Duality.

Duality gives a sense of balance, of companionship. With one is the other, ying and yang and all that jazz. In Wide Sargasso Sea, this theme of dualism is explored meticulously. The heroine, a sheltered and sensitive young girl, Antoinette Cosway is caught between the two cultures that have defined her childhood - white and black. She is biologically one and yet heavily influenced by the other. As a result, she does not fit in easily. The blacks reject her for her skin and the whites shun her for her impoverished roots that degrade her to a slave-like status in their eyes. And she herself is confused at her situation. On one hand, she yearns for the affection and approval of her French mother. Yet on the other, she longs for the comfort and attention of Christophine, her "da" (72). It's hard to place and describe her for she is so many things, but it's extremely easy to sympathize with her. 

One of the most emphatic use of duality happens in the scene where Antoinette stares at Tia, as if "in a looking glass" (45). Running towards her lone friend, Antoinette thought feverishly that she "will live with Tia and... be like her. Not to leave Coulibri. Not to go. Not" (45). Yet Tia rejects her too by throwing a rock at her. Standing before her injurer, with blood running down her face, Antoinette pauses, seemingly emtionless, and remarks lightly on the tears Tia is now weeping. We know from a previous passage that Antoinette has never seen her cry (23). But no longer. The strong and unbreakable Tia, symbolizing perhaps the resilient and black side of Antoinette, has yielded. And now our heroine is swept away into a foreign world of England and marriage.