Jean Rhys (24 August 1890 – 14 May 1979), born Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, was a mid 20th-century novelist from Dominica. Educated from the age of 16 in Great Britain, she is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), written as a "prequel" to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.^[1]

Early life[link]

Rhys was born in Roseau, Dominica. Her father, William Rees Williams, was a Welsh doctor and her mother, Minna Williams, was a third-generation Dominican Creole of Scots ancestry.

Rhys was educated at the Convent School and moved to England when she was sixteen, sent there to live with her aunt Clarice. She attended the Perse School for Girls in Cambridge^[2], where she was mocked because of her accent and outsider status. She also spent two terms at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in 1909. The instructors at RADA despaired of Rhys being able to speak what they considered "proper English" and advised her father to take her away. Unable to train as an actress and refusing to return to the Caribbean as her parents wished, she worked with varied success as a chorus girl, adopting the names Vivienne, Emma or Ella Gray.^[3]

After her father died in 1910, Rhys drifted into the demimonde. Having fallen in love with a wealthy stockbroker, Lancelot Grey Hugh ("Lancey") Smith (1870–1941), she became his mistress. Although Smith was a bachelor, he did not offer to marry Rhys and their affair ended within two years. He continued to be an occasional source of financial help. Distraught both by the end of the affair and by the experience of a near-fatal abortion (not Smith's child), Rhys began writing an account which became the basis of her novel Voyage In The Dark.^[3] In need of money, in 1913 she posed nude for an artist in Britain, probably Dublin-born William Orpen.

During World War I, Rhys served as a volunteer worker in a soldiers' canteen. In 1918 she worked in a pension office.

Marriage and family[link]

In 1919 Rhys married the French-Dutch journalist, spy and songwriter Willem Johan Marie (Jean) Lenglet, the first of her three husbands.^[3] She lived with him from 1920; they wandered through Europe, living mainly in London, Paris and Vienna. They had two children, a son who died young and a daughter. They divorced in 1933.

The next year she married Leslie Tilden-Smith, an editor. They moved to Devon in 1939, where she lived for many years. He died in 1945.

Two years later, in 1947 Rhys married Max Hamer, a solicitor and cousin to Tilden-Smith. He spent much of their marriage in jail. He died in 1966.^[4]

Writing career[link]

In 1924 Rhys' work was introduced to the English writer Ford Madox Ford. They met in Paris, and Rhys thereafter wrote short stories under his patronage. Ford praised her "singular instinct for form" and recognised that her outsider status gave her a unique viewpoint. "Coming from the West Indies, he declared, ‘with a terrifying insight and … passion for stating the case of the underdog, she has let her pen loose on the Left Banks of the Old World'."^[3] At that time her husband was in jail for eight months for what Rhys described as currency irregularities: Rhys moved in with Ford and his longtime partner, Stella Bowen. An affair with Ford quickly ensued.

In Voyage in the Dark, published in 1934, she continued to portray the mistreated, rootless woman. In Good Morning, Midnight, published in 1939, Rhys used a modified stream of consciousness technique to portray the consciousness of an aging woman.

In the 1940s, Rhys all but disappeared from public view, eventually being traced to Landboat Bungalows, Cheriton Fitzpaine, in Devon. After her absence from writing and the public eye, she published Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966. Wide Sargasso Sea won the prestigious WH Smith Literary Award in 1967. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys returned again to the theme of dominance and dependence, through the relationship between a self-assured European man and a powerless woman. Diana Athill of André Deutsch's publishing house was responsible for choosing to publish Wide Sargasso Sea, and she helped revive widespread interest in Rhys' work.

Later years[link]

In a brief interview shortly before her death, Rhys questioned whether any novelist, not least herself, could ever be happy for any length of time. She said that: "If I could choose I would rather be happy than write ... If I could live my life all over again, and choose ... ".^[5] She died in Exeter on 14 May 1979 before completing her autobiography. In 1979, the incomplete text appeared posthumously under the title Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography.

Selected bibliography[link]

• The Left Bank and Other Stories, 1927
• Postures, 1928 (released as Quartet, 1929)
• After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, 1931
• Voyage in the Dark, 1934
• Good Morning, Midnight, 1939
• The Day They Burnt the Books, 1960
• Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966
• Tigers Are Better-Looking: With a Selection from 'The Left Bank' , 1968
• Penguin Modern Stories 1, 1969 (with others)
• My Day: Three Pieces, 1975
• Sleep It Off Lady, 1976
• Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography, 1979
• Jean Rhys Letters 1931–1966, 1984
• Early Novels, 1984
• The Complete Novels, 1985
• Tales of the Wide Caribbean, 1985
• The Collected Short Stories, 1987

Archives[link]

Rhys's collected papers and ephemera are housed in the University of Tulsa's McFarlin Library.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Elizabeth Vreeland (Fall 1979). "Jean Rhys, The Art of Fiction No. 64". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3380/the-art-of-fiction-no-64-jean-rhys. 
• Literary Encyclopedia biography
• Jean Rhys Biography page
• Jean Rhys bio, with particular reference to her time in Dominica
• "Jean Rhys Archive", University of Tulsa McFarlin Library, Department of Special Collections and University Archives
• Joseph, Margaret Paul. Caliban in Exile: The Outsider in Caribbean Fiction. Greenwood Press, 1992.