Annette and Antoinette

Antoinette's mother and her relationship with Antoinette really sets the stage for Antoinette's actions in the last two sections of the book. It seems like people never stop talking about how Antoinette will unavoidably turn out just like her mother. When I hear that, my first instinct is to go, "No, she can change and become her own person, she isn't doomed just because of her family." However, as the book goes on Antoinette's life mirrors her mother's and the predictions start coming true. I really wish we could learn more about Annette, or see her from a point of view that isn't Antoinette or villagers who hate her. Why did she leave Martinique to get married? What was her relationship with Cosway like? What kind of person was she before the events of the book? How are she and Antoinette similar, and how are they different?

Both women are very emotionally isolated throughout Wide Sargasso Sea. When we first meet Annette, she is fixated on the past and everything she's lost. After the burning of Coulibri, Antoinette too is haunted by the past. However, their losses are very different: Annette misses her acceptance and status in society, but Antoinette, who has been ostracized her entire life, misses the beauty of Coulibri. For both women, their perceived madness comes from their past. Annette talks to herself out on the glacis because she's remembering days gone by, and Rochester thinks Antoinette is going mad because of her family history and because she sticks with the ways of her childhood (belief in obeah, familiarity with black culture, etc.) 

Annette seems to show more agency in her decisions than Antoinette does. Maybe it's because she's older, or maybe it's just a difference in personality. We don't know the circumstances of her marriage to Mason, but it seems like a deliberate decision on her part. She married him purposely to regain social status. It seems like she was also into the marriage, at least at first (the scene where Antoinette sees them together on the glacis seemed romantic). In general, it seems like more of a decision on her part than Antoinette's marriage to Rochester. Antoinette doesn't seem to know why she married him, and even when she tried to express her wish not to marry him she let herself be talked into it easily. Most of her actions seem dreamlike, and she spends a lot of time being shepherded around by other characters. Antoinette regains her agency at the very end of the book, when she decides to burn down Thornfield Hall. This echoes both the fire at Coulibri and the time Annette tried to kill Mason.

Both women's eventual madness comes more from isolation and oppressive social mores than anything else. While there may be some genetic component as well, I know that being ostracized and stuck in a decaying house for years with no friends/being alienated your whole life and then powerless in a marriage of mutual hatred (pick one) would definitely be enough to drive me crazy. The same gendered power dynamics affect them both: even though they come to hate their husbands/situation in life, they can't leave. Rochester and Mason hold all the power, and lock their wives up in their perceived madness. As mentioned, both Antoinette and Annette try to get revenge (free themselves?) by killing their husbands; while Annette fails completely, Antoinette is nearly successful. (Sorry if this post seems kinda disjointed, I'm trying to work through a bunch of different thoughts on Annette and Antoinette.)