia's dress and meet the visitors, or when she must leave the convent and is inexplicably sad.

Together, these places seem to show that getting away from society is the way that Antoinette copes with the world and its difficulties. It also sets up problems for the next section. What will happen to Antoinette when she leaves her last available place of refuge, the convent, and must go out into society to find husband and a place in the "aristocracy" of the island or of England? 

The Joys of Ambiguities

The Stranger is the most interesting book that we have read so far in this class (for me at least), but for some reason I have been reluctant to write on it. Maybe it was simply because I was busy and didn't have any time to think about what I wanted to write about, but I think it was also partially because I didn't know what to think about it. But I think that that is why I enjoyed the book so much. I didn't know what to think, but the issues seemed to apply to our justice system and our choices about judgement, and so there were so many questions, so many different opinions that could be formed.

The Stranger is so interesting to me because it seems so current. The other books had issues that are still very relevant today; The Mezzanine showed that it is important to pay attention to the little things in life, Virginia Woolf's commentary on veterans and "shell shock" is obviously relevant to today's problems with post traumatic stress disorder, and The Metamorphosis gave insight into work and family relationships. Most of the books seem to have focused more on "matters of the soul" than on issues that have to do with the way society works. On second thought, though, that statement seems inaccurate. After all, the issues of shell shock and the problems that arose when people did not recognize it were very relevant to that time period, and they related to society and politics. Mrs. Dalloway also touched on social class and women's roles. But none of the other books were as modern as The Stranger. I read the other books with their context in mind, and the political issues that were presented were primarily issues of the time period in which the books were set. It was easy to forget that The Stranger was not set in the modern day. There were, of course, indicators--Algeria was still occupied by the French, and the legal system's emphasis on Christianity would probably not be acceptable today. Still, the issues in the book feel more current: we always have to judge people for crimes that they cannot explain satisfactorily, and whether or not we figure their morality in their own private lives into our judgement is a very important issue. In a way, thinking about The Stranger was like preparing for a debate on current issues. First you have to understand the issue, then you have to fight for one side.

The polarizing aspect of the book was the main thing that made it so interesting. We talked in class about how we mostly agreed on everything for the rest of the books, but that the issues in The Stranger were so ambiguous that lots of people had different opinions. Sometimes in class it was truly like a debate, and that was exciting. It also makes you think a lot more; when the "right" reaction to a certain character in a book is not clear, you have to spend a lot more time puzzling over it. This reminds me of the time when our Model UN team went to a conference on campus. I was part of the Human Rights Committee, and we were debating about human trafficking. At the beginning, the discussions were interesting, and there were some good insights, but the conversation eventually became dull because every one agrees that human trafficking is bad. There was no debate. There were no questions to be asked. Our discussions about the other books have been interesting, but not as interesting as this one because The Stranger is so confusing. To some people, it doesn't matter that Meursault doesn't cry at his mother's funeral, or that he doesn't appear to show any remorse about the Arab--these qualities are just part of his personality, and it is not an innately immoral personality. For others, Meursault is completely without morals or emotions, and that is not okay. In any case, it makes for an interesting debate, whether in class or while reading and thinking about the book, and a debate is always more fun.