Book Review: The Collected Short Stories, by Jean Rhys (1987)

 

Paperback cover of The Collected Short Stories, by Jean Rhys (1987). Photo by Mark C. Taylor

Ella Rees Williams, who wrote under the pen name Jean Rhys, 1890-1979.

Jean Rhys is best-known for her stark, modernist novels like Voyage in the Dark, and Good Morning, Midnight, as well as her Jane Eyre prequel, Wide Sargasso Sea. Rhys also wrote short stories, and they are all assembled in the 1987 volume, The Collected Short Stories.

The Collected Short Stories includes the contents of Rhys’ first short story collection The Left Bank, published in 1927, and her late collections 1968’s Tigers are Better-Looking, and 1976’s Sleep It Off Lady. Also included are various short stories that didn’t make it into those three books. Curiously enough, the back cover of the book says that it contains 36 stories, when there are actually 51 stories in the book. I guess the proof-reader missed that one.

I’ve read all of Jean Rhys’ novels, and I think she was a very talented writer. Her subject matter is always depressing, but she writes so well that you’re drawn into her worlds. I felt I needed to read The Collected Short Stories so I could say I’ve read all of her work. But Rhys’ short stories didn’t do much for me. If you’ve read any of her novels, then you’ve basically read her short stories. Rhys’ short stories are all variations on the same theme: 51 stories, all sounding the same notes of depression and alienation.

Rhys was a misanthrope of the highest order. I can’t really tell you anything that she liked about life. In Rhys’ view, men are vile, but still somewhat attractive, and women are catty gossips best avoided. One of the key quotes I wrote down was: “Coming back from one of these walks the thought came to me suddenly, like a revelation, that I could kill myself any time I liked and so end it. After that I put a better face on things.” (p.126) Well, whatever it takes to cheer yourself up, I guess.

Rhys’ own life was closely mirrored in her fiction. Born Ella Rees Williams, she was raised on the island of Dominica until the age of 16, when she was sent to England to finish her schooling. She felt herself an outsider in both societies, and I suspect she never felt at home anywhere in this world. Eventually she made her way to Paris in the 1920’s, and Ford Madox Ford encouraged her writing. Rhys kept coming back to her youth again and again in her writing, and there are only two short stories that seem to be set after World War II.

I think the lack of plot hampers Rhys’ short stories more than her novels. You don’t read Jean Rhys for the plot or for narrative tension. I quickly figured out with Rhys’ novels that the plot isn’t really that important, so I’m reading the book for the mood. (It helps that all her novels are about 200 pages long.) But as I was reading the short stories, it just hit me over and over in each story: there’s no plot, no tension. If you take away narrative drive/plot/tension, then what else do you have except style/voice? That’s a large burden for style to carry over 51 stories and 400 pages. I think Rhys’ novels are much better constructed than her stories. If you’re looking to get a feel for her voice as a writer, read Voyage in the Dark, Good Morning, Midnight, or Wide Sargasso Sea.

Book Review: Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography, by Jean Rhys (1979)

 

Paperback cover of Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography, by Jean Rhys (1979)

Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography was published just a few months after author Jean Rhys’ death in 1979. Like most of Rhys’ books, it’s a slim volume, and editor Diana Athill warns us in the Foreword that the second half of the book was not finished to Rhys’ satisfaction. That being said, I preferred the “unfinished” second section, which feels more finished to me—I suppose because the sections are longer and more detailed.

Jean Rhys was the pen name of Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams, who was born on the island of Dominica to a Welsh doctor father and a mother of Scottish ancestry whose family had lived on Dominica for three generations. When Ella was 16 years old, she was sent to school in England. Ella’s whiteness meant that she would always be an outsider in Dominica, but in England she seemed too exotic, too foreign, to be fully accepted as English, and so she was an outsider in both societies. Ella worked a variety of jobs, including as a chorus girl, which provided some of the inspiration for her novel Voyage in the Dark.

Williams wrote four novels under the name Jean Rhys that were published between 1928 and 1939: Quartet, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, Voyage in the Dark, and the sublime Good Morning, Midnight. All four books are closely unified in style and subject matter, and they could easily be read together as a quartet. The novels all deal with female protagonists who endure difficult relationships with men, and they have few resources for dealing with modern life. These women are always on the edge of poverty, and they lack the education and drive to do much with themselves. (They’re probably all also suffering from clinical depression.) It’s not too much of a stretch to discern from Smile Please that these women were all quite similar to Jean Rhys herself.

Readers of Rhys’ novels will notice passages in Smile Please that crop up in her fiction as well. In Smile Please, Rhys writes: “It was astonishing how much I could sleep. I’m sure I slept fifteen hours out of the twenty-four, and I never dreamed. I slept as if dead.” (p.120) In Good Morning, Midnight, the narrator reports: “I got so that I could sleep fifteen hours out of the twenty-four.” (p.86) If you’re sleeping that much, it may be a sign that something else is wrong.

All four of Rhys’ novels sold poorly at the time but are now acknowledged as bleak modernist masterpieces. After the release of Good Morning, Midnight in 1939, Rhys didn’t publish another book until Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966, which finally brought her popular and critical acclaim and helped shed light on her earlier work. I read Wide Sargasso Sea not long before I read Smile Please, so I found the parts of Smile Please about Rhys’ childhood in Dominica to be very interesting, especially as they relate to the setting of Wide Sargasso Sea.

Smile Please is at times a heartbreaking portrait of the pain and alienation that Ella Williams seems to have constantly felt during her life. One of the quotes that really struck me was the following: “I would never be part of anything. I would never really belong anywhere, and I knew it, and all my life would be the same, trying to belong, and failing. Always something would go wrong.” (p.124) At times it seems as though everyone mistreats her, and she has a knack for remembering slights from so many years in the past.

The life of Jean Rhys/Ella Williams seems a prime example of how someone can take a life full of pain and, through the power of art, transform it into moments of beauty.

Book Review: Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys (1966)

Original cover of Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys, 1966.

Ella Williams, who wrote under the pen name Jean Rhys, 1970's.

Jean Rhys’ most famous novel is probably her last one: Wide Sargasso Sea, published in 1966 to much acclaim. There was a 27-year gap between her fourth novel, Good Morning, Midnight and Wide Sargasso Sea. What happened in between? As John Lennon wrote, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Rhys was a perfectionist in her writing, and she asked her publisher Diana Athill, in reference to Wide Sargasso Sea, “Why did you let me publish that book?” This was five years after the novel had been released. Rhys said, “It was not finished,” and proceeded to point out two words that she thought should have been removed from the text. One was “then,” and the other word was “quite.” Writers are an odd bunch. (Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography, by Jean Rhys, p.8)

Wide Sargasso Sea tells the story of the first wife of Rochester from Jane Eyre, the 1847 novel by Charlotte Bronte. Don’t worry, you don’t need to read Jane Eyre first. (I still haven’t read Jane Eyre.) That being said, I have no doubt that there are connections between the two novels that I missed, not being familiar with Jane Eyre.

It's difficult to compare Wide Sargasso Sea with Rhys’ other novels, since it is so different from them. Rhys’ previous four novels, Quartet, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, Voyage in the Dark, and Good Morning, Midnight are all similar in tone and subject matter—they could easily be read together as a quartet examining the life of the same main character. But the mood of Wide Sargasso Sea is markedly different—in part because the narrator shifts between Part One and Part Two of the novel, a brilliant idea.

Jean Rhys was the pen name of Ella Williams, who was born on the island of Dominica, then called the British Leeward Islands. (Fun fact: Dominica is one of only two countries that have purple on their flag. The other is Nicaragua.) She was sent to school in England at the age of 16, and she well understood the push and pull between two cultures that is an integral part of the plot of Wide Sargasso Sea.

I read the bulk of Wide Sargasso Sea in one day, and it’s a superb novel, and a testament to the talent and skill of Jean Rhys.