Stuck in the Doldrums of the Sargasso Sea

I am struck by the despair illustrating Annette’s life and her relationships to her daughter, her second husband, and her past that closes Part One of Wide Sargasso Sea.  As Antoinette tells of her mother, Annette’s, death, she admits she could not cry, and gives no date--not even a month--just that it was “last year, no one told me how, and I didn’t ask” (36).   

After her hellish dream, Antoinette goes on to describe a scene:  “Now the thought of her [Annette] is mixed up with my dream.  I saw her in her mended habit riding a borrowed horse, trying to wave at the head of the cobblestoned road at Coulibri” (36). 

It seems Annette’s mended riding clothes represent the old, wealthy way of living on the plantation that has now been ruined--torn by the upheaval of freed slaves--and patched with a different order of societal structure which Annette cannot get beyond to a fresh new way of life. 

The borrowed horse appears to symbolize the respect she has borrowed through her marriage to the relatively rich, white European, Mr. Mason, of whom she is not the master.  Annette knows he will never truly belong to her.  Though he has the capacity to transport Annette out of this hellish situation, he balks uncooperatively. 

Annette attempts to hail someone, probably Antoinette.  That brings to mind Annette’s failure to connect with her daughter, her distant, half-hearted, ineffectual communication with her own child.  She has not put forth enough effort to embrace Antoinette in love, but has instead chosen to mount the horse and stay apart.  Annette’s aloof behavior has not kindled enough devotion, affection or gratitude in her daughter to elicit tears at her own death--or even adequate caring for Antoinette to desire the closure of certainty about the cause of her mother’s demise.

Annette is stalled at the road to Coulibri, their plantation, which is but a shadow of its former self.  Like Annette, it has dwindled to an unkempt, desolate state of uselessness and hopelessness, abandoned by both blacks and whites alike. 

Annette is aimlessly adrift in a frightening, shadowy sea of weeds, without enough energy or resources to move forward.  Both the white pilot of the ship, her first husband, and the black crew of former slaves, have deserted her.  She is left floating hopelessly without direction, surrounded by dangers too deep to fathom.  She fears sinking to the lowest levels of society and being killed in a storm of conflict.  This helpless situation widely separates her from both her island past and her hope of a European future.  Annette is stuck in the doldrums of the Sargasso Sea.