Rhys was very interested in how it felt to be alienated and what this had to do with Creole people. Creole are people of European Decent, born in the West Indies. Rhys was born in Dominica. In Wide Sargasso Sea she portrays a connection between her and Antoinette; Both from Creole decent, both socially isolated and both grow up to feeling that they do not belong. Rhys was interested in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. In Jane Eyre it shows Bertha Mason as "beast or human it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered in clothing dark grizzled hair". Rhys felt angry at this portrayal because Bronte did not give the Creole woman a voice. In Wide Sargasso Sea Rhys tries to give the Creole woman a voice. I will discuss the ways in which alienation is used in the book. .
Racial tension causes alienation because Antoinette is of Creole background. On one hand the native black people who belong to the land of West Indies, and on the other white Creole people do not belong anywhere. The Creoles were known as "not real white people" this quote shows how they did not belong in Europe or the West Indies thus emphasises the alienation of being Creole. The black culture is very different, making the white people feel cut off from the white culture. White Creoles were in the minority making them feel outnumbered and because the black people knew that they had the right to power made the Creole people feel threatened by them. The Emancipation act worsened the issue of alienation; this was the uprising of black people. The black people were no longer slaves and had to be paid to work. Most white people could no longer afford to pay black people and waited for their compensation to come from the English government, however this never came. These fallen white people were called "white cockroaches" or "white niggers" black people used these terms as an insult towards white people to show they were different.
