Throughout the novel, the natural world reflects Antoinette’s and the husband’s respective feelings of comfort and/or alienation. When Antoinette is rejected by her mother and ridiculed by her peers, she hides in the gardens at Coulibri and feels that even biting ants and sharp, stinging foliage are “Better, better than people.” Conversely, a major feature of her nightmares, which turn out to be of England, is the unfamiliarity of the trees. The husband, on the other hand, who finds the people and customs of Jamaica disorienting and even disturbing, is similarly disoriented and disturbed by the Jamaican landscape. He becomes lost and delirious in the jungle, and says that the landscape is, “not only wild but menacing. Those hills would close in on you.”
The Natural Landscape: Gardens, Jungle, Trees Quotes in Wide Sargasso Sea
The Wide Sargasso Sea quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Natural Landscape: Gardens, Jungle, Trees. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Part 1
Quotes
And if the razor grass cut my legs and arms I would think ‘It’s better than people.’ Black ands or red ones, tall nests swarming with white ants, rain that soaked me to the skin— once I saw a snake. All better than people. Better. Better, better than people.
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Part 2
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This a very wild place — not civilized. Why you come here?
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I was tired of these people. I disliked their laughter and their tears, their flattery and envy, conceit and deceit. And I hated the place. I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and loveliness.
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The Natural Landscape: Gardens, Jungle, Trees Symbol Timeline in Wide Sargasso Sea
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Natural Landscape: Gardens, Jungle, Trees appears in Wide Sargasso Sea. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Part 1
One day, Antoinette finds her mother’s horse dead underneath a tree, and tells no one, because she believes if she doesn’t speak of it, it might...
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...to look at the sea, she is gawked at by passersby. Antoinette describes how the gardens at Coulibri during this time are allowed to grow beautiful and wild from neglect, without...
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...girl singing, "White cockroach, go away, go away. Nobody want you." Antoinette hides in the garden, where Christophine finds her many hours later, lying on the ground covered in moss.
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...they only came to see what had happened. As she watches the house and the gardens burn, Antoinette mourns the loss of the beautiful trees and flowers. She sees her former...
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...walk through the convent Antoinette is comforted by Louise’s beauty as well as by the trees and flowers in the convent’s gardens.
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...in much more detail. In it, she is being lead through a forest of unfamiliar trees wearing a beautiful white dress. She does not know the man leading her, but she...
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Part 2
...Massacre, and it is raining. He and Antoinette, along with several servants, wait underneath a tree for it to stop. One of the servants is Amélie, whom the husband finds “lovely”...
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The husband leaves the shelter of the tree to speak to the two porters also accompanying them on their trip. One of them...
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The husband describes the pools and the surrounding jungle as beautiful and untouched, “with an alien, disturbing, secret loveliness,” and yearns to possess the...
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...which he sees as hostile, and walks into it. As he walks deeper into the trees, he wonders how one can ever discover the truth, and concludes that it is impossible,...
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...the path he’d been on, he cannot, and becomes “lost and afraid among these enemy trees.” He hears footsteps and a voice calling to him-- it is Baptiste, who has been...
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...at Christophine’s house, she finds her old nurse sitting on a box underneath a mango tree. Christophine offers Antoinette a box, but Antoinette kneels on the ground close to Christophine instead....
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...there could never be a place as beautiful as Coulibri. She describes the royal palm trees, which had been cut down, as lost trees, and tells of the poisoning of her...
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...of herself, and she says that she was happy in the mornings, and in the garden, where “every flower in the world” existed, and she often drank rainwater from the leaves....
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...out to the veranda. As he wraps his bleeding arm, he looks out to the trees and feels that they are menacing him, have menaced him since his arrival. He hears...
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...be gossiped about constantly. He draws a picture of an English house surrounded by English trees, with a woman on the third floor.
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The next day is cool and misty. He watches the royal palm trees with respect, imagining that they will stand tall and defy the hurricanes that are coming...
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