The use of the word “marooned” further emphasises the sense of exile from society that the Creoles feel. Annette laments: “now we are marooned” the feeling of hopelessness and segregation could perhaps be foreshadowing Antoinette’s decline into insanity later in the novel, where she is locked away from society by Rochester.

The death of Annette’s horse, who had been “poisoned”, was the Cosway's last mode of transport from Coulibri to civilisation. The fear of the outside world could perhaps also be linked to her time in England where she never really was allowed to become accustomed to the social norms of the country, clearly linked to Antoinette's descent into madness.

Rhys highlights the fear the Antoinette feels to further emphasize the divisions between her and her ancestors from England. Antoinette admits that she 'hides from them' when they visit Coulibri. Once Rhys establishes the difference between Antoinette and the black community, she then goes about demonstrating the difference between Antoinette and the white English through the use of the wedding that Rhys describes soon after her argument with Tia. This also reminds us how much of an influence the adult world has on children. Rhys' use of such vulgar language further emphasizes the cultural and racial differences between the two characters. Money interrupts their supposed blossoming friendship and results in Antoinette calling Tia a 'cheating nigger'. Antoinette's lack of a cultural identity is clearly emphasized by her relationship with Tia whom she struggles to relate to especially on the themes of money, as both girls have lived very different economic lives. The road could perhaps be symbolic of the interaction between Creoles and the local black population, which is now non-existent. Rhys is stressing how the Act had affected the life of the Creoles as “road repairing was now a thing of the past”. This is a metaphor for the loneliness of Coulibri and the degradation that the area is under after the Emancipation Act of 1833. The Coulibri estate is the epitome of isolation with the road between them and the Spanish town is described as “very bad”. Isolation is a key theme in wide Sargasso, and Rhys uses setting to allude to this.

Wide sargasso