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

Product Information

The passage which introduces Serge flags up the date, the significance of Serge’s Jewish identity and the issue of representation as stereotype . Sasha’s angry that he was in her room, since she’s worried what other people in the hotel will think about their relationship. Likewise, Sasha’s relationship with her husband, Enno, the only man for whom she wears no mask, ends with him leaving her.

Good Morning, Midnight Study Guide | Literature Guide - LitCharts

Climax: René pins Sasha on the bed and attempts to rape her but then stops when she tells him he can take her money. She even privately admits, “This is the first time that I have seen him in a bright light, close by. The blood running from the wound in his head literally implies their bloodline and the damage inflicted to it. In Part One Sasha concludes her paranoid self-interrogation on the question, ‘What is she doing here, the stranger, the alien, the old one? The novel underscores the significance of what is not represented, and focusing on Sasha’s gaze at the Exhibition provides a positive if difficult way of reading her welcoming of the commis at the novel’s close.Featuring the comedic voices of Mark Watson, Josie Long and Daliso Chaponda, and created by award-winning producers Steven Rajam (Tim Key and Gogol’s Overcoat) and Benjamin Partridge (Beef and Dairy Network), this is an arts documentary series like no other. He has only been in the city for one night and is hoping to get a passport so he can travel to London, where he knows people who could help him. When the time comes, however, yet another bad experience in a restaurant—in which she hears somebody speaking disparagingly about her—ruins her mood, so she decides not to meet the Russian.

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

This passage illustrates the extent to which paranoia contaminates Sasha’s perception of the outside world.

Carr (1996), Emery (1990: 144-172) and Holden (1999) all consider the issue of an internalised fascism in this novel. Although early critics noted that Good Morning, Midnight was well written, they found its depressing storyline ultimately repellent. Page references are to the 2000 Penguin Classics edition and subsequent references to this text are given with the abbreviation GMM where necessary.

Good Morning, Midnight Character Analysis | LitCharts Good Morning, Midnight Character Analysis | LitCharts

On the contrary, it is a question of someone – if only one – with the necessary modesty not managing to know what everybody knows, and modestly denying what everybody is supposed to recognise. In Good Morning, Midnight Rhys created the powerfully modern portrait of Sophia Jansen, whose emancipation is far more painful and complicated than she could expect, but whose confession is flecked with triumph and elation. Shapiro Annual Lecture, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Centre for Advanced Holocaust Studies, < http://www.Although she is self-conscious about what the other boarders will think of a man in her room, she invites René in, and he invites her to dinner that evening to celebrate his new good fortune. She sees him in the hall the next morning, and he seems angry about how she treated him the night before. Nicolas collects the money on Serge’s behalf later that evening and, over drinks, tells Sasha that he believes Serge to be mad. In fact, by deciding to visit the French capital again, she dives head-first into the pool of her memories regarding the earlier Paris visit. The Exposition inadvertently laid out in visual terms the human propensity for self-deception, and our predisposition to accept (and enjoy) the discrepancy between reality and the image of reality with which we are confronted so long as we gain something in so doing.