Wide Sargasso Sea Summary

Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole girl, lives a lonely and isolated life on her family's dilapidated Jamaican plantation, Coulibri Estate, in the early 19th century. The financial collapse and death of her father, a former slave owner, has led to a bitter tension between the impoverished white upper class and the newly freed Black population. After her mother, Annette, remarries a wealthy Englishman named Mr. Mason, their home is unintentionally set ablaze during a protest by the freed slaves. In the chaos, Antoinette is injured and her younger brother Pierre is fatally wounded. The trauma of the fire pushes Annette into madness and Antoinette is sent to live in a convent where she is largely forgotten by her family.

At seventeen, Mr. Mason arranges for Antoinette to be married to a nameless Englishman in need of money, offering a hefty dowry as incentive. The newlywed couple retreat to Granbois, an estate inherited by Antoinette, for their honeymoon. However, the husband grows increasingly wary of Antoinette and the exotic surroundings as he receives a letter revealing her family's history of insanity. Antoinette, sensing her husband's growing animosity, seeks the help of her confidante Christophine for a love potion. This leads to a heated confrontation between the couple that not only confirms the husband's suspicions of Antoinette's insanity, but also results in him having an affair with a servant girl, Amelie.

The final part of the story sees Antoinette, now addressed as "Bertha" by her husband, in England, confined to a room in the attic of her husband's house under the care of Grace Poole. Having lost her sense of reality, Antoinette becomes increasingly unstable, even threatening her stepbrother with a knife during a visit. She continually dreams of setting the house on fire using Graces's keys and, one night, she wakes and decides to make the dream a reality. The narrative concludes with Antoinette, holding a lit candle, making her way down from her upstairs prison.