Jean Rhys was a modernist<\/a> writer best remembered for her novel, \u201cWide Sargasso Sea.\u201d Rhys drew on memories of her distant childhood for \u201cWide Sargasso Sea,\u201d which is a prequel to Charlotte Bront\u00eb\u2019s novel, \u201cJane Eyre.\u201d<\/p>\n However, she wrote a whole body of work much earlier in her career. During the 1920s and 1930s, Rhys wrote both short fiction and novels that featured vulnerable, impoverished young women living precarious lives. Many of her books and stories were set in Paris and other European cities.<\/p>\n Much of her novels are seen as autofiction<\/a>, in that they follow the trajectory of Rhys\u2019s own transient youth. Rhys\u2019s books and stories feature a stream-of-consciousness style<\/a> and sparse narratives that question and provoke discussion into women\u2019s lives and place in a society often weighted against them. Rhys is recognized as a post-colonial<\/a> writer.<\/p>\n Born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams \u2014 the daughter of Minna Williams (nee Lockhart)<\/a>, a third generation Dominican Creole, and William Rees Williams, a Welsh doctor in Dominica \u2014 on August 24th, 1890. Rhys was sent to England at the age of 16. There she lived with an aunt and attended the Perse School for Girls<\/a> in Cambridge. She was mocked for her strange accent and for being an outsider. She later attended for two terms at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Again, her accent caused her problems with acting. This obstacle led her to tour the U.K. as a chorus girl instead. She also later worked as an artists\u2019 model.<\/p>\n She became the mistress of a wealthy stockbroker named Lancelot Grey Hugh Smith. Refusing to marry her, he still maintained some ongoing financial support for her.<\/p>\n Rhys lived an often transient existence in London, longing to return to her homeland. However life had not been particularly easy for Rhys in Dominica<\/a> either. The daughter of a somewhat ambivalent mother, she had often felt isolated as a child due to her whiteness amongst a predominantly Black community. She even went so far as to claim her wish that she could be Black, so as to feel more acceptable.<\/p>\n Rhys\u2019s first husband was Willem Johan Marie Lenglet<\/a> (known as \u2018Jean\u2019). Lenglet was a French-Dutch journalist and the first of Rhys\u2019s three husbands. The couple lived in Paris, a city that inspired much of Rhys\u2019s writing.<\/p>\n Giving birth to a son, this child died at just a few weeks old of pneumonia. Rhys and her husband were out when her child died, and she lived with the fact of her son\u2019s neglect. Living precariously between Paris, Vienna and Budapest, before returning to Paris, Rhys gave birth to a second child, Maryvonne. Leaving her daughter in various orphanages whilst she attempted to procure money, Rhys and Lenglet refused to put Maryvonne up for adoption. Maryvonne was reunited with her parents in 1927. After her parents\u2019 divorce, Maryvonne lived mostly with her father in Europe.<\/p>\n Rhys\u2019s second marriage was to agent Leslie Tilden-Smith<\/a>. Tilden-Smith died in 1945.<\/p>\n In 1947, Rhys married for a third time. Her third husband Max Hamer was a solicitor, who was convicted of fraud shortly after their marriage. Rhys stood by him, despite living in abject poverty. They later lived in a house in Devon, purchased by Rhys\u2019s older brother. Hamer died in 1966, just before Rhys finally found literary success with the publication of \u201cWide Sargasso Sea.\u201d<\/p>\n Sadly Rhys often lacked agency in her own life, suffering from her experience of displacement. She was reported as being quite childlike, even in her later years. This personality feeds into many of her fictional literary characters. In her book, \u201cStet,\u201d editor and writer Diana Athill<\/a> described the process of nurturing Rhys through the publication and republication of her novels and short stories.<\/p>\n Rhys\u2019s first novel to be written was \u201cVoyage in the Dark,\u201d which started in draft form as a diary in a series of black notebooks in 1911. Rhys stored the notebooks in a suitcase. \u201cVoyage in the Dark\u201d eventually became her third novel to be published in 1934.<\/p>\n The autobiographical nature of the material, written originally as a diary, gives some indication as to why critics have long suggested that Rhys represents her own life in many of her female characters. Rhys has been \u201caccused\u201d of making her female fictional characters merely representations of the same woman, portrayed at different stages of life. But to identify all of Rhys\u2019s characters as being representations of her own experience<\/a> limits her as a writer.<\/p>\n Many of Rhys\u2019s other novels and short stories<\/a> also feature incidents within her own life, including her first husband\u2019s stint in prison, her brief spell in a women\u2019s prison herself, and forays into prostitution. No stone in her own life experience appears to have been left unturned.<\/p>\n In her first novel to be published, \u201cQuartet,\u201d Rhys explored her real life relationship with writer Ford Madox Ford.<\/a> Ford was Rhys\u2019s one-time patron who encouraged her to write, advising her to change her name to \u201cJean Rhys.\u201d Finding herself alone and penniless in Paris, Ford and his wife Stella Bowen<\/a> invited Rhys to move in with them. Ford then started an affair with Rhys, of which he claimed his wife was aware.<\/p>\n Through fictionalized characters in \u201cQuartet,\u201d Rhys exploits the \u201cfacts\u201d of this setup. She shows a complex relationship whereby the young female lodger, Marya Zelli, is taken in by an English couple after being stranded in Paris by her jailed Polish husband. The book went on to inspire Ford, Bowen and Rhys\u2019s ex-husband, Lenglet, in writing their own versions of the story.<\/p>\n In Kathleen Wheeler\u2019s<\/a> introduction to \u201cModernist Women Writers and Narrative Art<\/a>,\u201d she claims that:<\/p>\n \u201cRhys herself denied that her fiction was autobiographical, adding the important disclaimer that \u2018the feelings are always mine.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Although Rhys is seen as an early modernist writer, her work is very different from other literary modernists such as Virginia Woolf.<\/a> She utilizes many of the commonalities of modernism, but her work exhibits a wholly original register.<\/p>\n Whilst Rhys wasn\u2019t the first writer to weave elements of autobiography into her work, what is unusual about Rhys\u2019s female protagonists is their almost pathologically repetitive failures. This theme is where her work differs significantly to many modernist tropes. In a Rhys story, there are often revelations realized at the conclusion of the protagonists\u2019 story similar to the traditional \u2018epiphany\u2019 seen in many modernist texts. However, no redemption or resolution is found.<\/p>\n Famously a difficult and obstinate writer, Jean Rhys lived much of her later life as a recluse in Bude, Cornwall<\/a>, in England in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Rhys referred to this area as \u201cBude the Obscure.\u201d In the 1960s Rhys moved to a small village in Devon<\/a>.<\/p>\n Falling into obscurity, Rhys often turned to alcohol to deal with her loneliness and what she often saw as rejection by the literary community. Rhys was \u2018re-discovered\u2019 when writer and actor Selma Vaz Dias<\/a> put out an advertisement to enquire about her whereabouts. She was seeking the rights to adapt one of Rhys\u2019s novels, \u201cGood Morning Midnight,\u201d for radio. Many had presumed that Rhys had died in obscurity. Luckily, Rhys responded, leading to a long-lasting and collaborative friendship between the two women, including Dias encouraging Rhys to begin writing again.<\/p>\n Rhys had begun work on \u201cWide Sargasso Sea\u201d sometime in the 1950s. When U.K. publisher Andr\u00e8 Deutsch<\/a> showed interest in publishing the novel, editors Diana Athill and Francis Wyndham<\/a> assisted her in publishing the book. Both editors believed in Rhys\u2019s talent and began the attempt to revive interest in her work. This collaboration led to the re-publication of her earlier short stories and novels. Andr\u00e8 Deutsch also published some of Rhys\u2019s newer short fiction, written during her period of obscurity.<\/p>\n When she died at age 88, Rhys left behind an unfinished autobiography she had begun dictating only a few months before her death. This book was published posthumously as \u201cSmile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography.\u201d The book covers fragments of Rhys\u2019s early life growing up in Dominica, as well as her experiences as a young woman. But perhaps it is within her fiction that we find more of the truth of Rhys\u2019s experience of life.<\/p>\n<\/div> \u201cThe Left Bank and Other Stories” contained a preface by Rhys\u2019s patron, Ford Madox Ford. The book contains twenty-two impressionistic stories written as vignettes of Paris life. Critics have seen this work as significantly ahead of its time in terms of style, tone and theme.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div> Reviews<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div> StoryGraph<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div> Goodreads<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div> Published under the name \u201cPostures\u201d in the U.K., a title which Rhys did not approve of, the book quickly became known under its U.S. title of \u201cQuartet.\u201d The novel follows the themes of the Paris bohemian caf\u00e8 scene. It is based on the real-life relationship between Rhys and Ford Madox Ford. The New York Times<\/a> reported on the re-issue of the novel in a 1971 review stating that Rhys writes with a \u201cmiraculous spontaneity\u201d and an ability to \u201ckeep calm while reporting a catastrophe.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div> Reviews<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div> Amazon<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>The Challenging Life of Jean Rhys<\/h2>\n
The Books of Jean Rhys<\/h2>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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