Forms of Othering in the Novels of Jean Rhys

Student no: 659058

EN-397: LONG ESSAYFORMS OF OTHERING IN THE NOVELS OF JEAN

RHYS

Dr. Richard RobinsonSwansea University

659058Forms of Othering in the Novels of Jean Rhys

Introduction: 'The Rhys Woman' as Other

The work of Jean Rhys presents a considerable challenge for

feminist readers. Central to this challenge is Rhys's

depiction of her female protagonists, an archetypal woman

often referred to by critics as 'The Rhys Woman'. Although

depicted through different circumstances within the

progression of her novels, these women share enough

similarities to be described collectively as ‘a stunning

portrait of the feminine condition in the modern world’

(Staley 1978, 131). Arguably, by presenting all her

protagonists in this stereotypical way, Rhys reduces the power

of each woman's individual subjectivity, leading to a

depressing sense of futility and inevitable female

powerlessness within each narrative. Conversely, it could

be argued that this reduction is not representative of Rhys's

own views, but is rather a comment on the way that patriarchal

society constructs female identity as a singular, unattainable

ideal, evoking 'the myth of woman' (de Beauvoir 1972, 41)

which Simone de Beauvoir describes in The Second Sex. Indeed,

Rhys's presentation of fractured female subjectivity as

'dispersed, contingent, and multiple' is often shown to battle

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against the approved societal norm of 'the Eternal Feminine,

unique and changeless' (de Beauvoir 1972, 41), albeit in a

ironic, mocking way; 'Please, please monsieur et madame,

mister, missis and miss, I am trying so hard to be like you'

(Rhys 2000, 88). The main purpose of 'The Rhys Woman' is

therefore to examine this societal conception of woman as

irredeemably flawed, resulting in her marginalisation from

conventional bourgeoisie life. Although this feminist

comment is not explicitly stated in her work, it somewhat

exists within Rhys's satirical references to society as a

whole, as 'the feminist content of feminine art is typically

oblique, displaced, ironic and subversive; one has to read it

between the lines, in the missed possibilities of the text'

(Showalter 1979, 153). Thus, this essay will explore the ways

in which Rhys develops her protagonists in the novels Quartet,

After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie and Good Morning, Midnight, in relation to the

concept of the 'Other'. Rhys arguably attempts to align the

female subject with Otherness in order to support the notion

that 'to pose Woman is to pose the absolute Other... denying

against all experience that she is a subject, a fellow human

being' (de Beauvoir 1972, 41). Furthermore, Rhys

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demonstrates how this subjugation diminishes not only the

human identity of women, but also that of the men, 'who ghost

in and out [of her narratives]', equally possessing the same

'certain lack of substance'(Kennedy 2000, xi) as the women

they manipulate. In doing so, Rhys's novels evoke a

nihilistic interpretation of an unnatural world filled with 'a

pervasive sense of broad social injustice, along with parallel

sexual injustices', through the viewpoint of an indifferent

female protagonist, 'destroyed not only by her own fatal

flaws, but by those of the society around her' (Kennedy 2000,

x-xi). Nonetheless, the existence of 'The Rhys Woman'

remains one in which they are primarily financially dependent

on men, leaving them with an ‘unsavoury but fundamental

helplessness’ (Linnet 2005, 437) which Rhys herself does

little to readdress. Hence, the overall effect of interpreting

Rhys's work through a feminist approach cannot be wholly

convincing, as it also remains that 'she presents the

unnecessary suffering and cruelty of the world, but offers no

neat remedies' (Kennedy 2000, xi), only enabling her heroines

to voice their ‘frustration with self-denigration, the

masochism that critics sometimes deplore ’(Gardiner 1982,

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240). On the other hand, this may again by a symptom of a

patriarchal society in which 'the power to choose one's own

destroyer is women's only form of self-assertion' (Showalter

1979, 152). Therefore, Rhys's heroines, in the process of

destroying themselves, may be read as subversively enacting

their own 'self-assertion', in which the only other

alternative would be to surrender to a life of domestic

passivity. Moreover, in her presentation of woman as

'a mannequin of one kind or another cast in some role thrust

on the woman by society’ (Bender 1997, 92), Rhys ostensibly

portrays her heroines as passive vehicles, there to be 'cast'

in whichever 'role' society deems appropriate. It could also

be noted that 'mannequins are usually invisible. They're like

buttons: an essential fashion component, but one to which we

give little thought' (Sinclair 2014, 184). Therefore, by

forcing us to look at these women who 'are usually invisible',

Rhys offers a voice to women cast as the marginal Other, those

who are literally objectified as mannequins. Equally, these

women are not there to be easily forced into the 'role' of

radical feminist, as again this would merely reduce them into

becoming the object of a cultural ideal, albeit one which is

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meant to empower women. Furthermore, Rhys's

depiction of the Other relates to more 'dual, hierarchized

oppositions [of] Superior/Inferior' (Cixous 1975, 229) than

just that of Male/Female. As Bonnie Kime-Scott argues in The

Gender of Modernism; ‘[Modernism] relates to female writers but

also speaks to the marginality of class, economics and exile’

(Kime-Scott 1990, 4). Accordingly, Rhys's heroines are not

only displaced by their gender, but also grapple with issues

relating to their national identity, whilst facing an

uncertain economic position within a society that has little

to offer sexually promiscuous unmarried women. All of these

uncertainties combine within Rhys's novels to create an

uncanny disconnection with the narrating female protagonist

who has 'no pride, no name, no face, no country' and

consequently doesn't 'belong anywhere' (Rhys 2000, 38), in

spite of their best intentions. As a result, the figure of the

female as Other is not to be merely pitied in Rhys's novels.

Rather, the concept of the Other becomes a powerful tool for

expressing the strangeness of social marginalisation within a

society that refuses to confront its ideological weaknesses.

Chapter 1: The Other as Spectre

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The figure of the Other becomes marginalised not only because

it represents difference, but because this difference is

somewhat 'threatening', and therefore has the potential to

destroy the dominant hegemony. Consequently, 'the displaced

and split-off entity comes to seem more threatening because it

starts outside of the realm of contained knowledge (Rice and

Waugh 2010, 145). Therefore, coming from 'outside' of this

hegemonic 'realm' , that is, from outside of the realm of

contained patriarchal discourse, the threatening potential of

Rhys's female protagonists is thus controlled by those around

them in the narratives through their dismissal of these women

as 'mysterious, irrational and opaque' (Rice and Waugh 2010,

145). Hence,

it is easy to see why Rhys often chooses to reflect the image

that is most often imposed upon her heroines in her

narratives, that of the equally 'mysterious, irrational and

opaque' spectre. By aligning the image of the female

protagonist with that of the ghost, Rhys subversively reminds

the reader of the unconventional 'threat' of the creative

woman as a figure that embodies a terrible potential to defy

boundaries, whilst yet remaining apparently insubstantial.

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Arguably, this link between 'The death and the feminine, the end

and the beginning... frighten[ing] us when they break through'

(Kristeva 1991, 185) evokes the ghostly transience of the

woman as Other, a figure who is denied a full existence and so

remains trapped within liminal or contested modes of being.

For instance, Julia Martin in After

Leaving Mr. Mackenzie 'suffers time and again from a fear that she

is unreal, that people can't hear her or see her properly'

(Sage 2000, xii), as arguably do all of Rhys's protagonists.

This is not to say that Julia Martin has not lived, in fact

she is haunted by a 'past' that has left her 'not so much old

as fatally, shamefully vulnerable and worse for wear' (Sage

2000, v). However, ‘within the confines of male discourse,

story, narrative must be “definite, whereas Julia comes out of

vagueness, even about the events of her own life, which appear

to her distant, shadowy, as if she is recalling a text with

which she is not entirely familiar’ (Kloepfer 1989, 52).

Therefore to suggest that Julia is not 'entirely familiar'

with her own life, as if she has not lived through parts of

it, links 'The Rhys Woman' to Freud's notion of the uncanny,

or unhiemlich, and accordingly Rhys's novels present us with a

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world which 'is both strange and unnervingly familiar'

(Kennedy 2000,v), in other words, ghostly. Yet Rhys's

engagement with the uncanny in her novels is not just a

pastiche of traditional Gothic imagery, placing the woman

solely within the role of monstrous or ghostly Other. Rather,

her use of uncanny elements is more subtle, connecting

feelings of strangeness or unreality with issues surrounding

the boundaries of gender, as 'the Unheimliche requires...the

impetus of a new encounter with an unexpected outside element:

arousing images of death, automatons, doubles or the female

sex' (Kristeva 1991, 188).

In associating her characters with this

eerie uncertainty of the unknown, unconscious mind, Rhys

questions the accuracy of memory and its subsequent relation

in written or spoken narratives, as 'uncanniness occurs when

the boundaries between imagination and reality are erased'

(Kristeva 1991, 188). From the very beginning of After Leaving Mr.

Mackenzie, Rhys plays with this idea, as the novel's title

refers to Julia's own invention that 'she had parted from Mr

Mackenzie' (Rhys 2000, 7), when this is not true. Her lie,

whilst perhaps somewhat delusional, nevertheless places woman

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in the role of active creative participant, and can be seen as

Julia's attempt to reassert her subjectivity, at least within

the confines of her own narrative.

In spite of her efforts, the men in Julia's life

rarely continue to see women as anything other than ephemeral

ghosts. Arguably, this is because 'when everything is reduced

to the issue of having or not having a phallus, then the woman

is also and inevitably either reduced to passivity or non-

existence' (Rice and Waugh 2010, 226). This 'nonexistence'

however, only exists within dominant societal discourse, thus

the physical difference, or threat of woman remains; 'she may

be nonexistent; but there must be something of her' (Cixous

1975, 232). Therefore, this 'something' to which Cixous

alludes can be best surmised as 'spectral', as women also

represent an entity that, 'is everywhere all the time, yet

without a proper time of its own' (Wolfreys 2007, 163).

Furthermore, it is not just the unconventional 'Rhys

Woman' that is depicted in this way. Two female strangers, who

pass Mr. Horsfield just after he has witnessed an argument

between Julia and Mr. Mackenzie, are described as thus; 'Two

women passed flaunting themselves; they flaunted their legs

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and breasts as if they were glad to be alive. There was a zest

in the air and a sweet sadness like a hovering ghost' (Rhys

2000, 28). Admittedly, it is the 'zest in the air' that is

primarily aligned to the 'sweet sadness' of the 'hovering

ghost'. The women described are nevertheless reduced into

subhuman Otherness, by referring only to their most desirable

body parts, 'legs and breasts'. Furthermore, by Rhys

qualifying the women's act of 'flaunting...as if they were

glad to be alive', suggests the contrary, and that the real

'hovering ghost' in this scene is really woman's unconscious

despondency to a patriarchal culture in which they are only

seen as 'alive' when 'flaunting' their sexual potential.

Once this

potential has been realised, and the sexual conquest of the

woman has been made, Rhys suggests that the image of the

'hovering ghost' then comes to displace the used female body

itself, which is equally transient. Moreover, the image of the

ghost then comes to dominate the discourse between male lover

and discarded mistress, as the 'fallen woman' is made Other by

her grotesque undesirability. Therefore, when Mr. Mackenzie

first describes Julia as a spectre, she haunts him, not as an

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idealised version of a lost love but only 'as a generous

action does haunt one' (Rhys 2000, 21). From this Rhys implies

that what mostly 'haunts' Mr. Mackenzie about his relationship

with Julia is the regret of becoming involved with an

emotionally fragile woman who is physically past her prime,

hence his 'generous action' in seeing this undesirable woman

as a viable sexual object. Like Mr. Horsfield, in

his description of women Mr. Mackenzie reduces Julia into a

mere signifier of insubstantiality; 'She walked in - pale as a

ghost' (Rhys 2000, 22). Furthermore, by relating to the 'pale

ghostliness' within Julia's countenance, Rhys again implies

that when a woman becomes sexually unattractive she begins to

experience being 'reduced to passivity or non-existence'.

Additionally, the reflection of Julia's aging may remind Mr.

Mackenzie of his own mortality and decline, hence explaining

why at first, 'when she had walked in silent and ghost-like,

he had been really afraid of her' (Rhys 2000, 22). However, as

Julia sits down and begins to ask him about money, this fear

turns to disgust; 'now he only felt that he disliked her

intensely' (Rhys 2000, 22). Thus, Julia, like all of Rhys's

women, is caught in a losing battle of financial dependency

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versus self respect, in which they are forced constantly turn

to men for support, in spite of the notion that 'the seeds of

man's essential hatred and fear of woman lie in the financial

and emotional demands which she makes upon him' (Nebecker

1981, 150). Conversely, Mackenzie's

aversion to Julia could be said to present him as a similarly

insubstantial, emotionally stunted, and absent character.

Equally, Rhys's portrayal of men within her first novel,

Quartet, also confuses the issue as to who truly represents the

Other within the sexual relationships between men and women.

Namely, Rhys's depiction of Heidler, with whom her heroine

Marya Zelli begins an affair in return for a place to live,

describes him in the same reductive terms as she does to

describe her naive protagonist; 'When she woke next morning

the whole thing seemed very unreal and impossible. But even

while it was going on it had seemed unreal. She had felt like

a marionette, as though something outside her were jerking

strings that forced her to scream and strike. Heidler,

weeping, was a marionette, too.' (Rhys 2000,82). Heidler as

the 'weeping marionette' therefore represents the same

passivity and emotional instability that the stereotypical

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woman is meant to, confusing the argument as to whether Marya

is truly only the victim of manipulation, or whether in fact

Rhys's male characters are just as self-destructive as her

female protagonists.

Although there are no explicit references to ghosts

within this scene, Marya's questioning of reality again

parallels Rhys's work with ideas of the spectral uncanny. In

her ability to interpret the conflicts within her life as

'unreal' or spectral, Marya is able to dissociate herself from

present space and time, thereby distancing herself from the

emotional trauma of the argument 'even while it was going on'.

In doing so, Rhys demonstrates how her female protagonists

survive the emotional turmoil of their relationships; by

becoming the ostensibly reduced spectral figure that

patriarchal culture expects them to be. Arguably, this culture

is the mysterious 'something outside' which Marya feels

controls her actions, suggesting that she is haunted by the

pressure of societal expectation, rather than an individual

part of her fractured unconscious mind, that is 'someone

outside'.

Accordingly, Marya's subjectivity is consequently

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sacrificed in her submission to the emotional whims of both

Heidler and his wife Lois. Thus, it is difficult to be

sympathetic towards Rhys's depiction of woman as Other within

this novel, as rather than fighting against these expected

norms, Marya goes along with them, masochistically destroying

her integrity and identity in the process. Moreover, Rhys's

exploration of the Other in this novel is problematic in that

the power of men within the novel is reduced by the same

social systems by which women are made Other. As a result, it

can be argued that Quartet is a novel in which there is no real

Other, as ‘there is not a single victim in this novel... all

are motivated by lusts or needs and driven to a numbness and

moral blindness in their hatreds, illusions and self-pity’

(Staley 1978, 145). In

contrast, Sophia Jansen in Good Morning, Midnight, the oldest of

Rhys's heroines, is outcast from respectable society because

she 'is not just a drunk, but a drunk woman, the lowest of the

low' (Kennedy 2000, x). Similar to Rhys's allusions to the

grotesqueness of the aging female body in After Leaving Mr.

Mackenzie, the protagonist of Good Morning, Midnight is further

marginalised by her advanced age, described as 'almost beyond

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sexuality and haunted by her own ageing', (Kennedy 2000,

viii), thus 'almost beyond' power and subjectivity as a female

figure. Yet, like Marya and Julia, Sophia continues to

exercise her sexuality by indulging in relationships with

likewise marginalised men; namely foreigners and gigolos,

again suggesting that 'The Rhys Woman' is more likely to

associate herself with the figure of the Other, rather than

fight against this definition.

However, as socially isolated women, Rhys's heroines

appear to have no option but to surrender their autonomy, not

only for financial security, but also for passing emotional

support. Like Marya in Quartet, Rhys suggests that Sophia is

able to acquire a kind of a perverse liberation of spirit by

viewing herself as a spectral, insignificant figure. Still,

this attitude appears to do little to slow her emotional and

social decline, as by detaching herself from reality and

choosing to live as if she were already dead, Sophia gains

little more than 'a strange dignity and the perfect distance

from which to observe her own ruin' (Kennedy 2000, ix).

This

'perfect distance' however is broken by the end of the novel,

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when Julia experiences a violent attempted rape by the gigolo

she has befriended; 'I feel his hard knee between my knees. My

mouth hurts, my breasts hurt, because it hurts, when you have

been dead, to come alive...' (Rhys 2000, 153). Sophia is

forced 'to come alive' not because she is sexually aroused by

the encounter, but rather she is forced to admit that in fact

she does care about what happens to her, or at least to her

body, in her attempt to fight back. Therefore, after

having successfully fought off her potential rapist, Sophia

must reinstate her masochistic tendencies if she is to

continue to use the method of spectral detachment as a way of

coping with her life. Accordingly, she allows her neighbour,

who is previously described as 'the ghost of the landing'

(Rhys 2000, 13) to sleep with her as the novel closes; 'I put

my arms round him and pull him down on to the bed, saying:

'Yes - yes -yes...'' (Rhys 2000, 159).

By closing the novel with this

action, Rhys reminds the reader that 'the spectral is not

merely what returns from a past, or from some anterior

location. It is also that which is to come' (Wolfreys 2007,

155), as Sophia earlier foreshadows that she is 'always

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running into him' (Rhys 2000, 13) and that 'she felt that her

life had moved in a circle. Predestined, she had returned to

her starting-point' (Rhys 2000, 48). This implies that Rhys

acknowledges that her heroines will never be able to save

themselves by uniting with the threatening Other of

spectrality. Yet the women themselves remain unaware of this

knowledge, continuously revisiting past moments and mistakes,

in the hope that each time will be the last time they do so;

'still as if I were dead...I look straight into his eyes and

despise another poor devil of a human being for the last time'

(Rhys 2000, 159).

Chapter 2: The Other as Animal

Sophia's struggle towards the end of Good Morning, Midnight

therefore represents an ongoing struggle that the sexualised

'The Rhys Woman' faces over the control of her body. As

Gilbert and Gubar suggest, this is because the image of woman

in society is already seen 'as a representative of otherness,

[incarnating] the damning otherness of the flesh rather than

the inspiring otherness of the spirit' (Gilbert and Gubar

1979, 155). Additionally, 'The Rhys Woman'

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relies on her carnality as the primary method for securing

men, and therefore ensuring her survival, and so she remains

pressured to oblige the sexual expectations thrust upon her.

This sense of entrapment occurs repeatedly in Rhys's novels,

suggesting that these women are perhaps haunted by their

sexual bodies as a further indicator of their female

Otherness. Therefore, it could be argued that Rhys's

representation of her characters as animals allows a similar

discussion surrounding the figure of the Other as her focus on

spectral imagery does. In her own

personal letters, Jean Rhys describes the time she left London

for Paris with her first husband as a transformative time of

going from 'a hunted haunted creature', to a woman who

'became almost alive and self-confident for a time' (Owen

2000, vii). This difference between being 'haunted' and

'hunted' is one also explored through the character of Marya

in Quartet. Animalistic imagery, particularly regarding survival

techniques and entrapment, abounds in the novel, where not

only is Marya's husband Stephan is physically incarcerated in

prison 'bars that were like bars of animal's cage' (Rhys 2000,

30) but also where Marya herself, her lover Heidler, and his

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wife Lois are similarly trapped by the rules of society. This

entrapment embodies a kind of death-in-life, where the subject

is never entirely dead, yet only ever 'almost alive', a notion

that is also reflected in the spectral imagery of Rhys's other

novels. The slippage of a single letter between 'hunting' and

'haunting' demonstrates the instability of language itself,

thus reflecting not only the futility of Marya's words and

actions, but also the ghostly immateriality of her status as

woman, and therefore Other. In demonstrating this link, the

author examines and rejects the conventional order of the

Heidlers's expatriate society, instead showing the reader, 'an

underworld of darkness and disorder, where officialdom, the

bourgeoise and the police were the eternal enemies and

fugitive the only hero' (Owen 2000, xi-xii).

Arguably, the terms 'haunting' and 'hunting' become

synonymous with each other early on in the novel, when Marya

describes a day spent 'in endless, aimless walking' (Rhys

2000,28), in order to 'escape the fear that hunted her' (Rhys

2000,28). This fear, however, soon transforms into a spectral

image, a 'vague and shadowy', indefinite 'something'. Again,

Marya's inability to define the 'vague something', rather than

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'someone', that persecutes her can be read as her unconscious

perception of her position as a young woman within patriarchal

society. Furthermore,

in Marya's inability to succinctly name the fear that chases

her, Rhys again alludes to limitations of language as a

signifier of expression, thereby reminding the reader that all

humans are still indeed animals, and are still capable of

remaining outside of language. Marya's inability to express

herself adequately is further exasperated by her Otherness as

a woman within the primarily male constructed realm of

language . Therefore, 'The Rhys Woman' is covertly associated

to the figure of the animal, as a way of expressing not only

their exclusion from the dominant male culture, but also from

language. In doing so, Rhys is able to convey Marya's sense

of alienation from society by depicting her experience of the

world as that of an animal, associating Marya, as she does

with her other heroines, to the position of a weak or wounded

'under-dog' (Rhys 2000, 85), who is always 'one not quite of

the fold' (Rhys 2000, 12).

This marginalisation continues even as Marya becomes the

Heidlers's latest pet, 'they spoke of [her] in the third

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person as if she were a strange animal or at any rate a

strayed animal' (Rhys 2000, 12). This description as a

'strayed', rather than 'stray' animal implies that the

couple's real reason for taking Marya in is to exploit her

'strayed' or 'sinful' nature, that is her sexual potential, as

opposed to accepting her for purely charitable reasons.

Furthermore, Marya's apparent 'strangeness' not only evokes

images of an uncanny aloofness, but also implies that she is

seen by the Heidlers as some exotic creature, a 'savage' (Rhys

2000, 102) Other, whose body needs to be colonised and tamed,

as 'the foreigner who imagines himself to be free of borders,

by the same token challenges any sexual limit' (Kristeva 1991,

31). Indeed this

reading would be in keeping with the notion that 'every

angelically selfless Snow White must be hunted, if not

haunted, by a wickedly assertive Stepmother' (Gilbert and

Gubar 1979, 156). In Quartet, Marya is apparently 'hunted' by

the 'wickedly assertive' Lois Heidler for the purpose of

pleasing her husband. However, this reading may be too

reductionist, in that it is not just Marya who Rhys

zoomorphises. Lois is also described as having the 'eyes of a

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well-trained domestic animal' (Rhys 2000, 84), suggesting that

she too was once Heidler's preferred female pet. The

difference being that Lois's animalistic Otherness has been

'domesticated', that is, controlled and tamed in submission to

the patriarchy. However, this position of domestic comfort

comes at the price of requiring Lois to prey on weaker women

like Marya in order to reduce the threat of their unclaimed

sexual bodies. Therefore, Rhys's depiction of Lois may not be

as unfair as first perceived, as through closer reading ‘we

realise that' Lois also suffers as a result of male dominance,

and 'out of her humiliation and jealousy – has focused her

anger on Marya rather than Heidler, for Marya is a female, an

adversary’ (Staley 1978, 136). Like Marya,

Rhys's later heroines also learn to see humans as vile animals

for perpetuating a social order that requires the creation and

submission of an Other. For instance, in After Leaving Mr.

Mackenzie, Julia notes; 'Animals are better than we aren't

they? They're not all the time pretending and lying and

sneering, like loathsome human beings' (Rhys 2000, 97).

Furthermore, in casting woman as the Other, androcentric human

society remains stagnant as it 'engages with the looping

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circularity of history, whereby there is, as in the Gothic,

never an origin' (Punter 2002, 262). That is, Rhys arguably

sees human society as 'loathsome' because it 'pretends' that

humanity's biological 'origin', unlike that of animals, lies

with the male deity and not the female mother. Therefore, the

figure of the mother is often ostracised in order to maintain

the subjugation of women as Other. For Julia Martin

however, her mother is made doubly Other by the implication

that she is of a non-European racial background, again evoking

an exotic, animal Otherness; 'Dark-skinned, with high cheek-

bones and an aquiline nose' (Rhys 2000, 70). Rather than

embodying the sexual threat that Marya's exoticism does,

Julia's mother is an entirely passive object of pity; 'an

invalid, paralysed, dead to all intents and purposes' (Rhys

2000, 52) to the point where her body has become 'a huge,

shapeless mass' (Rhys 2000, 70). Despite this, Julia does

not see her mother's worn-out body as grotesque in the way

that people have viewed her own, instead envying her mother as

'still beautiful, as an animal would be in old age' (Rhys

2000, 70). Arguably, the beauty that Julia sees in her dying

mother is not a physical one, but the beauty of her ability to

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remain connected to the past, and thus both her physical and

colonial origin; ''She said something...It sounded like

'orange trees'. She must have been thinking of when she was in

Brazil'' (Rhys 2000, 72). Unlike Julia, her

mother has been able to remain detached from the world through

her silence as 'an inarticulate woman', (Rhys 2000, 76)

thereby not surrendering the story of her past to be altered

by others. Hence, her mother is also described as 'natural,

accepting transplantation as a plant might have done' (Rhys

2000, 76) because her silence ostensibly connects her to the

notion of the 'naturally' passive woman. Like a tropical,

domesticated plant, Julia's 'accepts transplantation', that

is, the removal and loss of her origin, with no apparent

resistance. Through her death, Julia is forced to accept that

'her mother had been the warm centre of the world' (Rhys 2000,

77). Consequently,she must decide how to deal with the loss of

her own maternal origin, in a cold world that refuses to

acknowledge the importance of woman as Other, and equally the

history of her family's racial Otherness. If 'The Rhys

Woman' is indeed to be read as the continuing portrait of a

single woman, it could be suggested that Julia will learn to

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accept this Otherness in the same way that Sophia Jansen does

within Good Morning, Midnight, through denigration and self-pity.

In her assertion that she is 'sad, sad as a circus-

lioness...sad as a woman who is growing old' (Rhys 2000, 39),

Rhys suggests that like the 'circus-lioness', the 'woman who

is growing old' only becomes 'sad' when she is perpetually

forced to perform the same role of the tamed exotic animal for

the amusement of an audience. Similarly, 'The Rhys Woman' must

continue to play the role of 'The Eternal Feminine', a

performance that becomes increasingly farcical as her body

ages and deteriorates. Like Rhys's

depictions of Lois Heidler, the older woman as the

'domesticated animal', Sophia is compared to a domesticated

kitten she once had accidently allowed to be run over 'you

could see it in her eyes, her terrible eyes, that knew her

fate... in the glass just now my eyes were like that kitten's

eyes' (Rhys 2000, 47-48). Although the domesticated animal's

'fate' was ultimately death, Rhys's depiction of her life is

equally as miserable; 'she was very thin, scraggy and

hunted...all the male cats in the neighbourhood were on to her

like one o' clock.' (Rhys 2000, 47). Thus describing the

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female animal as 'thin, scraggy and hunted', Rhys implies that

the deteriorating appearance of the aging female body results

in the revelation of a repulsive and wild Otherness that 'all

the male cats in the neighbourhood' want to claim and control.

Therefore, in order to pacify her growing hatred towards

humanity, Sophia drinks to become acceptably passive and tame;

'I'm a woman come in here to get drunk...but otherwise quiet,

fearful, tamed, prepared to give big tips' (Rhys 2000, 89).

However, this rage towards those who take pleasure in her

decline is barely concealed, as when a girl at the bar laughs

at her appearance she vows that 'one day the fierce wolf that

walks by my side will spring on you and rip your guts out'

(Rhys 2000, 45). This 'fierce wolf' is arguably the 'fierce',

animalistic society that will 'one day' 'spring on' the

younger woman 'and rip [her] guts out' when she too shows

signs of physical decline. Despite this

threat being aimed solely at another woman, this expression of

rage marks a significant change in the progression of 'The

Rhys Woman' towards a better understanding of the way female

subjectivity in particular is diminished through the role of

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the Other. In voicing this rage to herself in such a raw,

visceral way, Sophia comes close to understanding that her

problems do not always lie within herself as a woman, but

instead within society's perception of her. However, by

choosing not to voice this opinion, 'The Rhys Woman' still

remains in collusion with the systems that oppress her. Yet,

like the figure of the spectre, Rhys employs the image of the

animal Other to explore the similarities and differences

between men and women in society, and consequently the ways in

which the threat of these differences are controlled within

private and public spheres.

Chapter 3: The Other within Art

If the animal as Other, as Gilbert and Gubar suggest,

represents women's natural monstrosity and therefore

'culture's horror of carnal contingency and the female body'

(Rice and Waugh 2010, 145) then this argument must be followed

with an exploration of why they subsequently conclude that

'Women...must therefore be killed into art' (Rice and Waugh

2010, 145). This discussion of the Other within art is

broadened within Rhys's novels to include the methods of '

28


'killing' of oneself into an art object - the pruning and

preening, the mirror madness, and concern with odours and

aging' (Gilbert and Gubar 1979, 160) that frequently preoccupy

'The Rhys Woman'. Rather than

being a demonstration of woman's vanity and narcissism, this

preoccupation with appearance for Rhys's heroines signifies an

eternally futile attempt to present an image of themselves

that is acceptable to society. Despite their efforts, the

protagonists find that this 'killing' of oneself into an art

object' only results in a further despondency with themselves;

'A change of hair colour, a new dress, a new hotel room, a new

name: nothing will quite work the magic that will bring the

comfort of feeling human' (Kennedy 2000, x).This sense of

hopeless inevitability portrayed in Rhys's depictions of the

Other within art links back to previous discussions of the

Other as spectre and as animal, because all three are an

evocation of how Rhys's protagonists experience their bodies

being 'controlled and contained, aestheticized, made small, or

confined within the domestic space' (Rice and Waugh 2010,

145). For example,

in Quartet, Lois's attempts to make Marya into her own living

29


model for her art can be read as a further attempt to deny her

subjectivity by making her Other. This is particularly evident

in Lois's wish 'to begin her portrait of the sleeveless dress

and the short black gloves at once' (Rhys 2000,47),

demonstrating her complete reduction of Marya to the clothes

she wears, or the service she can provide as a passive

mannequin, rather than as an active muse. Hence, the position

of artist in the novel also becomes a position of power from

which to render the enemy as Other and dismiss their

subjectivity as unreality. This gendered divide of power

between artist and object however is just as ambiguous as any

other in the novel, as almost everyone Marya encounters

appears to have some connection to art. For example, she is

first introduced to the Heidler through her friend 'Miss De

Solla, who was a painter and ascetic to the point of

fanaticism' (Rhys 2000, 8). However, there seems to be some

distinction in that Lois, like Miss De Solla, produces

artwork, whereas Heidler only trades in it; 'You know Heidler,

the English picture-dealer man, of course' (Rhys 2000, 8).

Similarly, Stephan is also first described to Marya as 'a

commissionaire d' objets d'art' (Rhys 2000, 16), however it is heavily

30


implied that his 'selling' of pictures is merely a ruse to

sell other products on the black market; ''Oh, you sell

pictures', she said. 'Pictures and other things' (Rhys 2000,

16). Nevertheless, while the women of

the novel have the potential to render their own vision of

reality through art, it is up to the men of the novel to sell

it, which allows them to gain not only economic superiority,

but also the ability to effectively decide what version of

femininity is then sold to the public. Thus, as in all of

Rhys's work, women's subjectivity, as portrayed by female

artist, is reduced to a singular commodity by a primarily male

market. This reduction of plural female identities can be seen

in Miss De Solla's drawings, which Marya observes, whilst

'beautiful', nevertheless depict amalgamated 'groups of women.

Masses of flesh arranged to form intricate and absorbing

patterns' (Rhys 2000, 8). Arguably, this perception

of women's bodies as a beautiful, albeit tangled mass of

indistinguishable bodies foreshadows Marya's later realisation

that she has become the latest in a long line of female lovers

for Heidler, another image of woman to add to his collection;

'It was impossible, when one looked at that bed, not to think

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of the succession of petites femmes who had extended themselves

upon it' (Rhys 2000, 87). Additionally, she senses that her

affair has become more like a transaction between buyer and

seller, reduced to perfunctory sex in cheap hotel rooms.

Despite this, Marya persists within her farcical

relationships, as in an unreal world, the ghost or 'illusion'

of a successful relationship carries with it the emotional and

economical 'value' of security that she simply could not

achieve as a sexually promiscuous single woman; 'One realized

all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance,

and that the shadow can be more important than the substance.'

(Rhys 2000, 21).

Returning to the image of the Other within art in After

Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, Julia is first described in terms similar

to an art object; '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' (Rhys 2000, 11). Thus, it is implied

that Julia has been marginalised by society because of this

uncertainty about her origin, and consequently she cannot

truly 'belong' anywhere, unlike other women who have been more

32


easily assimilated into the domestic sphere.

Nonetheless, Julia continues trying to 'kill

herself into an art object', thus when confronted with the

impossible image of the ideal female form in 'a picture by a

man called Modigliani' (Rhys 2000, 40), she feels 'as if the

woman in the picture were laughing at me and saying: ' I am

more real than you. But at the same time I am you. I'm all

that matters of you'' (Rhys 2000, 41). Interestingly, the

woman represented in the painting has similar features to

those that Julia admires in her mother, implying that

accordingly this woman may look something like Julia herself;

'a face like a mask, a long dark face, and very big eyes'

(Rhys 2000, 40). The sense of an uncanny connection between

the two women is perpetuated in the repetition of animalistic

imagery used to describe the woman's body; 'a sort of proud

body, like an utterly lovely proud animal' (Rhys 2000, 40).

Moreover, like Rhys's portrayal of Julia as a living spectre,

the reality of the woman in the picture remains equally

ambiguous, indeed implying that this framed picture represents

'all that matters' of the woman as; 'the eyes were blank, like

a mask', yet the image is still 'as if you were looking at a

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real woman, a live woman' (Rhys 2000, 40).

Through Julia's reflection on the painting,

Rhys suggests that the experience of viewing one's uncanny

double trapped within art makes the female viewer aware of her

own Otherness and entrapment, causing them to feel; ' as if

[they] were dead...it is as if standing outside yourself, you,

the 'living' you, are a ghost' (Wolfreys 2007, 80). In Good

Morning, Midnight, this idea is take even further when Sophia

experiences this same sensation, yet whilst looking at picture

of 'an old Jew with a red nose, playing the banjo' (Rhys 2000,

83). Thus, like this figure of the marginalised Jew, Sophia

has been ostracised by her old age and apparent lack of

origin. However, the sexual

differences between Sophia and the man in the painting remain,

as Rhys reminds the reader that Sophia's economic worth, like

that of all her heroines, depends largely on the money given

to her by the men she attracts. Therefore this is why the male

figure is described as being paradoxically 'humble' and

'mocking' (Rhys 2000, 91) within the same sentence. Financial

troubles may have 'humbled' this street musician, however as a

single man, the subject has already achieved a kind of

34


emotional and economic autonomy that Sophia will never be able

to achieve as a poor, single woman. Nevertheless, as

in her other novels, Rhys's sympathy for the female subject is

limited, even in her portrayal of woman as the unrealistic

artistic creation of patriarchal culture. Sophia hates the

people she works with an a clothes store equally, but most of

all denigrates the shop's mannequins; 'those damned dolls'

(Rhys 2000, 16), as the ultimate example of the female body

only as a canvas for displaying commodities and power. Like

these mannequins, Sophia views other women as just as blank

and fake; 'what a success they would have made of their lives

if they had been women, satin skin, silk hair, velvet eyes,

sawdust heart - all complete' (Rhys 2000, 16). Thus, in her

inability to become like this idealised image, Sophia, like

all 'Rhys Women' struggles between her inward disgust towards

these people and her wish to become more like them in order to

reduce her sense of Otherness.

Conclusion: 'The Rhys Woman' as Feminist?

Therefore, throughout the course her novels, Jean Rhys remains

constant in her 'cruelly even handed' (Sage 2000, xi)

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depiction of the flaws within both men and women. Rather than

presenting her female protagonists as the sole victims of male

cruelty, Rhys more commonly berates the whole of humanity for

perpetuating a social system whereby the weak are devoured by

the strong; 'I'm afraid of men - yes, I'm very much afraid of

men. And I'm even more afraid of women...Who wouldn't be

afraid of a pack of damned hyenas?' (Rhys 2000, 144). As a

result, it may be difficult to succinctly define female as the

constant 'Other' within the societal context of Rhys's novels.

This ambivalence towards a

strictly feminist reading of 'The Rhys Woman' as the helpless

patriarchal victim raises the problem that it may well be

impossible to truly 'articulate the other side, the other

point of view, because wherever you [get] to there [is] always

another side' (Sage 2000, xiii). This is particularly

difficult when representing the figure of the Other as the

active subject within a text, which in turn undermines the

validity of this term, especially if the supposedly Othered

female protagonist is successfully able to voice her

experiences within a text. Furthermore, it may be impossible

to see oneself as an Other without somewhat effacing one's own

36


identity, thus ironically reiterating the very marginalisation

which highlighting woman as Other aims to address. So in order

to retain their sanity, Rhys's heroines learn to deny

themselves as Others, at least on a personal level, so that

they still possess some sense of themselves as active subject,

or 'I'; 'This is me, myself, who is crying. The other - how do

I know who the other is? She isn't me' (Rhys 2000, 154). On

the other hand, it has been argued that 'the aim of feminism

must be to break down the public/private split and the

binaries of masculinity/femininity, mind/body, reason/feeling

and begin to discover a language of politics which might

articulate a radically different vision of gender and society'

(Rice and Waugh 2010, 144). In equally scorning her male and

female characters, Rhys therefore goes some way to destroy the

boundaries between 'masculinty/feminity', suggesting that her

work still has the potential to be read as feminist. Moreover,

Rhys indeed appears to offer 'a radically different vision of

gender and society' in her deliberate intention 'to surround

her women with men who are largely as shallow, weak, spiteful

and vain as the stereotypical woman is supposed to be'

(Kennedy 2000, xi).

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This similar treatment of the sexes is perhaps

a better expression of feminism than a completely gynocentric

narrative in which women are exalted to the extent that the

binary of subject/other is merely shifted to female/male,

hence perpetuating gender inequality to the detriment of the

male. Similarly, by employing third-person narratives in

Quartet and After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, in which we get the male as

well as female perspective 'Rhys's multiple narrative voice

operates further to show that men, as well as women, play

predetermined roles, which in turn condition their response to

others' (Nebecker 1981, 151).

But, just because Rhys also

accommodates for a male viewpoint within her narratives, this

does not necessarily mean that her inclusion is an entirely

positive one. For example, one view that Rhys's male

characters frequently express is the 'male scorn of female

creativity', which arguably '[has] drastically affected the

self-images of women writers, negatively reinforcing those

messages of submissiveness conveyed by their angelic sisters'

(Gilbert and Gubar 1979, 157). Although these comments are

directed at her protagonists, none of whom claim to be

38


artists, they are nevertheless significant to the role of

women within Rhys's novels. Ultimately any scorn of female

creativity in the narratives must read as a self-reflexive

comment on Rhys's own role as an outsider, as a female writer.

For that reason, the most sensational blow against female

creativity comes from René, the male gigolo, a fellow

outsider or marginalised Other. Towards the end of Good Morning,

Midnight, René condemns Sophia's wish to be defined as 'a

cérébrale', an intellectual woman. ''A cérébrale', he says,

seriously 'is a woman who doesn't like men or need them...but

doesn't like women either', which in turn is a valid summary

of Rhys's own thoughts towards men and women throughout her

work. However he continues; 'The true cérébrale is a woman who

likes nothing and nobody except herself and her own damned

brain or what she thinks is her brain...In fact, a monster''

(Rhys 2000, 136). Hence, this connection between

the female intellectual and the 'monstrous' establishes not

the female as Other, but also the patriarchal reduction of

female intelligence and creativity. Rather than having pride

in possessing a great 'brain', the 'cérébrale' is led to

believe that her brain is 'dirty' or 'spoiled', because in

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light of what she has learnt about humanity, she has lost the

traditional female drive to care for any of them; 'You like

nothing, nobody. *Sauf ton sale cerveau. Alors, je te laisse

avec ton sale cerveau...(*Except your dirty brain. Then, I will leave you with

your dirty brain...).A monster...the monster that can only crawl'

(Rhys 2000, 157, my translation). As a result of Sophia's

defiance, she is left alone 'with her dirty brain' and

subjected to her own 'monstrous' self-torment as a punishment

for daring to defy the boundaries of her gender.

Therefore, in spite of Rhys's attempts to

redefine Otherness in her depiction of the female subject,

'there is no invention possible, whether it be philosophical or

poetic, without the presence in the inventing subject of an

abundance of the other...a springing forth of self that we did

not know about - our women, our monsters, our jackals, our

Arabs, our fellow-creatures, our fears' (Cixous 1975, 235).

So, whether they are seen as ghosts or animals, passive or

active, subject or object, 'The Rhys Woman' remains

indefinitely Other as the inventive creation of a writer who

herself led 'a life of female rebellion...a life whose

monstrous pen tells a terrible story' (Gilbert and Gubar 1979,

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161). Yet, Rhys demonstrates through the examples of her

'monstrous' protagonists that the life of the isolated female

outcast, or Other, is still a better alternative to being part

of a modern world in which men and women collude to form the

real monstrosity, the social machine; 'all that is left...an

enormous machine...It has innumerable flexible arms...at the

end of each arm is an eye, the eyelashes stiff with mascara'

(Rhys 2000, 156).

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Forms of Othering in the Novels of Jean Rhys

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