Antoinette's marginal and uncertain status emerges with the opening words of Wide Sargasso Sea: ‘They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks’ (WSS 5). From the start of the novel, Rhys makes clear the metaphysical basis of the notion of whiteness; as Delia Caparosa Konzett has put it, in this text ‘whiteness is … seen for the phantom construct that it is’. Antoinette's mother, Annette, is French and poor. The Creole ladies of English descent in Spanish Town do not recognize her as one of them. Skin colour is not sufficient to carry admittance to whiteness; in the colonial situation, whiteness only belongs to those with economic power. In this context Gregg quotes Fanon, who wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, ‘In the colonies the economic substructure is also a superstructure. The cause is the consequence. You are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich’. Tia understands this too; the Cosways don't count as white people: ‘Plenty white people in Jamaica. Real white people, they got gold money’ (WSS 10). Yet even when Antoinette's mother marries the rich English man, Mr Mason, as ‘a Martinique girl’ she is still regarded with suspicion (WSS 5). As Daniel Cosway says, ‘French and English like cat and dog in these islands since long time’ (WSS 60). Antoinette ‘had heard what all these smooth shining people said about her [mother] when she was not listening’. They know her history: ‘Emancipation troubles killed old Cosway? Nonsense – the estate was going downhill for years before that. He drank himself to death. Many's the time when – well! And all those women! She never did anything to stop him – she encouraged him. Presents and smiles for the bastards every Christmas.’ (WSS 13) No one can understand why Mr Mason should have made such a misplaced match. When it is pointed out that Annette is very pretty and dances wonderfully – one might recall that Rochester's ‘charmer’, the ‘Gallic sylph’ Céline Varens, was an opera-dancer – the same woman comments, ‘Dance! He didn't come to the West Indies to dance – he came to make money as they all do.’