While the first two sections of Wide Sargasso Sea hold an impossible sense of tragedy, the last section, teeming with Antoinette's ravings and the mania of her dream, is still more beautiful than her life was sorrowful, and this manic beauty is redeeming for her. The scorned Mrs. Rochester spends her last days consumed with the beauty of vivid colors and visions of flames, and ultimately dies in a scene that, according to her prophetic dream, will equal in its unrepressed beauty the natural vivacity of her homeland. Her suicide is not the inevitable end to her tragic life, but her final act of defiance against Rochester. When she tells Grace Poole that "if you are buried under a flamboyant tree when you die, your soul is lifted up when it flowers"
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She is so fixated on this dress because it is all that is left of her. She is afraid it has been stolen along with everything else: "'Have you hidden my red dress too? If I'd been wearing it he'd have known me,'" (120). She is convinced that her own brother does not recognize her without the red dress because it is the only thing that resembles what she was–sensual and untamed like her fiery Jamaica. Rochester, though, has removed her from that hot climate that is so conducive to her flame in the hopes that cold, damp, grey England will extinguish it. Grace Poole gives her a grey wrapper to replace her red dress, but ultimately fire overpowers: "But I looked at the dress on the floor and it was as if the fire had spread across the room. It was beautiful and it reminded me of something I must do," (121). Antoinette does not fear the fire or her approaching death. They are beautiful. Through the fire and her death she can regain the beauty that Rochester attempted to smother. When she dreams about starting the fire, she is similarly impressed by its beauty: "I laughed when I saw the lovely colour spreading so fast..."
She is so fixated on this dress because it is all that is left of her. She is afraid it has been stolen along with everything else: "'Have you hidden my red dress too? If I'd been wearing it he'd have known me,'" (120). She is convinced that her own brother does not recognize her without the red dress because it is the only thing that resembles what she was–sensual and untamed like her fiery Jamaica. Rochester, though, has removed her from that hot climate that is so conducive to her flame in the hopes that cold, damp, grey England will extinguish it. Grace Poole gives her a grey wrapper to replace her red dress, but ultimately fire overpowers: "But I looked at the dress on the floor and it was as if the fire had spread across the room. It was beautiful and it reminded me of something I must do," (121). Antoinette does not fear the fire or her approaching death. They are beautiful. Through the fire and her death she can regain the beauty that Rochester attempted to smother. When she dreams about starting the fire, she is similarly impressed by its beauty: "I laughed when I saw the lovely colour spreading so fast..."