Antoinette is the novel’s protagonist. She is the white Creole daughter of a plantation owner named Cosway and his second wife, Annette. Cosway owned Coulibri Estate near Spanish Town, Jamaica, which Annette inherited after his death. Antoinette has cousins and half-siblings who are half-black, including Daniel and Sandi Cosway, but she has been taught not to acknowledge them as family. Her stepfather is an Englishman named Mr. Mason. When he joins the family, his son Richard Mason becomes her step-brother.

Like her mother, Antoinette is very beautiful. She has long, reddish-blond hair that hangs below her waist, and she exhibits a taste for fashion. By the time she marries the nameless husband in Part Two, she has never left the Caribbean and knows only the islands of Jamaica, where her family’s estate is located, and Dominica, where she and her Aunt Cora vacationed and where she later honeymoons.

Nothing is more beloved to Antoinette than Dominica. Before she married, Mr. Mason invited her to stay with him in England, and after her marriage she listens to her husband describe it. However, she refuses to believe that England is a pleasant place to live and she has no desire to leave the Caribbean.