Crazy or Misunderstood?

The character of Antoinette in Wide Sargasso Sea is many times interpreted as crazy or evil. In the book, her mother was mentally unstable and her past was tumultuous. She then was given in marriage to an Englishman who did not understand her. At the end of the novel, she demonstrated signs of insanity, but her behavior was really just the product and consequence of all the injustices that life had given her. She was “more sinned against than sinning.”
At the beginning, Antoinette does not receive the love she needs from her mother and is betrayed by the only friend she had, Tia. Her mother could not pay any attention to her because of her own problems and Tia was more interested in a new dress than a good friendship. Throughout all of these problems, she had a safe haven. Coulibri. When Coulibri burned down, Antoinette’s innocence burned down with it. Her mother died shortly after, leaving her basically alone and hopeless to face the world.
Her marriage was arranged, and proved to be loveless. “Christophine, he does not love me, I think he hates me. He always sleeps in his dressing-room now and the servants know." Antoinette is lost and confused. She is trying to do what a wife should do, but her husband is blind to her efforts. Her husband even cheats on her with the servant, Amelié. She sees no choice but to become withdrawn. She is tired of being betrayed by the people whom she cares for.
The injustices that she receives come from society as well as from her family. Antoinette is found between two worlds, England and Jamaica and it feels as though she did not fit in any one of them. She is looked upon as being too white to fit in Jamaica and as too black to fit in England. She is never looked upon just as a human being. She feels that her home, Jamaica, suits her husband more that is does her. “I feel that this place is my enemy and on your side." It comes to the point were Antoinette believes that she belongs in the shadows.
As a result of all of these events, Antoinette suffers the greatest sin, one that nobody, not even the worst sinner deserves. Antoinette loses her self-image; she loses her identity. This woman, who was always searching for answers but was too afraid to ask questions, did not know who she was anymore. She chose to live in a fantasy world, where harm could not reach her. She decided to live in her mind. “So I shall never understand why, suddenly, bewilderingly, I was certain that everything I had imagined to be truth was false. False. Only magic and the dream are true-all the rest’s a lie.”
At the end, we see Antoinette alone, in England, being taken cared of by Grace Poole. She cannot see herself. She does not see what she has become.
“There is no looking glass here and I don’t know what I am like now. I remember watching myself brush my hair and how my eyes looked back at me. The girl I saw was myself yet not quite myself. Long ago when I was a child and very lonely I tried to kiss her. But the glass was between us- hard, cold and misted over with my breath. Now they have taken everything away. What am I doing in this place and who am I?”
Antoinette’s behavior may seem as that of a mad person, but her sins (which others use as clear evidence so as to denote her as mad) do not measure up to those sins which have been brought against her. Her life has been unfair, and thus her reactions to certain situations do not always resemble those of a "normal" person, one whose life has treated him or her more fairly. Considering she has been sinned against so greatly, her "sinful" actions and reactions are not only understandable, but also justifiable.