Jean Rhys was an English writer from the Caribbean island of Dominica, her best know work the enduring classic Wide Sargasso Sea, written as a prequel to Jane Eyre. This was her third novel, written in 1931, and like many of her works her main character is a mistreated, rootless woman, poised somewhere between hope and despair.
Julia has left Mr. Mackenzie in Paris - Mr. Mackenzie has left her a few payments via his lawyer to help her get on her feet. Money is tight. Believing she is still sought after and attractive at nearly thirty-five, she wanders and wonders when the next gentleman will enter her life, knowing it is all a pretense. Mr. Horsfield befriends her in a bar and although there is no romance, he sees she's had a rum existence and helps her as best he can with a sum for her bills. In Julia's mind, it's best spent on a new wardrobe leaving none for rent, using her last pounds to travel to England and stay with her martyred sister and dying mother. Much like Edith Wharton's House of Mirth, we see Julia sliding downward - over drinking, blowsy and embarrassing, being asked to vacate one seedy hotel after another ("it's not the first time she's been turned out of a room, that's clear."), yet rejecting invitations of help as much as she pursues old beaus and benefactors to no effect. Loneliness and despair seem to await each move she makes.
"It was the darkness that got you. It was a heavy darkness, greasy and compelling. It made walls around you, and shut you in so that you felt you could not breathe. You wanted to beat at the darkness and shriek to be let out. And after a while you got used to it. Of course. And then you stopped believing that there was anything else anywhere."
This must have been striking for it's time; raw and unromantic with a tarnished silver lining, Rhys makes no apologies for her characters. I'm glad to have discovered Jean Rhys. A quality read and an insightful look at the classes, England and Paris of the time.
1931 / Tradeback / 138 pages
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