Wide Sargasso Sea is set after the abolition of slavery, placing it roughly around 1836, this is nearly 30 years after the time period in which Jane Eyre was set. Bertha neither belongs to the white society nor the Black, this puts her in an uneasy position, and makes her childhood very unstable. The reason for the racial hatred between the two races at the time was the, the Emancipation Act, passed in 1799, calling for the freedom of all the slaves by 1827. Therefore the ,slaves were now free, but in several instances in the novel Rhys shows readers that this is still not the case, (p11) ‘no more slavery! She had to laugh!’ there is now just a huge amount of racial tension, built up because of the injustices of the slave system.