Wide Sargasso Sea: Motifs 9 key examples

When her horse dies, Annette lashes out at Godfrey, the butler at Coulibri. She tells him "You're blind when you want to be blind, [...] and you're deaf when you want to be deaf." With this accusation, Annette claims that Godfrey allowed the Black neighbors to poison her horse. Caught between the Black community and the White Cosway family, Godfrey is not entirely loyal to either side. Annette is tuned into this impartiality. Later complaining to Antoinette about their various servants, she once again invokes deafness when she brings up Godfrey: "He isn't deaf—he doesn't want to hear. What a devil he is!"

In the second part, blindness and deafness come up as metaphors for unawareness and bad judgment. When the husband finally goes to visit Daniel Cosway, Daniel says "Must be you deaf you don’t hear people laughing when you marry her." As the husband grows upset to hear his stories about Antoinette and her family, Daniel tells him not to direct his anger at him: "it's I wish to open your eyes." Whereas Annette uses blindness and deafness to figuratively charge Godfrey with being implicated in her horse's death, Daniel uses them to charge the husband with naïveté.

Perception and the sense of sight figure prominently in the entire novel, and Rhys pays significant attention to people's facial expressions, gazes, and eyes. The narrators repeatedly describe the uncomfortable sensation of being stared at by unwanted audiences. In the exposition, for example, Antoinette recalls that Black people would stare and jeer at her mother when she went riding. She mentions that she avoided looking at Black strangers, and repeatedly mentions withholding her gaze or looking away throughout the first part. Staring faces figure prominently in Antoinette's memory from the night Coulibri burned down: "They all looked the same, it was the same face repeated over and over, eyes gleaming, mouth half open to shout." Perception thus takes on an ambiguous undertone; in order to feel safe, Antoinette deliberately diverts or interrupts her own gaze. Both seeing and being seen can be troubling and dangerous. 

Within this context, the motif of blindness becomes especially notable. Although perception is in certain instances associated with uncovering the truth, the act of looking is also associated with exposure and vulnerability. Spending her childhood cut off from other children and the rest of the world, Antoinette takes comfort in a sort of sheltered blindness. In the second part, perception gives the husband a similar dread. When he serves as narrator, he makes frequent mention of people's gazes: inquisitive faces, sidelong looks, sly knowing glances, and cool testing eyes. In certain moments, he describes being watched as a physical sensation. 

In his final conversation with Christophine, at the end of the second part, the husband says "I would give my eyes never to have seen this abominable place." This gives rise to a sort of intertextual foreshadowing and dramatic irony. In Jane Eyre, Rochester goes blind in a fire. For readers who are familiar with this outcome, the husband's statement is ironic, because he will indeed go blind one day. Although the husband has yet to go blind in Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys foreshadows what will happen to him beyond the scope of the plot.

In one of the novel's very first paragraphs, Antoinette mentions their neighbor Mr. Luttrell, who one evening "shot his dog, swam out to sea and was gone for always." Like the Cosways, Mr. Luttrell was a former plantation owner, and he struggled to adjust to life in Jamaica after the Emancipation. His suicide, which involved killing his dog as well, sheds light on his helplessness. He was her mother's "only friend," and his sudden absence contributes to her growing isolation.

Another dead animal—this time belonging to the Cosways—also makes an appearance on one of the first pages of the novel. When still alive, Annette's horse is a symbol of her resilience. Antoinette explains that, though life was becoming increasingly bleak at Coulibri Estate, her mother "still planned and hoped." She continued to go on rides every morning, even if "the black people stood about in groups to jeer at her." When the horse dies, it becomes a symbol of the family's vulnerability, helplessness, and delusion. 

Then one day, very early, I saw her horse lying down under the frangipani tree. I went up to him but he was not sick, he was dead and his eyes were black with flies. I ran away and did not speak of it for I thought if I told no one it might not be true.

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When Antoinette discovers that her mother's horse is dead, she's initially unwilling to confront reality. This mirrors her mother's headstrong, somewhat delusional reactions to crises. Later, at the convent, Antoinette handles her helplessness in the same avoidant way: "It was like that morning when I found the dead horse. Say nothing and it may not be true."

In the novel's exposition, the horse's death becomes a kind of final straw for Annette, as it makes it her less mobile and cuts her off from society. In her view, they are now "marooned." The horse's death not only leaves them immobile and isolated, it underlines that they are in peril—the fact that the horse was poisoned indicates that someone actively set out to harm the Cosways. In the novel's second paragraph, Antoinette notes in a parenthetical that "My father, visitors, feeling safe in bed—all belonged to the past."

As Antoinette describes her childhood perspective on obeah, she recalls waiting in Christophine's room one day. Although she does not see it, she feels sure that "hidden in the room" is a "cock with its throat cut, dying slowly, slowly." She imagines being able to hear its blood falling, drop by drop, into a red basin. In this instance, the dead animal is a symbol of the unseen and unknown.

Dead animals continue to signal danger as the novel progresses. As the Cosways, Aunt Cora, and Mr. Mason attempt to escape a flaming Coulibri in the first part, they watch Annette's parrot Coco fall screeching from the house, "with his feathers alight." In this moment, Antoinette recalls that it is "very unlucky to kill a parrot, or even to see a parrot die." In the second part, she watches more animals dying by fire. During their evenings at Granbois, Antoinette and the husband watch moths and beetles flying into candle flames. At a certain part, she tells the husband "we are like these," before flicking a dead moth off the table. Coco's death and the insects' death by flame mirror Antoinette's death at the end of the novel.

After Antoinette discovers that Tia took her dress, she has no choice but to put on Tia's dress for her walk home. Tia thus forces Antoinette to take part in an exchange of identities.

Several details in the ensuing scene signal that Antoinette's involuntary outfit change causes ruptures in her self-understanding. To begin with, she finds it more appropriate to enter the house through the back way. Moreover, her mother makes a fuss over the dress. Because new people have moved into the neighboring estate, Annette wants her daughter to look put-together. She makes Christophine find an old muslin dress, which tears when Antoinette puts it on. First, Tia forces Antoinette to wear a dress that isn't hers. Then, Annette forces Antoinette to wear a dress that doesn't fit her. In these scenes, Antoinette is like a doll, dressed up by other characters. The motif of Antoinette's clothing in the exposition belongs to the broader motif of identity markers, through which the reader can trace her wavering sense of self. 

Another important identity marker in the novel is Antoinette's name. In the second part, the husband begins to call her Bertha, supposedly because he does not want his wife to go mad like her mother did (whose name was also Antoinette). As she explains this development to Christophine, Antoinette links his hatred to his desire to rename her. Antoinette eventually confronts him.

"My name is not Bertha; why do you call me Bertha?"

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"Because it is a name I'm particularly fond of. I think of you as Bertha."

Wishing to neutralize her past and give her a name that he prefers, the husband indicates that he cares more about how he sees her than how she sees herself. In a subsequent conversation, Antoinette continues to resist:

Bertha is not my name. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name. I know, that's obeah too.

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In obeah, turning someone into a zombi requires giving them a new name. By identifying the husband's attempts to rename her as obeah, Antoinette asserts that he's partaking in the very magic he finds so frightening. Giving her no power in his insistent renaming ritual, the husband treats her like an animal or a doll. He has already given Antoinette a new surname. By changing her first name as well, the husband appears intent on wiping all traces of her past from her identity. Antoinette's distress over having a new name imposed on her is related to her powerlessness and tenuous grasp on her sense of self. She recalls this in the third part: "Names matter, like when he wouldn't call me Antoinette, and I saw Antoinette drifting out of the window with her scents, her pretty clothes and her looking-glass."

The evening before this nightmare, Annette is hard at work ingratiating herself with their new neighbors—which marks the beginning of her courtship with Mr. Mason. The parallel between the mother's blossoming romance and the daughter's nightmare is notable, as Antoinette's dreams all appear to be related to courtship, marriage, and men. Through this dream, Rhys foreshadows that Antoinette will end up in a relationship that is mired in hostility and fear.

At the end of the first part, Antoinette recounts her second dream, which she had when she was a teenager. When Mr. Mason's son Richard visits her at the convent, he says that he has "some English friends" visiting him next winter and implies that one of them plans to pursue her. She remembers feeling almost choked by "dismay, sadness, loss." That night, she dreams that she is following a man through a forest.

He turns and looks at me, his face black with hatred, and when I see this I begin to cry. He smiles slyly. 

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In the second dream, Antoinette wears a long white dress that trails in the dirt. Although she feels "sick with fear," she doesn't want to be saved. Rather, she feels that "this must happen." It seems that she's being led into a house, which the reader assumes is Thornfield Hall. It would make sense that she's foreseeing her future life in England, as she notes that the trees are unfamiliar to her. 

During their honeymoon, Antoinette asks the husband about England. She asks him whether it's true that "England is like a dream." The husband seems annoyed, arguing that Jamaica is more like a dream than England. (In multiple instances during the honeymoon, he compares his present to a nightmare and even expresses a hope that he'll wake up.) Despite the husband's annoyance, Antoinette continues to associate England with dreams and has visions of specific aspects of her future life.

For I know that house where I will be cold and not belonging, the bed I shall lie in has red curtains and I have slept there many times, long ago. [...] In that bed I will dream the end of my dream. But my dream had nothing to do with England and I must not think like this.

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For a reader who is familiar with Jane Eyre, it seems clear that Rhys is foreshadowing Antoinette's fate at Thornfield Hall. Details like the cold, the red curtains, and Antoinette's looming death contribute to this. In fact, the dream motif unites the two novels, as both Rhys and Brontë give their heroines prophetic dreams. In Jane Eyre, Jane dreams of fire the night before she is supposed to marry Mr. Rochester. Antoinette has a similar dream at the end of the third part, which makes her decide to light Thornfield on fire.

Cockroaches are household pests with hard shells, spindly legs, and long antennae. Associated with dirt and trash, they are typically reddish to dark brown in color. The "white cockroach" metaphor suggests that the Cosways are just as low-status as other poor people, and that they unsuccessfully hide their metaphorical grime through their White exteriors. As former slave-owners, they have lost the elevated social position they once held.

Early in the novel's first part, Antoinette mentions her distrust of strangers, recalling an incident in which a little girl followed her around with a singsong taunt.

I never looked at any strange negro. They hated us. They called us white cockroaches. [...] One day a little girl followed me singing, "Go away white cockroach, go away, go away." I walked fast, but she walked faster. "White cockroach, go away, go away. Nobody want you. Go away."

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This scene encapsulates the Black community's derision for the Cosways. It is clear that the girl's behavior towards Antoinette is informed by what she has heard adults say about the family. As the novel's first line makes clear, the Cosways are seen as neither White nor Black. This is in part because of their relative poverty. Although Coulibri was once a prosperous estate, it falls into disrepair after the Emancipation Act outlaws slavery in Jamaica. Without the labor of enslaved people, the Cosway family loses the means to maintain their estate or former lifestyle.

Although she doesn't use the cockroach metaphor, Antoinette's playmate Tia underscores the Cosways' in-between position in Jamaican society in a comparable way. When the two girls quarrel, she tells Antoinette that "she hear [they] all poor like beggar." 

Real white people, they got gold money. [...] Old time white people nothing [...]

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Tia distinguishes between "real white people" and the Cosways, who are merely seen as white cockroaches. Their former social authority hinged on their possession of a thriving plantation, which itself hinged on their possession of enslaved people. Without affluence or authority, White people fall to the bottom of the hierarchy in Jamaican society.

In the second part, a character again uses the "white cockroach" insult against Antoinette in a song. This time it is Amélie, the maid at Granbois. During an altercation between the two women, Antoinette slaps Amélie. In response, Amélie threatens "I hit you back white cockroach, I hit you back." After the husband gets Amélie to leave the room, they hear her singing a song:

The white cockroach she marry

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The white cockroach she marry

The white cockroach she buy young man

The white cockroach she marry.

The two cockroach songs mirror one another. Whereas the song Antoinette hears in her childhood is about her being unwanted, Amélie uses her song to claim that Antoinette purchased her husband. In either case, the white cockroach designation is closely connected with Antoinette's economic status and underlines her family's in-between position in Jamaica. Explaining the song to her husband, Antoinette says that it makes her wonder "who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all."

Obeah is first mentioned in the first part, when Antoinette looks back on her mother's wedding with Mr. Mason. She remembers eavesdropping on two gossiping guests, one of whom says that it's "evidently useful to keep a Martinique obeah woman on the premises." Although the person says it with a mocking tone, Antoinette notes that "soon other people were saying it—and meaning it." A few pages earlier, she had mentioned that some girls from the bayside would help Christophine with the washing and cleaning without pay, because they were "terrified of her." Although the reader is still getting acquainted with the characters, it becomes clear that Christophine's presence scares others, at least in part because she's believed to be a practitioner of obeah.

Later in the first part, Antoinette recollects waiting for Christophine in her room at Coulibri, feeling afraid.  

I was certain that hidden in the room (behind the old black press?) there was a dead man's dried hand, white chicken feathers, a cock with its throat cut, dying slowly, slowly. [...] No one had ever spoken to me about obeah—but I knew what I would find if I dared to look. 

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This passage is representative of how obeah is discussed throughout the novel: tangible traces hint at the practice, but characters mostly refrain from bringing it up explicitly. Although Antoinette never sees Christophine practicing obeah, she can sense that her nurse's reputation is well-founded. In the second part, now no longer a child, Antoinette again spots feathers in Christophine's room. This obvious trace of obeah fills her with fear and brings a stop to her looking around. That being said, Antoinette's fear only reaches so far, as Christophine is consistently the character that Antoinette trusts the most.

Other characters, like the husband, distrust or dislike Christophine for her ties to obeah. In the second part, the husband looks up "Obeah" in a book, reading about zombis and voodoo. In this chapter, he reads that people "as a rule refuse to discuss the black magic in which so many believe." This strengthens the reader's impression that, although it perhaps maintains a widespread presence, obeah is a clandestine activity. The colonial government contributed to this furtive atmosphere by policing the practice of obeah. In 1760, Jamaica became the first Caribbean colony to outlaw obeah, when the Jamaican Assembly passed the Jamaican Slave Law. The act banned Black and enslaved people from making use of materials like blood, feathers, and parrot beaks for the purposes of witchcraft.

Daniel Cosway heightens the husband's concerns when he reveals that Christophine had to leave Jamaica after being sent to jail for being an "obeah woman." After talking to Daniel, the husband sends a letter to Mr. Fraser, to ask about an obeah woman they had previously spoken about. This woman, it turns out, is Christophine. In his response, Mr. Fraser tells the husband that he considers her "a most dangerous person," and instructs him to contact the local White inspector of police if she "gets up to any of her nonsense." The exchange between the husband and Mr. Fraser offer insight into the colonial government's regulation and prohibition of local practices. 

In the exposition of the first part, as Antoinette describes Coulibri from her childhood memories, she recalls "a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell" in their garden. She remembers the orchids, whose "scent was very sweet and strong." It is clear that Antoinette feels attached to the flowers in their garden. Although it can be intense, she still detects something fresh and sweet when breathing in their fragrance. When she smells the "ferns and river water" on her way back to Coulibri, she notes that she "[feels] safe again."

In the second part, the husband also takes note of how his surroundings smell. The portions of his narration in which he comments on fragrance offer insight into his first impressions of Jamaica and Granbois. Almost as soon as they arrive at the honeymoon house, he remembers breathing "the sweetness of the air."

Cloves I could smell and cinnamon, roses and orange blossom. And an intoxicating freshness as if all this had never been breathed before.

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Although cloves, cinnamon, roses, and orange blossom are all considered to give off pleasant smells, the husband does not seem entirely pleased with them. The negative connotation of the word "intoxicating" suggests that he finds the smell and quality of the air off-putting. In other parts, he uses descriptions like "heavy," "very strong," and "overpoweringly strong" to describe the fragrance of the setting. Even as he becomes familiar with the smells, he does not describe them in positive or even familiar terms. They remain a part of the alien night that he finds inhospitable and haunting. The husband's consistent sensory overload illustrates his alienation in Jamaica and in his relationship with Antoinette.

The husband's obvious dislike for the smell of his surroundings begins to seep into Antoinette's own understanding of them. During an argument towards the end of the second part, the husband opens the window to let "a little air in." She tells him that "it will let the night in too," as well as "the moon and the scent of those flowers you dislike so much." After she has witnessed her husband's rejection of a place she cherishes, she is unable to see—or smell—it without being impacted by his aversion.

In addition to disliking the smell of the local flora, the husband is also disturbed by the fragrance of the people around him. As Antoinette describes her love of Christophine's "warm and comforting" smell, for example, she notes in a parenthetical "but he does not like it." In another instance, the husband overhears Antoinette telling someone not to "put any more scent in [her] hair" because "he doesn't like it." To this, someone (likely Christophine) responds "The man don't like scent? I never heard that before." Antoinette is evidently committed to smelling in a way that will please her husband, as he quotes her asking "do you like this scent?" On some level, she seems aware that her background and taste prevent her from smelling in a way that he will appreciate. The diverging sensory preferences of the married couple shed light on the many rifts between them. 

After this reflection, he thinks to himself that though he feels like he sees nothing, he wants "what it hides—and that is not nothing." When thinking about the setting, the husband often describes it as though it were a character. This personification has the twofold effect of making the place more comprehensible to him and to underline that he feels victimized by its incomprehensibility. His relationship to the Caribbean is contradictory in a number of ways: he experiences it as beautiful yet disturbing, all-consuming yet nothing, dead yet alive.

At the same time, it is worth noting that the "beautiful place" that the husband feels so torn by metonymically stands in for the people who live there—and know the place better than he does. The husband grapples with his outsider position through brief parentheticals and nebulous questions. 

(Is she trying to tell me the secret of this place? That there is no other way? She knows. She knows.)

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In this parenthetical, the husband groups the place and Antoinette together; he feels as though his new wife and his unfamiliar surroundings have teamed up against him. Later in the second part, he articulates this very feeling in a conversation with Antoinette: "I feel that this place is my enemy and on your side." 

Towards the end of the second part, as they prepare to leave Granbois, the husband suddenly acquires a new perspective on the place—and the weight of its secret seems to diminish. 

So I shall never understand why, suddenly, bewilderingly, I was certain that everything I had imagined to be truth was false. False. Only the magic and the dream are true—all the rest's a lie. Let it go. Here is the secret. Here.

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(But it is lost, that secret, and those who know it cannot tell it.)

Not lost. I had found it in a hidden place and I'd keep it, hold it fast. As I'd hold her.

In this passage, the husband again examines his feelings about secrets through parentheticals. Reenacting a conversation with himself, he gives the reader insight into his ambivalent feelings about the place and Antoinette. Just as they're about to leave, he feels a desire to accept and cherish the parts of Antoinette that he will never understand. The voice in the parenthetical tells him that the secret is lost, and with it the opportunity to make amends with Antoinette. For a moment, he objects to this impulse and feels a desire for intimacy with Antoinette.

In the end, however, the husband returns to his former attitude: he feels victimized and excluded by everything he doesn't understand about Antoinette and where she comes from. As they leave Granbois, he thinks to himself that he hates "its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know."

Almost right away, the reader feels that the relationship between the husband and Antoinette is ill-fated. To begin with, the second part opens to heavy rain, which adds to the husband's "feeling of discomfort and melancholy." Because he serves as narrator in this section, his emotional state has a direct bearing on the reader's mood. Additionally, the town's violent name sharpens his sense of alienation. The dialogue also contributes to the gloomy foreshadowing. Amélie, for example, laughs at the husband while she wishes him happiness in his "sweet honeymoon house." A little later, a porter who calls himself the Young Bull tells him, "This is a very wild place—not civilized. Why you come here?"

As they leave Massacre and begin to ascend the hills, the husband hears something that sharpens the foreshadowing.

A cock crowed loudly and I remembered the night before which we had spent in the town. Antoinette had a room to herself, she was exhausted. I lay awake listening to cocks crowing all night.

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The crowing rooster has biblical associations. In the Gospels, Jesus predicts that Peter the Apostle will abandon him before the crowing of the rooster in the morning. Peter says that he will stand by Jesus's side even if it means dying with him. After Jesus is arrested, however, Peter denies knowing him three times. After the third time, he hears a rooster crowing. Reminded of Jesus's prediction, Peter weeps bitterly. Based on this, the sound is often associated with betrayal and considered inauspicious. 

Later in the second part, Antoinette hears a rooster after she has visited Christophine. Rather than simply remarking on the sound as the husband did earlier, she explicitly identifies it as a symbol of betrayal.

Nearby a cock crew and I thought, "That is for betrayal, but who is the traitor?"

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Knowing that Christophine is a practitioner of obeah, Antoinette has asked her former nurse for a love potion. When she wonders who the traitor is, the possibilities include Christophine, the husband, and herself. She feels guilty for bringing money into her relationship with Christophine, as well as for inviting her to practice obeah on her husband. This self-probing distinguishes her internal monologue from that of the husband. Typically taking it for granted that he's the victim in a given situation, he rarely wonders whether he's doing the right thing. Antoinette, on the other hand, is open to the possibility that the traitor is herself. She doesn't reach a clear conclusion, however, raising the rather broad question "And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?"

The couple's honeymoon is bookended by a rooster crowing. When the husband sits down to write a letter to his father explaining their departure from Dominica, he hears "a cock [crow] persistently outside." Haunted by the sound, but not curious whether it may be a signal of his betrayal of Antoinette, he throws a book at the rooster. He asks Baptiste what "that damn cock crowing about," and Baptiste responds that it is "crowing for change of weather."

After Antoinette discovers that Tia took her dress, she has no choice but to put on Tia's dress for her walk home. Tia thus forces Antoinette to take part in an exchange of identities.

Several details in the ensuing scene signal that Antoinette's involuntary outfit change causes ruptures in her self-understanding. To begin with, she finds it more appropriate to enter the house through the back way. Moreover, her mother makes a fuss over the dress. Because new people have moved into the neighboring estate, Annette wants her daughter to look put-together. She makes Christophine find an old muslin dress, which tears when Antoinette puts it on. First, Tia forces Antoinette to wear a dress that isn't hers. Then, Annette forces Antoinette to wear a dress that doesn't fit her. In these scenes, Antoinette is like a doll, dressed up by other characters. The motif of Antoinette's clothing in the exposition belongs to the broader motif of identity markers, through which the reader can trace her wavering sense of self. 

Another important identity marker in the novel is Antoinette's name. In the second part, the husband begins to call her Bertha, supposedly because he does not want his wife to go mad like her mother did (whose name was also Antoinette). As she explains this development to Christophine, Antoinette links his hatred to his desire to rename her. Antoinette eventually confronts him.

"My name is not Bertha; why do you call me Bertha?"

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"Because it is a name I'm particularly fond of. I think of you as Bertha."

Wishing to neutralize her past and give her a name that he prefers, the husband indicates that he cares more about how he sees her than how she sees herself. In a subsequent conversation, Antoinette continues to resist:

Bertha is not my name. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name. I know, that's obeah too.

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In obeah, turning someone into a zombi requires giving them a new name. By identifying the husband's attempts to rename her as obeah, Antoinette asserts that he's partaking in the very magic he finds so frightening. Giving her no power in his insistent renaming ritual, the husband treats her like an animal or a doll. He has already given Antoinette a new surname. By changing her first name as well, the husband appears intent on wiping all traces of her past from her identity. Antoinette's distress over having a new name imposed on her is related to her powerlessness and tenuous grasp on her sense of self. She recalls this in the third part: "Names matter, like when he wouldn't call me Antoinette, and I saw Antoinette drifting out of the window with her scents, her pretty clothes and her looking-glass."

The evening before this nightmare, Annette is hard at work ingratiating herself with their new neighbors—which marks the beginning of her courtship with Mr. Mason. The parallel between the mother's blossoming romance and the daughter's nightmare is notable, as Antoinette's dreams all appear to be related to courtship, marriage, and men. Through this dream, Rhys foreshadows that Antoinette will end up in a relationship that is mired in hostility and fear.

At the end of the first part, Antoinette recounts her second dream, which she had when she was a teenager. When Mr. Mason's son Richard visits her at the convent, he says that he has "some English friends" visiting him next winter and implies that one of them plans to pursue her. She remembers feeling almost choked by "dismay, sadness, loss." That night, she dreams that she is following a man through a forest.

He turns and looks at me, his face black with hatred, and when I see this I begin to cry. He smiles slyly. 

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In the second dream, Antoinette wears a long white dress that trails in the dirt. Although she feels "sick with fear," she doesn't want to be saved. Rather, she feels that "this must happen." It seems that she's being led into a house, which the reader assumes is Thornfield Hall. It would make sense that she's foreseeing her future life in England, as she notes that the trees are unfamiliar to her. 

During their honeymoon, Antoinette asks the husband about England. She asks him whether it's true that "England is like a dream." The husband seems annoyed, arguing that Jamaica is more like a dream than England. (In multiple instances during the honeymoon, he compares his present to a nightmare and even expresses a hope that he'll wake up.) Despite the husband's annoyance, Antoinette continues to associate England with dreams and has visions of specific aspects of her future life.

For I know that house where I will be cold and not belonging, the bed I shall lie in has red curtains and I have slept there many times, long ago. [...] In that bed I will dream the end of my dream. But my dream had nothing to do with England and I must not think like this.

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For a reader who is familiar with Jane Eyre, it seems clear that Rhys is foreshadowing Antoinette's fate at Thornfield Hall. Details like the cold, the red curtains, and Antoinette's looming death contribute to this. In fact, the dream motif unites the two novels, as both Rhys and Brontë give their heroines prophetic dreams. In Jane Eyre, Jane dreams of fire the night before she is supposed to marry Mr. Rochester. Antoinette has a similar dream at the end of the third part, which makes her decide to light Thornfield on fire.

Cockroaches are household pests with hard shells, spindly legs, and long antennae. Associated with dirt and trash, they are typically reddish to dark brown in color. The "white cockroach" metaphor suggests that the Cosways are just as low-status as other poor people, and that they unsuccessfully hide their metaphorical grime through their White exteriors. As former slave-owners, they have lost the elevated social position they once held.

Early in the novel's first part, Antoinette mentions her distrust of strangers, recalling an incident in which a little girl followed her around with a singsong taunt.

I never looked at any strange negro. They hated us. They called us white cockroaches. [...] One day a little girl followed me singing, "Go away white cockroach, go away, go away." I walked fast, but she walked faster. "White cockroach, go away, go away. Nobody want you. Go away."

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This scene encapsulates the Black community's derision for the Cosways. It is clear that the girl's behavior towards Antoinette is informed by what she has heard adults say about the family. As the novel's first line makes clear, the Cosways are seen as neither White nor Black. This is in part because of their relative poverty. Although Coulibri was once a prosperous estate, it falls into disrepair after the Emancipation Act outlaws slavery in Jamaica. Without the labor of enslaved people, the Cosway family loses the means to maintain their estate or former lifestyle.

Although she doesn't use the cockroach metaphor, Antoinette's playmate Tia underscores the Cosways' in-between position in Jamaican society in a comparable way. When the two girls quarrel, she tells Antoinette that "she hear [they] all poor like beggar." 

Real white people, they got gold money. [...] Old time white people nothing [...]

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Tia distinguishes between "real white people" and the Cosways, who are merely seen as white cockroaches. Their former social authority hinged on their possession of a thriving plantation, which itself hinged on their possession of enslaved people. Without affluence or authority, White people fall to the bottom of the hierarchy in Jamaican society.

In the second part, a character again uses the "white cockroach" insult against Antoinette in a song. This time it is Amélie, the maid at Granbois. During an altercation between the two women, Antoinette slaps Amélie. In response, Amélie threatens "I hit you back white cockroach, I hit you back." After the husband gets Amélie to leave the room, they hear her singing a song:

The white cockroach she marry

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The white cockroach she marry

The white cockroach she buy young man

The white cockroach she marry.

The two cockroach songs mirror one another. Whereas the song Antoinette hears in her childhood is about her being unwanted, Amélie uses her song to claim that Antoinette purchased her husband. In either case, the white cockroach designation is closely connected with Antoinette's economic status and underlines her family's in-between position in Jamaica. Explaining the song to her husband, Antoinette says that it makes her wonder "who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all."