Literary Giants ~ Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys was born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams on August 24, 1890 in Roseau, Dominica. Her father, William Rees Williams was a Welsh doctor. Her mother, Minna Lockhart Williams was a 3rd generation Dominican Creole of Scottish descent. Rhys attended the Convent School until she turned 16 and then moved to England where she would live with her Aunt Clarice. She studied at the Perse School for girls, Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She had a hard time with the English language and that fact kept her an outsider. She tried working as a chorus girl in 1909 and 1910 but was unsuccessful. When her father died she was forced to leave her studies.

Rhys served as a volunteer worker in a canteen during WWI. She also worked briefly in a pension office. In 1919 she married journalist and song writer Jean Lenglet. They had a son who died at 3 weeks and a daughter. Rhys wrote short stories under the patronage of Ford Madox Ford, an English writer and had an affair with him. During this time in Paris she familiarized herself with modern art and literature. She became an alcoholic and the condition would be life long. Resentment of a patriarchal society and feeling of displacement that she felt would eventually form some of the most important themes in her work. Her first collection of stories was published in 1927. Her first novel, “Postures”, appeared in 1928. During the 1930’s she wrote “After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie”, “Voyage in the Dark” and “Good Morning, Midnight”. These 3 novels would bring her a degree of literary reputation and financial security that carried her through the next 15 years.

In the 1940’s and 1950’s Rhys went into a secluded retirement and was out of the public eye. In 1966 her masterpiece, “Wide Sargasso Sea”, was published and she emerged as a significant literary figure. The novel was written as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. For this novel she won the WH Smith Literary Award in 1967. Her writing often echoed her own tragic life experiences. She once declared, “I have only ever written about myself”.

Jean Rhys died on May 14, 1979, in Exeter, England. She was in the process of writing her autobiography. In 1979, after her death, the incomplete text appeared under the title “Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography”.