Jocelyn Woods
Aug 22, 2017 · 1 min read

It’s not exactly accurate to say that Antoinette was “a poor white woman living in Jamaica.” She was a Creole heiress whose family owned a large property, as well as several slaves until they were freed by abolition in Jamaica. It was abolition that forced her family into poverty. (That and the fact that their home is set on fire during a revolt against slavery and colonial rule).

She wasn’t entirely seen as white by Rochester due to her Creole heritage but her family was also rejected by the Jamaican people due to their role in slavery and colonialism. She exists on the margin between races, between England and Jamaica, Western “Civilization” and the Other, and between sanity and madness, and these are also the reasons she appears as exiled to the attic.

Your description makes it sound like she was just some random poor white woman living in a hut on the beach in Jamaica, maybe weaving baskets to sell to the tourists. ;)

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    Jocelyn Woods

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