Good Morning, Midnight: Jean Rhys (Penguin Modern Classics)

Product Information

Could she have had a happy life? Read this: From 1960, and for the rest of her life, Rhys lived in Cheriton Fitzpaine, a small village in Devon that she once described as "a dull spot which even drink can't enliven much". Characteristically she remained unimpressed by her belated ascent to literary fame (from The Wide Sargasso Sea), commenting, "It has come too late." In an interview shortly before her death she questioned whether any novelist, not least herself, could ever be happy for any length of time. She said: "If I could choose I would rather be happy than write ... if I could live my life all over again, and choose ...".

Money. Every care in the world centers on money, swirls around money like a whirlpool. She borrows money from friends, some give her money out of exasperation or kindness or … whatever. Rhys' representation of the Underground as a fluid space of memory challenges Dostoevsky's view of the subject as split from his body, from his language and from the world of others"Apparantly at the time of publication, the critics praised the writing of this book, but said that it was unenjoyable due to its depressing subject matter. However, I think that it was an incredibly brave text to release at the time (1939) for it painted a woman's sexuality in a very frank way, and didn't shy away from difficult subjects. We see her drinking alone in bars, going out with different men (including a gigolo), and generally come to terms with her existence as a solitary woman, and I appreciated that vision created by Rhys. The next day, Sasha goes with Delmar to meet Serge, who dances wildly in his apartment full of art. She has a great time but unexpectedly starts crying. She’s embarrassed, but Serge assures her that it’s very human to cry. Despite their pleasant and reassuring conversation, though, it soon becomes clear that Serge is mainly interested in getting Sasha to buy one of his paintings—and yet, when she says she doesn’t have the money on her at the moment, he says she can have a painting for free. But she insists upon paying him, so they plan to meet later that day so she can give him the cash.

Wisdom would probably consist in finding some middle path between these two poles of egotism, but if I had to choose, I guess I’d take Rhys’s route. I mean, I have no desire to end up a depressive alcoholic in a rented room—though that’s a definite possibility at this point—but that does seem a marginally better fate than becoming a priapic fifty-year-old pontificating about Nietzsche to his cronies. The language is simple and harsh, the protagonist’s thoughts are honest and direct, as when you decide you don’t care whether you live or die, sugarcoating is not needed anymore. Did you see her? Coming in here drunk and filthy and with a man to boot? I'm surprised she had the cheek to show her face.It is not just the loneliness, it’s the inability to pull oneself out of it, of making nothing out of her youth, of pouring out her existence into the vapidness of the Parisian cafes, seedy hotel rooms. Of being the failed participant of her own life. Her life which is splattered on those forgetful streets, and bars where everyone is cruel, everyone disapproves. She is the witness of her dissolution. And how hard she tries to sink in her invisibility, the muteness of her self. But think how hard I try and how seldom I dare. Think and have a bit of pity. That is if you ever think you apes which I doubt. What is it one looks for in others when one is that lonely? How differently and acutely observant and intuitive does that make a person? And how distrustful! She knows there is something in her that makes them see through her. Is it the sadness, the compliance, the vulnerability? It makes them so hateful, so pitiless. But there is no self-pity in Sasha Jensen, but a terrible ache, a yearning inside. It is something that can never be filled for its moment of birth is already over. Mental illness? Depression? Alcoholism? What shelf should I put this under? Bleak? All in all, not a pretty story, but fascinating in its way, fast-paced, written in a stream-of-consciousness format. Its deep psychological insight kept my attention all the way through. A disaffected, thirty-something guy abandons his wife, moves to Paris and sleeps with some prostitutes. His name is Henry Miller and the book is called Tropic of Cancer. Jean Rhys was struggling with depression herself, so her works are partly autobiographical and represent the condition very accurately.

God, it’s funny, being a woman! And the other one – the one behind the bar – is she going to giggle or to say something about me in a voice loud enough for me to hear? That’s the way she’s feeling.I had some thoughts before hand this would turn out to have a strong feminist viewpoint, and it does to some extent, only her women are more helpless and sad rather than angry or militant, and there is no poisoned chalice towards men, with her rants feeling aimed more internally. Sasha does have a saving grace though, that being humour, her willingness to see the comedy, even absurdity, in the most bitter memories and humiliating encounters, and there would be many of them.