In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys explores the origins of Bertha Antoinetta Rochester, the madwoman in the attic of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Reimagined by Rhys as Antoinette Cosway Mason, Sargasso Sea documents Antoinette's troubled adolescence and her eventual descent into apparent madness. Rhys' choice to investigate the life of a character already destined for a tragic end focuses the informed reader on the development of Antoinette's madness and a potential explanation for her inevitable fate. In this essay I will investigate a key aspect of Antoinette's fragile condition, the complex ethnic identity she forms during her adolescence, particularly regarding her childhood friendship with Tia, and how that confused identity relates to her tragic end. A victim of many circumstances beyond her control, Antoinette's identification with both black and white culture fractures her sense of self, alienates her from both, and is a major factor in how she is degraded by her husband. Between the upheaval of post-emancipation Jamaica and her ever-changing social position, Antoinette finds herself “caught between two cultures…but never able to fully identify with either.” (Kadhim 2011) This incomplete sense of self is incompatible with the world she lived in and, combined with her inability to control her own destiny, informs her disastrous marriage and any abuse and imprisonment she suffers at the hands of her husband, leading to madness and his tragic fate. [Author's Note - I don't want the above to read as if Antoinette is somehow responsible for Rochester being abusive, only that he is more capable of doing so because of the way he perceives her as "other" and that she is less than worthy. Tip... middle of the paper... the announcement happened. And even though it never happened, I tried again. Dear God, let me be black” (Rhys 1981) Living and writing more than a century after constructing the character of Antoinette, there is certainly an aspect of self-exploration in the way Rhys chooses to tell Antoinette's story, perhaps reflecting his struggles with personal identity in his youth. To conclude, although Antoinette Cosway Mason's tragic life is filled with unfortunate circumstances, nothing is more critical to her eventual demise than the racial identity she forms as a lonely, isolated child. The short-lived success of Antoinette's arranged marriage to Rochester can be traced to his view of her as "foreign" and "other." Identifying so strongly with the culture of her servants and former slaves, Antoinette finds herself torn between two cultures and neither accepted nor respected by either...