The West Indies

In the short story, Mrs. Railton mentions to Hartley that Mr. Brympton is “almost always away”1 and barely home. It is not clearly stated where exactly he is staying when he is absent from home, but at one point, the servants are told that he is “cruising with a friend in the West Indies”.2

The West Indies, also called “West India”, is a crecent-shaped collection of islands that belong to different states. The group of islands separates the Carribean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Starting from Florida, USA, the islands curve 1,200 miles (approximately 1,900 kilometers) to the southeastward direction, then West along the coast of Venezuela.3












Figure 1: Group of islands of the West Indies.

https://cdn.britannica.com/05/5105-050-4BD5D42D/West-Indies.jpg (accessed December 14, 2019).

The West Indies are divided into three subgroups. The Greater Antilles, which includes the islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and Puerto Rico. Another division is called the Lesser Antilles and consists of the Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Saint Kitss and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, and Grenada. Then there are isolated groups of the North American continental shelf, the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands as well as those of the South American shelf, including Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, Curaçao, and Bonaire.4

Some parts of the island groups like the Dominican Republic, for example, show a few mountain peaks like the Duarte Peak with its 3,175 meters, making it the highest point in the Carribean.5 Besides mountainous landscapes and other prominent peaks (Bandera, Yaque, Mijo, and La Rucilla), each Greater Antilles island also has an encircling coastal plain. Going further North-South, other chains of mountains form the Lesser Antilles. Some of those mountains contain still active volcanic cones. The tropical climate creates warm temperatures between ~20-30 °Celsius during the day – depending on the month – whereas it gets 6 °Celsius cooler during nighttime. Furthermore, most islands experience a relatively high humidity throughout the year, where heavy rainfall sometimes happen and hurricanes are also not so uncommon in the regions. Thanks to the tropical weather, plants and flowers are flourishing and big forests offer an ideal place for animals to inhabit. However, cutting down trees – that once covered most of the islands – which was done by sugar plantation owners for firewood and vats, caused soil to impoverish, so laws had to be passed to prevent deforestation and the destruction of animals' homes.6

The majority of the population in the West Indies are descendants of African slaves that were lured to work on the sugar plantations in the Carribean or descendants of the colonists from Spain, France, Great Britain, The Netherlands, or they are mixed. In consequence of different countries and cultures clashing together, different languages were created that are formed partly by different European languages. Papiamentu, for example, is a creol based on Spanish, Dutch, Portugese, and English, and is spoken Curaçao among other regions, for instance. However, in contrast to that, other people speak pure Spanish like in Puerto Rico.7

Besides sugar plantations, other cultivations like cocoa, bananas, or spices have been part of the agriculture to contribute to West Indies' economy and export market. In addition to that, tourism has also become a major source of income due to the tropical climate and the beautiful coasts that make it a popular tourist spot.8


________________________

1 Lewis, R. W. B. The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton. (Vol. 1. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968. 457-474, Print.), 458.

2 Ibid. 469.

3 Encyclopedia Britannica, “West Indies”, https://www.britannica.com/place/West-Indies-island-group-Atlantic-Ocean. Accessed December 14, 2019.

4 Encyclopedia Britannica, “West Indies”, https://www.britannica.com/place/West-Indies-island-group-Atlantic-Ocean. Accessed December 14, 2019.

5 Encyclopedia Britannica, “Dominican Republic”, https://www.britannica.com/place/Dominican-Republic#ref515717. Accessed December 14, 2019.

6 Encyclopedia Britannica, “West Indies”, https://www.britannica.com/place/West-Indies-island-group-Atlantic-Ocean. Accessed December 14, 2019.

7 Encyclopedia Britannica, “West Indies”, https://www.britannica.com/place/West-Indies-island-group-Atlantic-Ocean. Accessed December 14, 2019.

8 Ibid.

Header image source: