Back in the 1960s when my Bronte mania started, Jean Rhys published The Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel to Jane Eyre. I remember being wildly excited at this but then profoundly disappointed at what I found when I got my hands on a copy. As a teenager I had been expecting something totally different and I have written about this in an earlier post here.
After reading the Wide Sargasso Sea, I then got hold of her other books to see if they were more to my taste. Her publishers had done what all good publishers do when they have an unexpected hit on their hands, they pulled up all of Jean's out of print books and reissued them on the back of the latest success. Before WSS, Jean Rhys had not had anything published for some thirty years, but suddenly she was the flavour of the month, the critics marvelled at her modernistic style of writing and went into raptures at her depiction of the life of her heroines in pre-war Paris, the smoking and drinking in seedy bars knocking back the absinthe and having sex with indiscriminate partners. I remember finding it all frightfully sophisticated as a 16 year old and intriguing, but my main feeling was one of profound irritation at the listless heroine who drifted through all these stories. No matter what her name was or what she did, she was the same person, so devoid of any get up and go that the made the heroines of Anita Brookner (whose writing I discovered later on in life) appear positively lively and forceful. it crossed my mind at the time that surely all of these eponymous heroines must be Jean herself and having read this biography, it appears that this indeed was the case.
This book by Lilian Pizzichini dropped through my letter box one day this week, I picked it up and that was it, I then spent the rest of the day totally fascinated and though I had to take a break every now and then from the unrelenting misery which seemed to be Jean's lot, I kept going back to it. The style draws you in and I have a feeling that even if the reader knew nothing about the subject you and I would still read it as it it just a darn good piece of writing. The author obviously has great sympathy for her subject, though every now and then I thought I detected a hint that the author was slightly losing patience with Jean.
Jean was born in Dominica and it would appear that the languidity and apathy and lack of positive action in any way, were inherent in her as a child. Her mother Minna already had three other children when Jean was born and by the time she was five, her mother was pregnant again. She had very little time to spare for such an unrewarding child who needed understanding and patience, and Jean was handed over to the the care of her nurse Meta "who couldn't bear the sight of me". She told Jean tales of witchcraft and black magic and treated her with a casual cruelty which seemed to go totally unnoticed by her parents.
Later on as she headed towards puberty, she was abused by an older man who spent hours with her making her feel loved and desired, even though it filled her with guilt "Mr Howard was in his seventies, so he must be like a grandfather, and she must do as he said. He was abusing her but she did not know this. What she did know was that he knew she was not a good girl otherwise he would not have said these things to her". This unhealthy relationship was eventually noticed and stopped but not before Jean's self esteem had been further damaged and had been told by Mrs Howard "you are a wicked girl and you will be punished".
My copy of The Blue Hour is bristling with yellow post it notes which I used to mark up a sentence or paragraph that I found significant (I will not deface a book with pencil notes) and which I wish to use when reviewing, but there are so many of them that I cannot use them all. I will just reproduce some lines from this book that struck me as I read and which will, I hope, give you a clue or two to Jean's character:
"She only felt alive when she was anxious"
"She was too washed up and desperate...Jean did not mind too much being the subject of Violet's disapproval. She was used to it"
"Implicitly she asked to be rescued; at the very least she wanted special treatment"
After the arrest of her first husband for fraud: "As usual she had no money and no idea what to do"
Of her second husband: "Leslie was the latest in a long line of rescuers and she turned to him with eager gratitude...she could feel safe with him, she lay in bed all morning and got up when she felt like it"
Jean's life was one of drift. She seemed to have no direction, no control of her own destiny and each time she was in trouble she waited for somebody to rescue her, and somebody always did. Not only did she appear to take all this for granted, but she repaid this love and friendship with resentment and anger and her second husband, Leslie, suffered physical abuse at her hands as by this time she was an alcoholic spending most of her days in a drunken stupor.
She had two children, her first died just a few weeks old,and it comes as no surprise to find when she had her second, a daughter, she was an inadequate mother and unable to care for Maryvonne who, fortunately seems to have been a daughter of strong personality and extremely capable. She chose to spend her life with her father, from whom Jean was now estranged, and went back to be with him in Holland even though the German invasion was threatened. She became a member of the Resistance and displayed great courage throughout the Second World War. Jean "sat out the war".
Yet they seemed to have a relationship of sorts. The small excerpts of letters used here show a different side to Jean and she wrote to Maryvonne regarding the Wide Sargasso Sea "If I could finish it before I peg out or really turn into some fungus or other! I think of calling it the First Mrs Rochester with profound apologies to Charlotte Bronte and a deep curtsey too. I suppose that won't do (I'm supposing that you have studied Jane Eyre like a good girl)". I see these letters have been published and I must see if I can get hold of them next time I visit the library as this glimpse of Jean has made me want to find out if I can like her a little better.
On reading this post back, I fear I have made Jean Rhys sound a really ghastly and unlovable person, but I don't think she can be despite her dreadful behaviour. Even when she was old and alone and behaved badly, her friends stuck by her even though ingratitude seemed to be their reward so obviously they could see something that made them hang on in there. I remember reading interviews with Jean when the book was published and after the others were reissued and a wonderful photo of her with a fag in one hand and a glass in the other, looking raffish and outrageous, but after reading this biography, one can see it was all a front to hide her fright and despair.
"Whenever she was in crisis, she always found her inner peace - the bottom of the abyss was where she belonged, after all she was safe there, no one could push her down any further"
And I think it is because of this despairing realisation on her part and the knowledge that the reader has gained of her misery and chronic inability to be happy that, in the end, made her friends stay by her and also made me feel more gentle towards her.
This is a simply marvellous biography and though I was irritated and infuriated at regular intervals throughout my reading and kept wanting Jean to Get a Grip, I found The Blue Hour unputdownable and it is going on my list of Books for 2009, the first non-fiction contender.
Wonderful stuff.
