Jean Rhys

180 Pages·2012·2.073 MB·English

by  Helen Carr

2/8/12/
WRITERSANDTHEIRWORK
ISOBELARMSTRONG
GeneralEditor
JEAN RHYS
2/8/12/
2/8/12/
JEAN RHYS
Helen Carr
Second Edition
2/8/12/
#Copyright1996and2012byHelenCarr
Firstpublishedin1996byNorthcoteHousePublishersLtd,Horndon,Tavistock,
Devon,PL199NQ,UnitedKingdom.
Tel:[phone] Fax:[phone].
Secondedition2012
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisworkmaybereproducedorstoredinan
informationretrievalsystem(otherthanshortextractsforthepurposesofreview)
withouttheexpresspermissionofthePublishersgiveninwriting.
BritishLibraryCataloguing-in-PublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
ISBN978-0-7463-1163-9
TypesetbyPDQTypesetting,Newcastle-under-Lyme
PrintedandboundintheUnitedKingdom
2/8/12/
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Biographical Outline viii
Abbreviations and References xi
Note on Ellipses xii
Introduction xiii
1 Jean Rhys and Her Critics 1
2 Feminist Approaches to Jean Rhys 11
3 The Caribbean Question 17
4 Writing in the Margins 26
5 Autobiography and Ambivalence 32
6 ‘The Day They Burned the Books’ 39
7 Fort Comme La Mort: the French Connection 45
8 The Politics of Good Morning, Midnight 51
9 The Huge Machine of Law, Order and
Respectability 58
10 Resisting the Machine 63
11 The Enemy Within 71
12 Goodnight, Day 78
13 Intemperate and Unchaste 82
v
2/8/12/
CONTENTS
14 The Other Side 94
15 The Struggle for the Sign 106
Notes 120
Select Bibliography 140
Index 149
vi
2/8/12/
Acknowledegments
Many thanks to Laura Marcus and Peter Hulme for reading the
original version of this book, and to Brian Hulme for his patience
in waiting for the second edition. The author and publisher
gratefully acknowledge Penguin Books Limited for permission to
quote from the Penguin editions of Jean Rhys.
vii
2/8/12/
Biographical Outline
1890 Born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams on 24 August in
Roseau,Dominica,WestIndies, to aCreolemotherof
Scottish and Irish descent, and to a Welsh doctor
father.
1907 Comes to England, to the Perse School for Girls in
Cambridge.
1909 Two terms at the Academyof Dramatic Art: leavesto
become a chorus-girl, under the names, at various
times, of Vivien, Emma or Ella Gray.
1910 First affair with Lancelot Hugh Smith, twenty years
her senior.
1912 Hugh Smith breaks off the affair.
1919 Goes to Holland to marry Jean Lenglet, a Dutch-
French poet and journalist. They move to Paris.
1922 Her son William dies at the age of threeweeks. They
move to Vienna.
1922 They return to Paris. Her daughter Maryvonne is
born.
1924 Meets Ford Madox Ford, who encourages her writ-
ing.Lenglet isimprisonedforcurrency irregularities.
She becomes Ford’s mistress. ‘Vienne’, her first
published story appears in the transatlantic review,
edited by Ford, under the name Jean Rhys.
1927 The Left Bank and Other Stories published in Britain
and the USA. Leslie Tilden Smith becomes her
literary agent.
1928 Postures (i.e. Quartet) published in Britain. She and
Tilden Smith start living together in London.
1929 Quartet published in the USA.
1930 After Leaving Mr Mackenzie published in Britain.
1931 After Leaving Mr Mackenzie published in the USA.
viii
2/8/12/
BIOGRAPHICALOUTLINE
1933 Rhys and Lenglet are divorced.
1934 Voyage in the Dark published in Britain. She and
Tilden Smith marry.
1935 Voyage in the Dark published in the USA.
1936 Visits Dominicawith Tilden Smith.
1937 Pays the visit to Paris on which she begins Good
Morning, Midnight.
1939 Good Morning, Midnight published in Britain.
1945 Leslie Tilden Smith dies. Daughter Maryvonne, who
had worked with the Dutch Resistance during the
war, marries.
1946 Rhys and Max Hamer start living together. They
move to Hamer’s house in Beckenham. Short stories
rejected by Constable.
1947 She and Hamer marry.
1948 Maryvonne has a baby girl, Ruth Ellen.
1949 Rhys spends about five days in Holloway Prison.
‘Rediscovered’ by Selma Vaz Dias through an adver-
tisement in the New Statesman.
1950 Hamer imprisoned for minor fraud.
1951–2 Rhys lives by herself for about nine months near
Maidstone at the Ropemakers Arms. Part of the diary
she kept there was later published in Smile Please.
1952 Hamer released.
1955 They move to Cornwall.
1957 Adaptation of Good Morning, Midnight broadcast by
the BBC. Rhys signs a contract with Andre´ Deutsch
for the novel which wasto become Wide Sargasso Sea.
From now on she has much more encouragement
and friendship, particularly from Diana Athill of
Andre´ Deutsch, Francis Wyndham and Diana Melly.
1960 They move to Cheriton Fitzpaine in Devon. ‘Till
September, Petronella’ and ‘The Day They Burned
the Books’ published in the London Magazine.
1966 Hamer dies. Wide Sargasso Sea published in Britain,
winning the W. H. Smith Prize.
1967 Voyage in the Dark and Good Morning, Midnight
reissued in Britain. Wide Sargasso Sea published in
the USA.
1968 Tigers are Better-Looking (collection of short stories
including some from The Left Bank) published in
ix
2/8/12/
BIOGRAPHICALOUTLINE
Britain. Voyage in the Dark reissued in the USA.
1969 ‘Temps Perdi’ and ‘I Spy a Stranger’ published in
Penguin Modern Stories. Quartet and After Leaving Mr
Mackenzie reissued in Britain.
1970 Good Morning, Midnight published in the USA.
1971 Quartet reissued in the USA.
1972 After Leaving Mr Mackenzie reissued in the USA.
1974 Tigers are Better-Looking published in the USA.
1975 MyDay,acollectionofthreeautobiographicalpieces,
published in the USA.
1976 Sleep It Off Lady (short stories) published in Britain
and the USA.
1979 Jean Rhys dies. Smile Please (autobiography) pub-
lished posthumously in Britain and the USA.
x