Anna’s divided herself is also a result of the betrayal of the male figures that surround her. Walter’s financial support symbolizes Anna’s subordination and dependence to the male controlled society. At the end of Anna and Walter relationship, Vincent, Walter’s cousin, writes a letter to Anna, informing Anna of Walter’s decreasing love or less attraction for her. In that letter, Walter offers money if she is able to manage it well. The affair ends on the same note or ground that it began; Anna has been used and is now being thrown away like an ordinary sexual object. The depth of Anna’s reaction to Vincent’s letter is taken through an image she recalls from her childhood. After reading the letter, she suddenly remembers coming upon her Uncle
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In the end of the novel, Anna recalls a long road she used to take as a little girl to her mother’s old homestead. The journey begins amid the lush forest of the Caribbean, “you ride in a sort of dream, the saddle creaks sometimes, and you smell the sea and the good smell of the horse” (151). Anna concludes, “it was as long as life sometimes. I was nearly twelve before I rode it by myself. There were bits in the road that I was afraid of. The turning where you came very suddenly out of the sun into the shadow; and the shadow was always the same shape” (152). This physical journey captures symbolically Anna’s inner journey. After all the natural beauty, the dark reality shadows her at the end. The protagonist’s life portrays a permanent cycle. In the last part of the novel, Anna’s fragmented identity dies in an abortion and a new self emerges; she starts a new life, “and about mornings, and misty days, when anything might happen. And about starting all over again, all over again” (187). Parallel to the opening lines of the novel, in which Anna talks about being “born again” (7), these last lines refer unequivocally to the possibility of beginning “all over
In the end of the novel, Anna recalls a long road she used to take as a little girl to her mother’s old homestead. The journey begins amid the lush forest of the Caribbean, “you ride in a sort of dream, the saddle creaks sometimes, and you smell the sea and the good smell of the horse” (151). Anna concludes, “it was as long as life sometimes. I was nearly twelve before I rode it by myself. There were bits in the road that I was afraid of. The turning where you came very suddenly out of the sun into the shadow; and the shadow was always the same shape” (152). This physical journey captures symbolically Anna’s inner journey. After all the natural beauty, the dark reality shadows her at the end. The protagonist’s life portrays a permanent cycle. In the last part of the novel, Anna’s fragmented identity dies in an abortion and a new self emerges; she starts a new life, “and about mornings, and misty days, when anything might happen. And about starting all over again, all over again” (187). Parallel to the opening lines of the novel, in which Anna talks about being “born again” (7), these last lines refer unequivocally to the possibility of beginning “all over