In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys addresses identity through two main characters: Antoinette and her husband, Rochester. The novel deals with both English and Caribbean identities and explores the effect of contrasting identities within these various characters. Through this exploration, Rhys explores the idea that identity is something that is inherited and acquired. Rhys also highlights an important issue for the reader, which is that you should not have your identity forced upon you but be true to your roots. The novel is set in 1830s Jamaica, with Antoinette, a Creole woman, a person of mixed European and black ancestry living on the poor Coulibri estate in Jamaica. Recently joining the Great Britons, renaming herself Antoinette, Rochester confuses her sense of identity even more. As earlier in the novel Antoinette remembered kissing a mirror, where her physical self and her reflected self represented her two contrasting identities, and when she kissed her reflection they were merged. When Rochester changes his name and later locks Antoinette in the attic without a mirror, he does not know his own name or his physical identity, as Antoinette explains, "a long time ago, when I was a child and very alone, I tried to kiss her. But the glass was between us, hard, cold and fogged by my breath. Now they have taken everything away from me. What am I doing here and who am I?"; even the slightest fragment of identity Antoinette had before was aggressively attacked and erased by Rochester, leaving Antoinette a "ghost" to herself and others. Shown by the character of Antoinette who adopts a Caribbean identity and feels ostracized by her English peers and sense of English identity. On the other hand, Rochester has a strong sense of English identity and attempts to erase all traces of Caribbean identity in Antoinette, and in the process even participates in Caribbean culture himself. Therefore Antoinette's fabrication of identities and Rochester's subsequent manipulation lead Antoinette to have no identity causing her to slip into madness. Rhy's exploration of the key theme of identity through the character of Antoinette shows the reader the dangers of not being true to one's roots but having them imposed.