Obeah and Antoinette

As I was reading Wide Sargasso Sea, I was very interested in the topic of Obeah. In the novel, Christophine is known as a follower of Obeah, and is depicted in scenes as early as Antoinette’s early childhood as distrustful because of her following of these traditions. People around Antoinette believed that Christophine could summon zombies and thought that she was not to be crossed, or else they would be affected by evil spirits through Christophine. Even Antoinette was frightened of her practices in Obeah; in part one, Antoinette narrates: “I was certain that hidden in the room (behind the old black press?) there was a dead man’s dried hand, white chicken feathers, a cock with its throat cut, dying slowly, slowly. Drop by drop the blood was falling into a red basin and I imagined I could hear it.” She also mentions here that she has never been taught about what Obeah really was, but was certain of herself that she already knows about it. With this description, Obeah sounds really horrid and disgusting, and seems rather like a gory pastime rather than a way of spiritual devotion. However, even as she thinks of obeah as horrifying, we see that Antoinette stays close and connected with Christophine throughout her childhood and into her adult life, and we discussed in class that we saw Christophine as her protector and her “magic worker” so long as Antoinette stayed on Christophine’s good side. Christophine was always warm and friendly towards Antoinette as well, despite all the bad rap she received because of her practices in the Obeah traditions.
Because of Antoinette’s close relationship with Christophine, as well as the fact that she is basically her only real companion, it makes complete sense that Antoinette is understanding of (or at least does not question/run from) Christophine’s practices of obeah. In fact, we obviously see that she runs to Christophine in order to ask her for a love potion, seeing this as the utmost best solution for Rochester to love her back. Her undoubtful confidence in obeah as a solution to an intricate and complex problem says a lot about Antoinette, and how much Christophine has affected Antoinette’s life. As I have researched using our handy dandy online reference tools (s/o Credo), Obeah is most common in “descendants of Ashanti-speaking West African slaves” (Simmons). Quite obviously, Antoinette does not categorize herself as a descendant of an African slave, but she is more than open to the idea of Obeah resolving something very intangible and complicated - her own relationship with her husband. This idea that she had so much faith in Christophine's beliefs makes me believe that Antoinette thought of herself as relating more with the colored people of Coulibri than her own slave-owning family. This idea can be foreshadowed early on with her looking eye to eye with Tia (who Antoinette uncomfortably calls the n-word earlier - maybe she thought she was accustomed enough to the culture of the black workers around her so she thought she was able to use it? But this is before our modern analyses of racial slurs so maybe I’m pushing this too far) as if she saw herself “like in a looking glass”, as well as her constant rejection from her mother as she tries to comfort her compared to Christophine's constant acceptance of Antoinette, no matter what point of struggle she was at.
Do you also think that Antoinette's firm belief in Christophine's love potion from obeah traditions to solve her struggles with Rochester proves that she identified more with the black people around her rather than her own white family/people?

Cited:
Simmons, Merinda. "Obeah." Africa and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, edited by Richard M. Juang, and Noelle Anne Morrissette, ABC-CLIO, 1st edition, 2008. Credo Reference, http://proxy2.library.illinois.edu/login?url=http://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/abcafatrle/obeah/0?institutionId=386. Accessed 18 Nov 2017.