The Windward Islands are significant to Wide Sargasso Sea because they are where Annette, Antoinette’s mother, owned the estate which Part 2 is spent on after Antoinette and her husband marry. The Windward Islands represent colonialism and empire in this text, being used as a setting to carry out these themes through its environment and characters. The Windward Islands are not just one place in Wide Sargasso Sea — they cover various locations, as they are one of the 3 primary archipelagos of the Caribbean (alongside The Greater Antilles and The Leeward Islands). In Wide Sargasso Sea, themes such as colonialism, slavery and otherwise entrapment, and social hierarchy are conveyed through this location. Thanks to a Wordpress website linked below (with an author whose name I was unable to find), I learned that Massacre, where Antoinette and her husband arrive on the way to the estate, was actually named after the genocide of the Indigenous people who had been living there when France and England colonized the islands. We are introduced to complicated, often unfair and dehumanizing dynamics and viewpoints from many characters as a result of nationalism, colonialism, and other forms of related prejudice such as racism — such as the unnamed narrator’s repeated refusal to understand or sympathize with Caribbean traditions or beliefs and disgust towards the mixed race and black servants who he spends his time around. Mapping this location on COVE reveals how colonialism effects everyone involved — the perpetrators the victims, and the eventual survivors who will live on to pass down their knowledge, trauma, and experiences.
https://guides.ocls.org/caribbeanamerican/windwardislands
https://www.oceanalliance.com/inspiration-item/windward-islands/
https://rhyswidesargassosea.wordpress.com/geography-of-wide-sargasso-sea/