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Jean Rhys’ novel Wide Sargasso Sea is a text that explores the concept of madness. It does this from many angles, including exploring the following questions: What is madness? Who gets to define madness? What does madness depend on? The characters that will be analysed in order to understand the concept of madness in this novel are Antoinette and her mother Annette, as well as Rochester. English society with its morals and values, pronounces Antoinette as unsuitable to be an ideal ‘English’ wife because according to their morals, a woman who does things excessively is an outcast. According to Laura E. Ciolkowski (1997:339), “Antoinette is deemed unsuited for English domestic bliss not because of any psychological disorder from which she might be suffering but because of the appetites and excesses she so liberally exhibits”. Because Antoinette hands out food, drink and money to her relatives, this is equalled to madness. Rochester himself says of this, As for the money, which she handed out so careless, not counting it, not knowing how much she gave, or the unfamiliar faces appearing and disappearing, though never without a large meal eaten and a shot of rum, I discovered –sisters, cous