Throughout the novel, Anna’s attempts to fully integrate are central to her struggles in the novel, as she searches for home. Anna is the book’s Other, someone who, despite her white ancestry, cannot change her Caribbean lilt to an English accent. Further, and despite her upbringing in the West Indies as a fifth-generation Creole, she can never be black or wholly accepted by the identity that she fetishizes.

Even in her own skin Anna is not at home and resists the idea of growing old in it. For her, a woman who is white can only end up sad and frustrated, as seen in the example of her stepmother, Hester. However, with the black servant, Francine, Anna experiences joy and seems to correlate that identity with the idea of happiness, something Anna can’t seem to attain.

The climate Anna was born and raised in is a stark contrast to the one in which she lives and almost dies in. The predictability of the English landscape and its ways are too tame, and unlike the “wild” (47) beauty of the West Indies.

When Anna describes the West Indies in her drunkenness, Walter dismisses her and confirms his own preference for “cold places” (46) as the West Indies sounds overwhelming for him.