"In the face of trouble" : inertia, fate and survival in the life and work of Jean Rhys

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dc.contributor.authorRenaud, Denise Georgenaen_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-08-15T17:36:39Z
dc.date.available2024-08-15T17:36:39Z
dc.date.copyright1993en_US
dc.date.issued1993
dc.degree.departmentDepartment of English
dc.degree.levelMaster of Arts M.A.en
dc.description.abstractDiana Athill, in her introduction to Jean Rhys: The Complete Novels, speaks of Rhys's "invariable and almost pathological inertia in the face of trouble." This thesis examines the expression of that attribute in Rhys's work, its implications for her own and her protagonists' survival, and illustrates the parallels between her life and theirs. Rhys translated aspects of her own turmoil into the lives of her characters, in what appears to be, at least partly, an exploration of her own difficulties. Her conviction that her life was predetermined exacerbated the passive, dependent behaviour she had learned as a child of a wealthy colonial Caribbean family, and the "learned helplessness" that resulted from traumatic circumstances that affected her childhood and her early adult years. Inertia, the defence with which she met every crisis, and alcoholism, with its attendant fear, rage and incapacity to function, made a torment of her life. In spite of these handicaps Jean Rhys managed to write five extraordinary novels and many short stories. She also produced a collection of personal writing, some of which formed the basis of her fiction. Rhys's fictional characters manifest a much more tenuous hold on survival than their creator. They live with an almost reckless disregard for their own interests, a recklessness that Rhys occasionally pursued in her own life. But they are almost annihilated, while their author lived to enjoy, as much as was possible for her, a successful end to her writing career. An examination of biographies, the novels, and critical analyses of Rhys's fiction suggests a distinct relationship between the author's life and work. The first chapter examines Rhys's family background and her upbringing, which was at times abusive, and which could possibly have led to her reactions of inertia and dependence on the protection of men. The second chapter illustrates how religion, particularly her exposure to Roman Catholicism, and the influence of Obeah, the witchcraft which the slaves had brought to the Caribbean from Africa, may have exacerbated her fatalistic attitudes. The last chapter considers the kinds and availability of work that might have provided independence to a woman of middle-class status in the nineteen-twenties and nineteenĀ­ thirties, but demonstrates, also, the emotional and mental responses to life which made the performance of such work difficult, if not impossible. No attempt has been made to arrive at definitive conclusions about the nature of the mental disturbance that appears to have affected the life of the author and the characters she created. Specific circumstances in Rhys's life are compared with similar incidents in her fiction to conclude that while she herself survived, with difficulty, her characters are illustrative of the destruction which she might have considered to be the logical outcome of the kind of life they live.en
dc.format.extent128 pages
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1828/19403
dc.rightsAvailable to the World Wide Weben_US
dc.subjectUN SDG 5: Gender Equalityen
dc.title"In the face of trouble" : inertia, fate and survival in the life and work of Jean Rhysen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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