The Sargassum in the Sea: A Small Map of the Book

This is a common blog idea and a small post but I enjoy finding the concrete reasons behind things.



We talked about this briefly in class. The Sargasso Sea is a section of the Atlantic ocean between Europe and the West Indies well known for its long, treacherous not really strings of sargassum seaweed, from the Portuguese sargaço. The general consensus in class was that the Sea represented the vast, symbolic uncrossable gulf between Antoinette's world and Rochester's, which is why nothing good came of either of them crossing it.

The theme and its implications are not what I'm here to talk about. Some books (see: Lord of The Rings, Watership Down, Mrs. Dalloway, even) have maps, and this one doesn't. I found it hard to picture where everything was. Let's explore the West Indies.




Zooming out: This is the North Atlantic Gyre. The currents of the world swirl sort-of-clockwise around the Americas and Europe, ending up spinning around in what is called the Sargasso Sea. Also mentioned in class, a lot of stuff tends to wash up there, be it trash or kelp or (hopefully more symbolically) people. In fact, there's a gross thing there called the North Atlantic Garbage Patch (which also would have been a good name for the novel). It is, you guessed it: just a bunch of plastic waste out on the ocean, and it's "hundreds of kilometres across in size." Nasty.


Here are the West Indies.

See where we're going? Annette and Christophine are from Martinique (about in the middle of all those tiny islands). Rochester says that after he and Antoinette get married, they go on an "interminable journey from Jamaica," specifically mentioning going from Spanish Town (which is in Jamaica) to the Windward Islands (66).










So, Spanish Town is the capital of the parish of Saint Catherine, in the historic county of Middlesex, Jamaica. just saved you some googling.  In Part One, Antoinette talks about "the Jamaican ladies" near them and "the road from Spanish Town to Coulibri Estate," so Part One most likely takes place on Jamaica, moderately far from Spanish Town. The convent Antoinette stays at is "Mount Calvary Convent, Spanish Town, Jamaica, 1839." This place does not exist now, if it ever did; the best I can find is a facebook page.

Additionally, Rochester first arrives in the West Indies via Spanish Town, a bustling port city.

Martinique is an island claimed and ruled by France, even today. This is where Annette and Christophine are from.

Granbois (meaning 'big tree'), where Antoinette and Rochester stay in part 2, is near Massacre, Dominica. (Dominica is the island right above Martinique.)


And of course, I managed to find Shmoop's explanation AFTER I finished all this research.