Jean Rhys Flashcards
voice
we have access to Julia’s thoughts and sometimes slip into free indirect speech or into the thoughts of other characters but mostly there is a third person perspective
‘The landlady was a thin, fair, woman with red eyelids. She had a low, whispering voice and a hesitating manner, so that you thought: ‘She can’t possibly be a Frenchwoman.’ Not that you lost yourself in conjectures as to what she was because you didn’t care a damn anyway.
If you went to inquire for a room she was not loquacious. She would tell you the prices and hand you a card…
Julia paid sixteen francs a night…’
repetition
when a man follows her at the beginning of the novel -‘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?’
when a man follows her the second time - ‘When they reached the next lamp she turned and looked at him. He was young – a boy – wearing a cap, very pale and with very small, dark eyes set deeply in his head. He gave her a rapid glance.
‘’Oh, la la,’ he said. ‘Ah, non, alors.’
‘Well,’ said Julia aloud, ‘that’s funny. The joke’s on me this time.’
importance of appearances
‘she made herself up elaborately and carefully; yet it was clear that what she was doing had long ceased to be a labour of love and had become partly a mechanical process, partly a substitute for the mask she would have liked to wear’
people comment on her make-up - Mr Horsfield kisses ‘her lovely dark eyelids’
make-up acts as a barrier between her and those around her
‘her career of ups and downs had rubbed most of the hall-marks off her, so that it was not easy to guess at her age, her nationality, or the social background to which she properly belonged’
‘ ‘I was awfully pretty when I was a kid’ ‘
performativity
when J boards the ferry, ‘I can always get somebody you see. I’ve known that ever since I’ve known anything.’
‘When you are a child you are yourself and you know and see everything prophetically. And then suddenly something happens and you stop being yourself. you become what others force you to be. You lose your wisdom and your soul.’
‘Every day is a new day. Every day you are a new person…. What have you to do with the day before?’
Mr M - ‘Once, in his youth, he had published a small book of poems. But when it came to actualities his mind was a tight and very tidy mind.’
the novel as a kunstleroman
if you think of Julia as an actress/ a performance then she is an artist
However, she doesn’t reach some kind of new artistic height at the end of the novel, she merely becomes trapped in her own performance and the gritty reality of her socio-economic situation.
‘But I knew when she spoke that she didn’t believe a word….It was a beastly feeling I got – that I didn’t quite believe myself, either.’
‘When I got home I pulled out all the photographs I had, and letters and things. And my marriage-book and my passport. And the papers about my baby who died and was buried in Hamburg. But it had all gone, as if it had never been. And I was there, like a ghost.’
value of art - ‘ ‘I wonder if that picture’s any good. […] it might be very good for all I know.’ ‘
gender
‘I wanted to go away with just the same feeling a boy has when he wants to run away to sea – at least, that I imagine a boy has. […] So I did get away. I married to get away.’
‘She saw young men running races and some of them collapsed exhausted. And then – strange anti-climax – young women ran races and also collapsed exhausted, at which the audience rocked with laughter’
meetings with Mr Mackenzie/ ending
‘She picked up her glove and hit him with it, but so lightly that he did not even blink. ‘I despise you’, she said.’
‘Then he began to pity Julia, ‘Poor devil,’ he thought. ‘She’s got damn all.’ ‘
‘Lend me a hundred francs, will you?’ she said. ‘Please.’
This shocked Mr Mackenzie. He flushed. He said: ‘Good Lord, yes.’
‘It was the hour between dog and wolf, as they say.’
overview
the novel follows Julia Martin after she has left Mr Mackenzie
when she runs out of money in Paris, she moves back to London, where she receives a hostile welcome from her sister Norah and her Uncle Griffiths.
After her mother’s death, she begins an affair with Mr Horsfield before moving back to Paris and once again meeting Mr M in a cafe
people’s thoughts VS their actions
‘He though: ‘Well, you’ll get turned out my girl, that’s a sure thing’ He said: ‘ It looks to me as if everybody in here has gone to bed a long time ago.’ ‘
gritty reality of Julia’s situation
’ ‘People are beasts such mean beasts […] They’ll let you die for want of a decent word’ ‘
Christine Poutney
‘her writing still reads, 75 years later, as entirely fresh and modern. Her use of short chapters and short paragraphs, jump cuts and modern idioms, feels almost experimental’
‘Rhys makes no apology for any of her characters.’
