Jean RhysJean Rhys has long been central to debates in feminist, modernist, Caribbean, British and postcolonial writing. Elaine Savory's study, first published in 1999, incorporates and modifies previous critical approaches and is a critical reading of Rhys's entire oeuvre, including the stories and autobiography, and is informed by Rhys's own manuscripts. Designed both for the serious scholar on Rhys and those unfamiliar with her writing, Savory's book insists on the importance of a Caribbean-centred approach to Rhys, and shows how this context profoundly affects her literary style. Informed by contemporary arguments on race, gender, class and nationality, Savory explores Rhys's stylistic innovations - her use of colours, her exploitation of the trope of performance, her experiments with creative non-fiction and her incorporation of the metaphysical into her texts. This study offers a comprehensive account of the life and work of this most complex and enigmatic of writers. |
Contents
CHAPTER 1 Living on both sides living to write | 1 |
The Left Bank and Quartet | 36 |
CHAPTER 3 A Caribbean woman lost in Europe? After Leaving Mr MacKenzie and the question of gender | 57 |
Voyage in the Dark and the politics of colour | 85 |
Good Morning Midnight | 109 |
spatial arrangements in Wide Sargasso Sea | 133 |
Rhys and the craft of the short story | 152 |
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Common terms and phrases
African ALMM Angier Anna Anna's Antoinette Antoinette's argues autobiography blue Brathwaite Brathwaite's British Carib Caribbean chapter character child childhood Christophine colonial colour complex construction Coulibri Creole critics cultural Dark Diana Athill Dominica draft dress emotional England English essay evidently experience eyes feeling female feminist Ford Francis Wyndham gender girl Granbois Heidler humour husband identity important Jane Eyre Jean Rhys Julia Leaving Mr MacKenzie Left Bank Lenglet Lennox Honychurch literary living look major manuscript Marya mask Midnight mother narrative narrator novel obeah political post-colonial published Quartet race racial reading Review Rhys protagonists Rhys texts Rhys's fiction Rhys's texts Roseau Sasha Selma Vaz Dias sense sexual signifies Smile social Sonia Orwell story TAB-L thinks thought Tigers Are Better-Looking tion Triple Sec V. S. Naipaul VITD voice Voyage West Indian West Indies white Creole Wide Sargasso Sea woman women writing