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

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Figure 1: The view by day of the German and Soviet pavilions in Paris, 1937. The area they flank was, and still is, named Place de Varsovie. By permission of the Bureau International des Expositions. Paris, the city of light, goes out modestly, giving way to shabby hotel rooms and superficial descriptions of dead, empty streets where soulless people roam without direction. How long ago was it? Now, everything is a blank in my head—years, days, hours, everything is a blank in my head. How long ago was it? I don’t know.

Good Morning, Midnight An Exhibition of Blind Spots in Good Morning, Midnight

But she has armour: her cynical attitude, her devil-may-care façade that can usually be counted on to carry her through at least a bit of life’s insults, laughter, snide remarks – the easy things, a little hunger, lousy weather, a look from a man (or woman), something said under the breath but quite loud enough to be heard. And there’s always crying. She hates crying but so often it’s all she can do, it’s the only way of facing what can’t be faced when the armour is not there and the drink won’t mask the dark … I think: ‘Is it the blue dressing-gown, or the white one? That’s very important. I must find out—it’s very important.’ Rhys fans should go for Good Morning, Midnight or a group of her astonishing stories (I’d suggest Vienne, Till September Petronella, and Tigers Are Better-Looking.) But those new to Rhys will enjoy discussing Wide Sargasso Sea, the heartbreaking prequel to Jane Eyre which was published in 1966. Rhys was 76 and had almost given up hope of literary recognition until it won the WH Smith literary award and she was propelled into the limelight. Set in Jamaica and on another unnamed Caribbean island, Sargasso draws on Rhys’s intense memories of Dominica, where she told friends that she wanted to be buried, “under a flamboyant tree”. And that – if you really want to understand what made Jean Rhys the great writer she would become – is where to go and look for her. In the present, Sasha goes to the Luxembourg Gardens the day after she was supposed to meet the Russian. Funnily enough, she runs into the other Russian man, who is clearly fond of her. His name is Delmar, and he’s a very kind, pensive man who believes in simply taking life “as it comes.” He also senses that Sasha is lonely and says that he, too, used to feel isolated and alone—until, that is, he started forcing himself to be social. Thinking companionship will also do Sasha some good, he arranges to introduce her the following day to a painter friend of his named Serge.

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. These are words spoken with truth and clarity. They’re simple and honest. And not for a single moment in the novel did I doubt them, not for a single moment did I conceive that there could be an alternative ending. I’m not going to sugar coat it for you: this isn’t a nice novel. There is very little in the way of redemptive themes, and the motif of freedom is only fully achieved through the ultimate rejection of human happiness and interpersonal relationships. Her gaze at the commis makes sense as an encounter with nonrecognition, with that which cannot be thought, but which ‘perplexes’ the soul and ‘forces it to pose a problem’ (DR: 176). A significant aspect of Good Morning, Midnight is that this perplexity does not just concern the protagonist: it is the novel's insistence and it concerns the reader, how we see, how we read and how we think. But I don’t believe things change much really; you only think they do. It seems to me that things repeat themselves over and over again.”

Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys - BBC

In his famous early poem, Eliot writes of man’s penchant for hiding behind masks of his own making. In her essay, “The Self Impersonation In World Literature,” Dr. Wendy Doniger confirms Eliot’s notion and argues that the masks people wear are not so far removed from the true face that lies beneath. When she got home on the 25th, her tenants, Mr & Mrs Besant, were lurking in the hallway (they rented the upstairs rooms). According to Jean he said

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I’m making this sound very depressing and of course it isn’t a light comedy, but there is no wallowing in self pity. It is though a masterly study of the human condition and Rhys is a sharp and perceptive observer of relationships between men and women and is very good at setting mood. Her everyday descriptions are beautifully observed. I had heard of this author from her well-known book Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel and a feminist response to Jane Eyre’s ‘crazy woman in the attic.’ Although I have not read that book I decided to give this one a try. Rhys, then, is the anti-Miller. She’s a gigantic but necessary buzzkill. Where Miller is all about acquisition—of books, women, experiences—Rhys is all about loss. Her fictional alter ego is slowly losing everything: her looks, her faith in humanity, her will to live. There’s no self-pity; just the bitter resignation of someone who, out of pure disgust, has decided to drink herself to death. You worked as a mannequin?’ Down and up his eyes go, up and down. ‘How long ago was this?’ he says.