In the novel Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, Antoinette struggles to find her true identity. This becomes challenging for her because she cannot escape the local populations tendency to judge others based on concepts such as race, physiological states, and family or social statuses.
When talking to Mr. Rochester, Antoinette says that the local Jamaican population constantly called her, a white cockroach. That's me. And I've heard English women call us white niggers. So between you and I often wonder who I am and where is my country and where do I belong and why was I ever born at all (61). Antoinette is often the target of discrimination in Spanish Town, Jamaica. Since Antoinette and her family had been a target of hatred as a family who had previously owned slaves, she never believed that she is a part of any family. Antoinettes biological family is dysfunctional and she is shunned when she asks about her half siblings who are black and whose father is the same as Antoinettes biological father, Alexander Cosway. When she finally finds and feels comfortable with her family at the convent, even that is taken away from her. Antoinette is categorized as being creole or a person with mixed backgrounds or ethnicities such as black, white, European, and more specifically French. Therefore, Antoinette never fits into society and instead, her feelings of isolation develop into negative thinking which cause Antoinette to feel like she is all alone. These negative thoughts encouraged her to believe that others considered her an outsider to two very different and separate societies and did not accept her for who she was. Antoinettes prolonged binary thinking of social classes and race removes the possibility of seeing herself as having ties to both the black and white populations. Unfortunately, she is viewed as neither and all alone which leads her to see the world more harshly and she wishes to escape it.
