After Reading Miss Rhys

I stumbled upon Jean Rhys quite by accident, after watching a film version of her novel, Quartet.  Born in the West Indies in 1890, she emigrated to England at the age of 16.   She had the good fortune to be in Paris in the 1920's and mingled with the likes of the "Lost Generation."  Ford Madox Ford greatly praised her short stories.  With her husband in jail for currency fraud, she moved in with Ford and his wife and quickly became involved in an affair with Ford.  She later turned the circumstances into a slim little novel, Quartet.

She published her first collection of short stories in 1927 under the title, The Left Bank and Other Stories.  Jean Rhys wrote a series of slim little novels, her most famous being Wide Sargasso Sea (1966).  My first introduction to her came with After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1931).

First sentence: "After she had departed from Mr Mackenzie, Julia Martin went to live in a cheap hotel on the Qui des Grands Augustins."

Soon after leaving Mr Mackenzie the cheques stop coming and she must use her fading sexual charms to try to extract money from former lovers or seek new ones.  In her bleak existence she moves from one seedy apartment to another between Paris and London.  While in London her mother dies, after a long illness, during which she was cared for by Julia's sister.  There is a bitter reunion between the two sisters, while Julia fluctuates between hope and despair.

"That night, coming back from her meal, a man followed her.  When she had turned from the Place St Michel to the darkness of the quay he came up to her, muttering proposals in a low, slithery voice.  She told him sharply to go away.  But he caught hold of her arm, and squeezed it as hard as he could by way of answer.

She stopped.  She wanted to hit him.  She was possessed with one of the fits of rage which were becoming part of her character.  She wanted to fly at him and strike him, but she thought that he would probably hit her back.

She faced him and said: 'Let me tell you, you are - you are...'  The word came to her.  'You are ignoble.'

Not at all,' answered the man in an aggrieved voice.  'I have some money and I am willing to give it to you.  Why do you say that I am ignoble?'

They were now arrived at Julia's hotel.  She went in, and pushed the swing-door as hard as she could into his face.

She could not have explained why, when she got to her room, her forebodings about the future were changed into a feeling of exultation.

She looked at herself in the glass and thought: 'After all, I'm not finished.  It's all nonsense that I am.  I'm not finished at all.' "

I liked Jean Rhys' sparse writing style and stark description of the times, usually tracing the decline of fading beauty.  I like her evocation of the time, written from the perspective of someone who was there.

Her collection of short stories, The Left Bank and Other Stories, has been long out of print and hard to find, but I did come across her complete short stories, which I am reading now.