This document provides an analysis of Jean Rhys's novel Wide Sargasso Sea and how it depicts the religious syncretism between Obeah and Christianity in the Caribbean. It discusses how the characters of Antoinette and Christophine explore both Obeah rituals as well as Christian symbols and prayers. Their religious identities reflect the cultural collision that occurred during colonization as African, indigenous Caribbean, and European religious beliefs blended together. The analysis examines the contrasts Rhys draws between light and darkness, order and chaos, to mirror Antoinette's struggle to find her own identity amid these conflicting religious and cultural influences in her environment.

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Iuliia Klymenko
English 220
Dr. Gilchrist
8/19/13
Revealing Caribbean Religious Cosmology/Christian Mysticism in Wide Sargasso Sea
Religious identity- like a cultural identity is assumed differently by people.
Usually, two different religions, combined with the same historical occult transformation,
create a cultural collision or gap. One example of mixed cultural collision occurred in the
Caribbean. During colonization by Europeans, the slaves had their own culture and
religion. Through practicing their religious beliefs, they tried to create a protective
cultural shield against the colonizers, usually by terrifying them with the magical
mysticism of black rituals. However, at the time, Christian missionaries began to have a
major impact on Caribbean religion, such as Voodoo and Obeah, which combine
elements of Western African, native Caribbean, and Christian (especially Roman
Catholic) beliefs. In the novel Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys shows a contrast between
Obeah and Christianity, iconic order and magical chaos, light and darkness that mirror
Antoinette’s search for identity.
In Wide Sargasso Sea, Obeah is often complementary to Christian beliefs
illustrating how their symbiosis (of beliefs) shapes religious and cultural identity. In the
first part of the book, Antoinette describes Christophine’s room:
I knew her room so well -the pictures of the Holy Family and the
prayer for a happy death […] I was suddenly very much afraid […]
I was certain that hidden in the room (behind the old black press?)

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there was a dead man's dried hand, white chicken feathers, a cock
with its throat cut, dying slowly, slowly. Drop by drop the blood
was falling into a red basin and I imagined I could hear it. No one
had ever spoken to me about obeah – but I knew what I would find
if I dared to look. Then Christophine came in smiling and pleased
to see me. Nothing alarming ever happened and I forgot, or told
myself I had forgotten. (18)
In this part we find out that Christophine is practicing Obeah. These lines are full of
paradox, contrast, symbolism and mysticism like Obeah itself. It’s difficult to understand
why Christophine has never spoken about Obeah before. It emphasizes the mystique of
Obeah rituals and spells. It is possible that Christophine put a spell on Antoinette to make
her forget what she saw. At the same time she knew already what could be expected from
Obeah rituals and Antoinette dares herself to look. The beautiful contrast, that I think
Rhys often uses, is about the light and dark of religion. It is difficult for Antoinette to
look in there, because it is frightening and at the same time comforting, when
Christophine comes out from the room smiling, with an “angel face’. The icon of the
“Holy Family” and the prayers in her room make it clear that Cristophine is a Catholic.
There is a paradox or is it a syncretism of religion? In Creole Religions of the Caribbean,
Olmos explains that “Syncretism by correspondence, a symbiosis by identity, trough
which an African deity and a Catholic Saint became one on the basis of mythical or
symbolic similarities”(9). This religious syncretism is visible. Like Art, Obeah, according
to Nietzsche’s quote, is “bound up with the duality of the Apollonian and
the Dionysian”(1); there is duality of Christian iconic order and the dark chaotic mystery

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of Voodoo, also the complement of Iconic Saint’s eye and African blooding rituals,
represented by mystical dances. All this creates a cultural identity, emphasizing on the
antagonism between the West Indian and English. For a moment, Antoinette accepts the
Christian white, pure truth while living in a covenant school, where she learns more about
the Roman Catholic Saints; she says:
But we have our own Saint, the skeleton of a girl of fourteen under the
altar of the convent chapel. The Relics. But how did the nuns get them out
there, I ask myself? In a cabin trunk? Specially packed for the hold? How?
But here she is, and St. Innocenzia is her name. We do not know her story;
she is not in the book. The saints we here about were all very beautiful and
wealthy. (Rhys 32)
Here, Antoinette tells us about the mythical skeleton with a strange name. The girl's
skeleton invites parallels with the obeah rituals of the dead man's dried hand. Again and
again, we observe this dualism and contrast even in the skeleton’s name- St. Innocenzia,
the connection of something pure and mystical at the same time. Also, Rhys uses here the
biblical scene (verse) from Revelation 21:2, also known as Apocalypse, “I saw the Holy
City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride
beautifully dressed for her husband”. It serves as a personal revelation for Antoinette,
ironically by its mysticism and biblical truth. Antoinette in search for her identity is being
blinded by the white dress that at the same time represents her look into the European,
not the Caribbean side. Christianity is winning over the Magic. At the same time, “The
nun's situation can hardly be compared to the obeah's. The role that the nun/virgin has
played in patriarchal society cannot be called equivalent to that played by the

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obeah/witch” (Fayad 235). The Christian Covenant’s “matriarchal society” could not
fully compete with the Obeah’s spells in the “patriarchal society”. Even though, for some
time, the covenant becomes a refuge for Antoinette, the struggle between light and dark is
still inside of her, overlapping with the contrast between the white and dark magic of
Christianity and Obeah respectively. That all makes it harder for Antoinette to identify
herself:
Everything was brightness or dark. […] That was how it was, light and
dark, sun and shadow, Heaven and Hell, for one of the nuns knew all
about hell and who does not? But another one knew about Heaven and the
attributes of the blessed. […] So I prayed for along time to be dead. Then
remembered that this was a sin. […] All the same, I did not pray often
after that and soon, hardly at all. I felt bolder, happier, more free. But not
so safe. (Rhys 34)
Here we observe this contrast between good and evil, Holy prayers to Saints and Devilish
prayers for death. Antoinette clearly knows the difference between good and evil. But she
is in favor of the dark side, free of prayers, that makes her happier but not safe. Again and
again, we witness her being lost between prayer for repentance and sin, white and black
Magic and English Creole with Caribbean Creole. In an article Jamaican ladies and
tropical charms, the author states:
Antoinette understands the antagonism between the West Indian and the
English as a competition between two contending forms of occult
transformation, the West Indian as obeah and the English as talk about
obeah that seeks to counter its charms with more-than-rhetorical forces of

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its own. (Mackie III)
Antoinette knows the difference, but still she has this “struggle to come into being.” She
is married to a man, but her marriage doesn’t help her; it even makes the struggle for her
to come into “being” worse.
She goes and asks for help from her surrogate mother, Christophine. Antoinette
witnesses Christophine practicing Obeah and describes it by saying, “She said something I
did not hear. Then she took a sharp stick and drew lines and circles on the earth under the
tree, then rubbed them out with the foot. If you talk to him first I do what you ask me”
(Rhys 69-70). Obeah works as much through psychological manipulation as it does through its
rituals and potions. Christophine gives Antoinette a condition that she needs to talk with her
husband first. Christophine clearly understands that once she will give him the potion, the trouble
will take place. She lets Antoinette have a freedom of choice, but her intentions are still
mysterious. In the book Obeah, Christ, and Rastaman: Jamaica and Its Religion, Morrish
explains, “The ground is frequently marked out in a specific way inside a circle […]-
beyond which is “the world” (53). It symbolizes that the real world was separated in
Obeah by the circle of magic and mysticism. Once you get inside the circle of magic,
there will be no way for return to “the world.” Antoinette decides to enter into the magic
circle. Christophine invites her into her house, and she sees there: “Her bedroom was
large and dark. She still had her bright patchwork counterpane, the palm leaf from Palm
Sunday and the prayer for a happy death. But after I noticed a heap of chicken feathers in
one corner, I did not look round anymore” (Rhys 70). Over time nothing has changed in
Christophine’s room; she still keeps the Catholic symbols and prayers, but the Obeah
chicken still there also. Antoinette stops looking, because this time she knows more, she
knows much more about the dark magic and is experiencing an inner conflict between

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Christianity and Obeah. But it doesn’t stop her from asking Christophine for a potion in
attempt to close the gap between her self and her husband: “[…] she attempts to traverse
the distance between her Jamaican identity and the role of his wife, his English lady. She,
then, uses Christophine's black magic to make herself more white, more English, and
more of a lady; by doing so, she abandons herself to the spells of patriarchy and
colonialism” (Mackie III).
Antoinette chooses the dark magic that proves again that the power of spells
(magic) is stronger than the power of prayers at this time. But magic doesn’t help her
with finding her truth of identity, that light, that was missing. Ironically, at last Antoinette
holds her candle. According to Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe, “Christian candle
Symbolism can also be observed alongside Santerian candle symbolism. Having
established the essentially syncretised nature of the mysterious beliefs and practices of
Voodoo, Obeah, Santeria, and similar religious systems, it is possible to explore and
examine their fundamental principles” (51). At last Antoinette says, “I was outside
holding my candle. Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do.
There must have been a draught for the flame flickered and I thought it was out. But I
shielded it with my hand and it burned up again to light me along the dark passage”(Rhys
112). By going through the phases of two faiths, experiencing the inner struggle,
Antoinette still is not able to find herself through her marriage or religion.

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Works Cited
Fanthorpe, Lionel and Patricia. The Principles of Santeria, Voodoo, Obeah, and Similar
Religions. Canada: Dundurn Press, 2008. Print.
Fayad, Mona. “Uniquet Ghosts: The Struggle for Representation in Jean Rhys’s Wide
Sargasso Sea.” Modern Fiction Studies 34.3(1988): 437-52. Print.
Mackie, Erin. Jamaican ladies and tropical charms. University of Calgary, Department
of English. April 2006.
Morrish, Ivor. Obeah, Christ, and Rastaman: Jamaica and Its Religion. Cambridge,
England: James Clarke & Company, 1982. Print.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Birth of Tragedy. 1871. Trans. Ian Johnston. Web.
https://www.msu.edu/course/thr/431/BirthofTragedy.pdf.
Olmos, Dayan. Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and
Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo. New York and London: New York University
Press, 2011. Print.
Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999. Print.

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