Historians have long disputed whether the health of the West Indian sugar industry had an effect on the decision to abolish the slave trade, and whether it was faltering in profitability. (see Marietta Morrissey's Towards a Theory of West Indian Economic Development [JSTOR; must be on campus to view])The Marxian view that the causes of the British anti-slavery movement in the first years of the nineteenth century were purely economic has been subject to some historical controversy. Recent historians, according to David Beck Ryden in his essay Does Decline Make Sense? [Project Muse; must be on campus to view] deny any economic hardship at all in the colonies. Their research focuses on how the social and political climate sowed seeds for reform, and that the move to abolish slavery was a "major philanthropic agenda" of the day. To ignore the role of market factors is a decidedly anti-Marxist and perhaps idealist and romantic look at the British social and politic views of slaves and slavery. Howard Temperley, in Capitalism, Slavery and Ideology [JSTOR; must be on campus to view] examines the role of economics, the invisible hand, as a motive for attacking slavery. To prove such a theory it becomes necessary to show how these economic motives translated into political actions and finally into legislative acts. To respond to the argument, Ryden points out that "both sugar prices and estimated slave prices culled from the Jamaica Archives confirm the contemporary commentary that outlines the problem of overproduction which led to a financial crisis on the eve of the slave trade's abolition." (p. 347-48) Whatever the motives, the end of slavery was a move towards the end of an economic era, and, Marx or not, it would change everything.

We see in Wide Sargasso Sea a deliberate anachronism that utilizes all the resulting implications to articulate the identity of the West Indian Creole of the post-slavery period, and this shifting of dates is crucial. In one of her letters, Rhys wrote of the importance of linking facts with fiction and of putting fiction in reference to specific social and historical events to get to a "truth" through the reconstitution and reordering of facts. (Gregg, 84) In a way, Wide Sargasso Sea for Rhys is making a case for the white female Creole character, using history, her imagination, and facts, albeit rearranged, to her advantage. Veronica Marie Gregg writes:

Rhys's reworking of historical data, cultural references, and literary allusions suggests that in rewriting the Victorian novel, she is calling into question the entire Book, the metatext of the dominant, metropolitan discourse. In order to demonstrate the implausibility and the "lie" of the English portrayal of the West Indian Creole woman, Rhys performs the cultural criticism that insinuates Bronte's text into the larger discursive practices; and she reads the precursory novel as a production of its cultural and social ethos. Furthermore, Rhys' text works upon a repertoire of strategies and discursive acts engendered by British imperial control of the West Indies. (p. 84)

There are historical allusions embedded in the novel's events and characters, and we see the effects of Emancipation on both. The novel is defined by the history, but the history is also told through the novel, a history to which the characters and situations are stitched. The history is ever-present in the novel.

All the relationships within the post-slavery West Indies were socially constructed according to slavery and the plantation society; Christophine was a wedding gift to Antoinette. When Antoinette describes "all the people in [her] life" at the beginning of the novel, text has already folded into the substance of the character's life centuries of West Indian history, calling attention to the continuity between slavery and post-slavery conditions "the presence of the past." (Gregg, 86) In addition, events in the novel are results of social pressures that could only result from slavery and post-slavery life. The suicide of Mr. Luttrell is a result of the British government failing to give him compensation for his loss of slaves after the Emancipation, a compensation that was not always received.  Here we see how the economic environment, as it flowed from pre- to post-slavery, affected the lives of the plantocracy in the West Indies. The racial superiority of the whites depended on the economic superiority they achieved through unpaid black labor, but this economic superiority itself, conversely, depended on their assumed racial superiority. Gregg explains this with Frantz Fanon's assertion that "the cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich." (89) Again, the end of an economic era changed everything, because the economic substructure of the colonies also determined the social superstructure of class. The ending of slavery take Antoinette and her family down the ladder, because "real white people" have money; their racial superiority is determined solely by money which the ending of slavery takes away.

            Critics have argued that the friendship between Antoinette and Tia would not have been likely because of the ideological barriers embedded in the colonialist discourses of white supremacy. (Gregg, 87) We see the textual divisions between black and white in the Tia/Antoinette relationship, and those marks of race undermine the narrative construction of their friendship. The text constantly brings up references to racial divisions:

The narrative function enacts a sentimental fiction of friendship between the black and white girls even as the textual function demystifies and undercuts it. In this way the Rhys text displays its own contradictions, offering its own internal critique." (Gregg, 89)

Their friendship, or rather its termination, exemplifies the effects of Emancipation on the novel and how the novel uses historical referents. When Tia takes the three pennies from Antoinette, it is framed by considerations of race, class, and colony, which Rhys comments on through the event. Instead of being a transcendental relationship in the context of the reality of colonial history, the relationship between Tia and Antoinette "is a direct engagement with the roles that have been historically and discursively assigned to black and white people in the West Indies." (Gregg, 91) The dress episode, when Tia takes Antoinette's dress, is a similar trope for dismantling the terms "white" and "black" in relation to who exactly the "victim" and the "victimizer" are, relationships that directly relate to slavery. Who are we to feel sorry for in each situation? Antoinette goes home in Tia's dress, and her mother is embarrassed in front of her guests. Christophine comments that the notion that slavery is over is a farce, a reference to the reality of post-slavery "slavery."

If we consider the economic effects on the planter class post-slavery, it is not surprising that masters would, by whatever means possible, attempt to reduce the small amount of "free time" decreed in the Abolition of Slavery Act of 1833.  Economic troubles fueled these actions; the question is whether economic troubles fueled the abolition of slavery. The slave economy of the West Indian colonies shaped life there, for the ruling whites, the enslaved blacks, and we see archetypes of those lives in Rhys' s novel. We see how the poor Creole white fits in to these racial roles, we see that the economy has shaped the characters, relationships and events. We see the transition from slavery to post-slavery and the effects of such a huge economic transition on the class structure. Wide Sargasso Sea is informed by the history while simultaneously informing us of the lives in that history.