1. WIDE SARGASSO SEA
Different settings

2. JAMAICA
NEAR SPANISH TOWN ….
COULIBRI ESTATE …

3. JAMAICA
Thefirstpartof thenovel isset in Jamaica, in a Estate near
SpanishTown in thesouthof the Caribbeanisland. At some
poinafter1934 .The novel starts a few years afterBritain
passed theEmancipationActin 1933. Thisled totheruin of
manyslaveholders. Ontheotherhand, freedslaves, were still
stuckin theplace , altthoug theywerenotslavesanylonger. So
theystartedhatingtheirformerowners evenmore.
At thatmomentmany English investors arrived at theisland
lookingforgooddeals.

4. COULIBRI
ESTATE
“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 trees, 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. Twice a year the octopus orchid
flowered, then not an inch of tentacle showed. It
was a bell-shaped mass of white, mauve, deep
purples, wonderful to see. The scent was very
sweet and strong. I never went near it.”
In thisquotationthereisa clear referencetotheBible, in particular
tothegardenin Eden. Howeverwecan perceivethat although
Antoinettelikestheirgardenin CoulibriEstate, it is obviousthat at
that momentthegardenisnotwhatit usedtobe. Shefeelsthat
thingsin thegardenhadgonewild. That orderand disorder, beauty
and decayare mingled. Shedescribes the flowersas snakesand as
anoctopusas if she feels afraidof them.

5. DOMINICA
NEAR MASSACRE….
GRANBOIS - THE COSWAY ESTATE …

6. DOMINICA
Thesecondpartof thenovel is set at Granbois, in a Estate
neara towncalledMassacrein Dominica.
Thecontrol of Dominica changed during the years between
theFrench governmentand theBritish one.
The nameof the town is suposed to refer toa massacreof
indigenous from the island., butin the novel nobodycan
assertthat.

7. THE COSWAY
ESTATE
“The road climbed upward. On one side the wall
of green, on the other a steep drop to the ravine
below. We pulled up and looked at the hills, the
mountains and the blue-green sea. There was a
soft warm wind blowing but I understood why
the porter had called it a wild place. Not only wild
but menacing. Those hills could close in on you.
Everything is too much, I felt as I rode wearily
after her. Too much blue, too much purple, too
much green. The flowers too red, the mountains
too high, the hills too near …”
In thisquotationwecan seethewayRochester fells whenthey
were arriving at Cosway Estate. He feels overlwhelmed by all
the things he can see. He feels threatened by the beauty of the
place.

8. THE COSWAY
ESTATE
“”Oh England, England”, she called back
mockingly, and the sound went on and on like a
warning I did not choose to hear.”
Soon the road was cobblestoned and we
stopped at flight of stone steps. There was a
large screw pine to the left and to the right what
looked like an imitation of an English summer
house –four wooden posts and a thatched roof.
She dismounted and ran up the steps. At the top
a badly cut, coarse-grained lawn and at the end
of the lawn a shabby white house. “Now we are
at Granbois.” I looked at the mountains purple
against a very blue sky.””
In this quotation we can see that Rochester is always
missing everything about Enlgalnd. He compares everything
to it. He cannot appreciate the beauty of the Caribean.

9. THE COSWAY
ESTATE
"Is it true," she said, "that England is like a dream?
Because one of my friends who married an
Englishman wrote and told me so. She said this place
London is like a cold dark dream sometimes. I want
to wake up."
"Well," I answered annoyed, "that is precisely how
your beautiful island seems to me, quite unreal and
like a dream.“
“But how can rivers and mountains and the sea be
unreal?”
“More easily”, she said, much more easily. Yes a big
city must be like a dream.”
“No, this is unreal and like a dream,” I thought.”
In this dialogue Antoinette and Rochester argue about
which of the two countries is more unreal and dream
like. Antoinette feels and dreams that England is just a
dream so Rochester gets a bit angy when he hears
Antoinette´s ideas.

10. THE COSWAY
ESTATE
“If she was a child she was not a stuidchild
but an obstinate one. She often questioned
me about England and listened attentively to
my answers, but I was certain that nothing I
said made much difference. Her mind was
already made up. Some romantic novel, a
stray remark never forgotten, a sketch, a
picture, a song, a waltz, some note of music,
and her ideas were fixed. About England and
about Europe. I could not change them and
probably nothing would. Reality might
disconcert her, bewilder her, hurt her, but it
would not be reality. It would be only a
mistake, a misfortune, a wrong path taken,
her fixed ideas would never change.
This quotation shows that no matterwhat Antoinette
could be told about Europe and England in particular
she would not change her mind it. She would be
delighted anyway.

11. THE COSWAY
ESTATE
I will be a different person when I live in
England and different things will happen to
me […] England, rosy pink in the geography
book map, but on the page opposite the
words are closely crowded, heavy-looking.
Exports, coal, iron, wool. Then imports and
Character of Inhabitants. Names, Essex,
Chelmsford on the Chelmer. The Yorkshire
and Lincolnshire wolds. Wolds? Does that
mean hills? How high? Half the height of ours,
or not even that
Here we see how Antoinette develops her image of England.
In this quote she focuses on some different points about
England. She even thinks herself as somebody different living
there.

12. ENGLAND
THORNFIELD HALL

13. THORNFIELD
HALL
The third part of the novel takes place in Thornfield
Hall, England.
This isMr. Rochester´s home.
However, as Antoinette is locked up in the attic of the
house there are not so many descriptions of the place.
Antoinette believes that she is living in a cardboard
world. And she cannot believe that she is in England.

14. THORNFIELD
HALL
“Then I open the door and walk into their
world. It is, as I always knew, made of
cardboard. I have seen it before somewhere,
this cardboard world where everything is
colouredbrown or dark red or yellow that
has no light in it. As I walk along the passages I
wish I could see what is behind the
cardboard. They tell me I am in England but I
don't believe them. We lost our way to
England. When? Where? I don't remember,
but we lost it”
Here we can see that although Antoinette is now actually in
England, she still thinks of it as an imaginary place. She cannot
believe that she is really in England because all she has seen of
England is the interior of the house and a brief visit to a random
meadow. At this moment she is living at Thornfield. She even
thinks that they got lost while travelling there.

15. RATIONALE:
I have chosen to work with the different settings in Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys because while reading the book I
tried to imagine those different places , especially those in the Caribbean countries.
The main aim was to provide some extra geographical and historical characteristics of the different settings that
appear in the novel, and particularly to try to understand how the characters feel about those places where they
live during the different parts in the novel.
It is difficult to find pictures of the places, because they seem to be small ones. However I think that it is quite
clear to understand the way the protagonists feel about them while reading the quotations from the book.
I chose to work with Power Point because in my opinion it is a very effective tool to prepare presentations like
this one, in which you have to include different kinds of images and even audios.