Chapter Part One of Wide Sargasso Sea - Study Guide by Jean Rhys

"It may have been the way he smiled, but again a feeling of dismay, sadness, loss, almost choked me ... It was like the morning when I found the dead horse. Say nothing and it may not be true" (p.49)

Her fate, she realises (although she cannot tell what it is the reader can), has begun to close in on her and she feels less safe and has a symbolic and prophetic dream. The man is leading her not to love but is strange and threatening. He "smiles slyly", and we have been taught throughout to distrust smiles and laughter; the girl and boy who taunt her on her first day of the convent smile before their attack. The soothing hot chocolate reminds Antoinette of her mother's funeral and these memories become mixed with the dream, significantly meshing the influence of her mother, her madness and history on Antoinette's own fate as pictured in the dream.