The novel Wide Sargasso Sea isn’t just a prequel to Jane Eyre, but rather a significant re-writing of the classic Victorian age writings. This time around Antoinette (Bertha) Mason, a young Creole girl living in the British Colony of Jamaica, and Rochester’s marriage is no longer a harsh sub-story. It is actually the main story in which the genders battle over emotional, resistance and economical control. However, race and racial difference are complicated categories in this novel, just after the emancipation of slavery in the British Colonies. Antoinette Cosway, others wise known as Bertha Mason, is called at one point a “Black nigger.” Similarly, the servant Mannie is called a “black Englishman.” Held up as opposites, pairing the categories of “White” with “nigger” and “black” with “Englishman” seems to be contradictory.

However, Antoinette’s story tells how and why she had come to feel alienated and insecure at her home. Her story is different from Jane Eyre story. After her father’s death. She did not identify with the white people In Jamaica who were mostly British colonials. The Jamaicans did not accept her family either, and without her father, Antoinette and her mother had no financial security and few if any friend. I think Antoinette’s main desire in this novel is to belong whether with her mother, with her friend Tia, or with her husband Edward Rochester. She is, in turn, rejected by each one. Time and again this rejection is coded as a rejection based on racial difference.