Jean Rhys - Writing Career

Writing Career

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 status as an exile 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'." It was Ford who suggested that she change her name from Ella Williams to Jean Rhys. 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, which, in fictionalised form, she later portrayed in her novel Quartet.

In Voyage in the Dark, published in 1934, she continued to portray the mistreated, rootless woman, in the shape of a young chorus girl who has grown up in the West Indies and now finds herself in England. In Good Morning, Midnight, published in 1939, Rhys used a modified stream of consciousness technique to portray the experiences 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 the public eye, she published Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966, after many years spent perfecting it. The book won the prestigious WH Smith Literary Award the following year. Rhys returned again to themes of dominance and dependence, through the relationship between a self-assured European man and a powerless woman. Diana Athill of publishing house André Deutsch chose to publish Wide Sargasso Sea, and, together with the writer Francis Wyndham she helped revive widespread interest in Rhys' work.