Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys , pseud. of Gwen Williams, 1894-1979, English novelist, b. Dominica. Her novels, written in the 1930s, mercilessly exploit her own emotional life, depicting pretty, no-longer-young women who find themselves down and out in large European cities. Without work or funds, her characters must depend on men, chance encounters, or former lovers, for money to buy a hotel room, a drink, a pair of gloves. Rhys's vision is uncompromising and her literary style is spare. These early works include Quartet (1929), After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (1931), and Good Morning, Midnight (1938). After a long retirement she published her masterpiece, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which drew equally on her own Caribbean childhood and on a reimagining of Charlotte Brönte's Jane Eyre from the perspective of Rochester's mad West Indian wife. It was followed by three short-story collections and the first volume of an autobiography (1979).

Bibliography: See studies by T. Staley (1979), D. Plante (1983), and N. R. Harrison (1988).

Rhys, Jean (Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams) (?1890–1979), novelist, born in Dominica, came to England in 1907. In 1919 she left England and remained abroad for many years, living mainly in Paris, where she began to write and where much of her early work is set. Her works include The Left Bank: Sketches and Studies of Present-Day Bohemian Paris (1927); Postures (1928, reprinted 1969 as Quartet); After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1930); Voyage in the Dark (1934), a first-person account of 19-year-old Anna Morgan's experiences as a chorus girl in London and on tour; and Good Morning, Midnight (1939). A long silence followed, during which Jean Rhys lived quietly in the West Country, until a radio adaptation of Good Morning, Midnight (1958) brought her back to public attention. Wilde Sargasso Sea (1966), set in Dominica and Jamaica during the 1830s, presents the life of the mad Mrs Rochester from Jane Eyre, a Creole heiress here called Antoinette Cosway. Tigers are Better Looking (1968) and Sleep it Off, Lady (1976) are collections of short stories.