Financial decline also serves to drive Annette into madness. Annette started out as an affluent socialite and is now a destitute widow. She is unable to adapt to this new, unfamiliar position in society and longs for her privileged lifestyle. This becomes evident when Antoinette recalls how her mother “still planned and hoped-perhaps she had to hope every time she passed a looking glass.” Annette tries to recapture her former _prestige by riding her horse every morning, even after “her riding clothes grew shabby”. Her horse and her riding clothes are status symbols that represented the wealth her family once had. Annette desperately holds onto these symbols in order to feel as though she is still connected to some measure of prosperity. It is impossible for Annette to ascend in status at this point in time, and the drastic financial change in her life is too severe to cope with. The depression caused by her life of poverty is another external factor that causes her to go insane.
The insolence of the Negroes disturbs both Annette and her daughter. Now that the Negroes are no longer oppressed, they can openly taunt and ridicule the whites, and this is exactly what they do to Annette, who is even more vulnerable because she has no husband. Naturally, the fact that she was “abandoned, lied about, (and) helpless” made her concerned for her safety. The Negroes even poison her horse, which prompts Annette’s complete isolation as she no longer has any means of traveling outside of the estate, thus she is socially and physically confined to Coulibri. This prospect terrifies her, as is seen when she laments, “Now we are marooned, now what will become of us?” Antoinette is very aware that the Negroes hate her family, and relates an incident when a Negro girl tauntingly sings “go away white cockroach, go away” to her. The animosity between the races makes it difficult for Antoinette to feel safe and secure in her surroundings. Both Annette and her ndaughter are subjected to the cruelty of the Negroes, and this only serves to perpetuate their madness.
Neither Annette nor Antoinette ever felt safe or secure because they were alone and vulnerable. Antoinette could only find comfort in nature and places. After having a nightmare, and receiving no reassurance from her mother, this poor, solitary child must tell herself “There is the tree of life in the garden and the wall green with moss. The barrier of the cliffs and the high mountains. … I am safe. I am safe from strangers.” The reader sees her longing to feel safe when she says, “I wished I had a big Cuban dog to lie by my bed and protect me…” Annette does not feel safe in Coulibri either. A year after they were married, Annette begins to tell her husband that she wishs to leave the estate. She knows that her marriage to Mason and the consequent restoration of her privileged lifestyle prompted jealousy and contempt amongst the Negroes. She also fears for Pierre’s safety as he is vulnerable to harm because of his physical handicap. Months of constant worry climax on the night that Coulibri is set afire, and Pierre dies before Annette can save him. The loss of her son brings out her wild, hysterical behaviour, which is seen when she is “twisting like a cat and showing her teeth” as Mason leads her away from Coulibri. She descends into total madness after the fire. Hence, the fact that Antoinette and her mother never feel safe contributes to the madness that eventually consumes them. Again, one must reocgnise that external factors rather than an inherited insanity cause the mental deterioration of these women.
Antoinette always suffered with an identity crisis, and this helps to bring about her disturbed mental state. British Creoles do not associate with the Cosways because they are French Creoles, thus she does not fit in with the whites. She grows up in a manner similar to the Negroes. She lives in poverty for much of her youth and has more contact with blacks than whites. However, due to the hatred and contempt that exists between these ethnic groups, and of course because of the obvious racial difference, Antoinette cannot belong to this group of people either. This identity crisis affects her mental and emotional state because she yearns to have a sense of belonging, yet can never fulfill this desire.
After examining all these points, one must conclude that Antoinette and Annette lose their grasp on reality due to the cruelty of life and others, mainly the Negroes. Isolation, neglect, malice from the Negroes, a lack of security and crippling financial changes all combine to result in these two women having a constantly disturbed state of mind. As a child, Antoinette is not exposed to essential human emotions such as love and happiness, thus she suffers psychologically. Her childhood leaves her feeling unprotected and unwanted. Such is her mental state when she marries her husband. Therefore, one must acknowledge that the framework of Antoinette’s insanity is already set when she gets married. Events that take place thereafter only serve to progress her descent into madness. Hence, her husband does not cause her to go insane.
Antoinette’s mental instability is slightly more apparent in the sections narrated by her husband, and it exists prior to the fiasco caused by Daniel Cosway’s letter. On the night she relates the story of the two large rats that came into her bedroom , the vulnerability of her childhood is evident when her husband “rocked her like a child and sang to her”. These actions imply that he recognizes that his wife is severly disturbed by her past. He also observes that at night she was different, “ever her voice changed. Always this talk of death…” He listens to her irrational request when she says “If I could die. Now, when I am happy. Would you do that? You wouldn’t have to kill me. Say die and I will die.” The sharp contradictions in her personality make it clear that she is insecure and unbalanced. Hence, the reader must note that even Antoinette’s husband detects signs of her instability not long after marrying her, thus proving that he is not the cause of her madness.
Daniel’s letter prompts Antoinette’s spouse to treat her coldly, thereby exacerbating her condition. Daniel asserts that Richard Mason deceived Antoinette’s husband and deliberately neglected to tell him about the history of insanity in her family. The letter’s contents do not seem to shock its reader; on the contrary, “it was as if he’d expected it, been waiting for it”. This is so because he always subconsciously suspected that something was wrong with his wife. He grows cold and distances himself from Antoinette, both physically and emotionally. This happens just at the time when she is becoming sexually involved with him, which has resulted in the creation of a deep, intimate attachment to her husband. His unconcerned attitude towards her leaves her longing for his love. He sleeps with the servant girl Amelie and begins to call his wife Bertha, which was his mother-in-law’s real name. By calling her Bertha, he succeeds in psychologically destroying her because he alleges that she is just like her mother: insane. The truth is that he transforms her into her mother, but he is not the initial cause of her insanity as she had tendencies of instability from her childhood. Thus one must acknowledge that her husband only exacerbated, not created, her condition.
To conclude, one must recognize that the harsh circumstances of the lives that Annette and her daughter lead in Coulibri serve as the foundation for their insanity. The reader cannot attribute their downfall to a genetic trait, but must instead understand that the process of going insane would not have started if their life at the beginning of the novel was not so lonely and miserable. Fate is cruel to these two individuals, and the cruelty of the Negroes is the only human cruelty inflicted on Annette and Antoinette at Coulibri, thus their lunacy begins as a result of both sources. Antoinette’s childhood leaves her with emotional scars and prohibits proper mental and personal growth, thus she marries her husband with these already established problems, and her husband’s actions only serve to develop the existing unstable tendencies.
