The Suffering of Antoinette

Antoinette is the principal and the most important character in Jean Ryes’ Wide Saragossa Sea. She is subjected to the tyranny of a husband, a traumatic childhood and people who do not love her, even her own mother, except for Christophine. Her power in the novel is limited and she has literally no sway over anyone. Questions arise of her sanity, her innocence and if she is devious in any way. It is in my mind that she goes in and out sanity and insanity yet remains innocent throughout the entire time of the novel. She is rarely ever devious and seems too love everyone in a child like manner. This funnels into her escape the only way she could.
Her innocence is undisputed. She acts like a child throughout the entire novel: she asks countless questions, doesn’t seem to understand anything and asks Christophine for a love potion to seduce her husband into loving her again (p.69). Although she is supposedly grown up, there doesn’t seem to be any maturity in her actions or speech.
The question of if she is sane or not is a somewhat different topic, but while reading her I got a sense that somehow her innocence and insanity were mixed together; as if it was a precursor for her later insane escapades with her husband and her demise. She is so innocent that she cannot understand why he does not love her and why he hates her, and this leads to her eventual breakdown and the fate that her mother endured. She recalls the reason for her mother’s hatred of her to Mr. Rochester: “Then there was the day when she saw I was growing up like a white nigger and she was ashamed of me, it was after that day that everything changed” (p. 84). She blames this on herself, although in reality it is societies. It would be a hard, traumatizing experience: living with a mother that hates you in a world that hates you. Like I said already, this gives possible reason for her breakdown in the later part of the novel. She tells a tragic tale of her life and the truth, but Rochester does not believe it. Her dreams are a good source of her sanity. The first one she has is when she is young and leaves her waking up in a sweat. In it she is wandering through a wood and someone is watching her and hating her (p. 10). She is subject to this fear that surrounds her and takes ownership over her wherever she goes. Reality is exaggerated in her dreams. The last couple (pp. 120-121) consist of dreams of Sandi and Mr Rochester and a red dress that sets on fire, which in the dream burns her master’s house down. The red dress is the only thing she has left from her previous life and empowers her to take action, which she does by mimicking the dream in reality: The only way she could get free.
In conclusion Antoinette is the deepest darkest character in the novel. Her innocence is unmistakable. Her insanity is haunting: she knows it is there but cannot escape it (just like he first dream). It is unfortunate that the only way she could be free from fear and oppression is by taking her own life.