Jean Rhys
The memory of Jean Rhys must be kept alive. Her modern prose and incisive view of the demimonde world around her “particularly in its treatment of women and race” saw her writing ahead of her time. Rhys was as complex as all of her protagonists. Born to a Welsh father and a white Creole mother, Rhys faced discrimination as an outsider when she finally arrived in Blackpool, England, from Dominica. Her exotic beauty attracted men in droves, all of whom exploited and were, in time and turn, equally exploited by her. She had worked a succession of demimondaine jobs “chorus girl, artist’s model” and came to see sex as a commodity and an inevitable exchange; she had been a prostitute in troubled times, later evolving into a courtesan. Rhys found a mentor and lover in Ford Madox Ford, picking up on the economical American style that was popular at the time. Yet, her novels were never celebrated until she had reached a late age, possibly because her themes were so modern, it had yet to be accepted by the general public then. By the time her celebrated novel Wide Sargasso Sea was published in 1966, she was long forgotten, with many thinking she had died years before. Wide Sargasso Sea caused a sensation and made a celebrity of Rhys, who had famously said it had all come too late. Rhys had practically invented what is now commonly known as alternative fiction that particular genre that tells a well-known tale from the point of view of a minor character. In the case of Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys explored the idea of race, sexual manipulation, exploitation, and even human trafficking and mail order brides through the eyes of the madwoman in the attic who was but a ghostly presence in Jane Eyre. Rhys has also unwittingly given rise to the modern female writer, she who now has the license to write frankly about her sexuality, race, gender and social context. I’d discovered Rhys as a student studying and living in Tottenham, a district that exposed the rougher, seedier side of London to me. Reading Rhys helped put a salve over my surroundings and status as Other in a foreign land. It is a shame that today, Rhys is known for just this one novel when others such as Good Morning, Midnight, Voyage in the Dark and her short story collections are well worth appreciating. She was forgotten once before. Let’s not forget her legacy ever again. – Mindy Teh
