Overgrowth

I found the description of the once manicured, but now overgrown estate garden kind of interesting. The paragraph on pages 10 and 11 mentions how the garden was once “large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible,” but now it is “overgrown [with] a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell.” Rhys also writes about the orchids that were so alluring, but unapproachable. At this point in the story it seems like the garden is much like the island itself. The old order is withering, but there’s also a swarm of chaotic energy accompanied by a terrifying allure now that the master is gone. In the moment it seems like it’s something you could interact with and enjoy, but there’s also a sense that it could immediately overwhelm and overpower the senses. It’s a very weird place to find one’s self; in the middle of this transformation and not sure where to go. If we look at Antoinette, she’s got these choices to make because the middle isn’t where it’s at. The middle ground seems to be filled with abandonment, isolation, and alienation.

As a result, we start to see her finding comfort in extremes as the chapter progresses.  For her, those extremes tend to be on the European side. After losing her friend and her mother finds a new husband, Antoinette starts to withdraw from the world outside the estate walls and we start to see her gravitating towards Mason’s unparalleled Englishness. She eats an English dinner with her family even though she typically eats traditional island food alone; she adores a picture of a “lovely English girl with brown curls and blue eyes,” and finds comfort/safety in Mason’s English self-confidence. This move to one extreme and the moment of safety that came with it is immediately thrown into upheaval, but once that passes and some other events transpire she finds herself in another situation where she feels “safe.” This happens when Antoinette enters the convent. The island ways she was used to are replaced by customs of the European church. With the end of the first part of the book, it looks like that her sense of safety is going to be disrupted again.