Art and Experience

Abstract

This is a study of Jean Rhys’s fiction; in this chapter, however, because of its importance, I attempt to place her life in the foreground of the entire study rather than treat it as background to her work. The extraordinary circumstances of Jean Rhys’s nomadic and bohemian life are fascinating in themselves. Her origin, cultural milieu, and experiences no doubt explain many of the unique qualities of her art and must be taken into consideration in any serious treatment of her fiction. The emphasis in this chapter falls not on her later years as she has become increasingly better known, nor on her literary reputation in the fifties and sixties, which is treated in a later chapter, but upon the little known and darker time of her life prior to and during her most creative period, the twenties and thirties. Leaving aside the problematic relationship between life and art, it became clear to me from the first reading of her work that her background and culture not only set Rhys apart from her contemporary novelists, but also shaped a widely different sensibility and radical consciousness. Of vital importance to an understanding and appreciation of Rhys’s contribution to the modern novel is the recognition of the striking way in which her fiction reflects a complex of values and an attitude toward life which both undercuts and opposes so many of the most cherished values, both public and private, of the bourgeois world.