JEAN RHYS24 August 1890 – 14 May 1979

Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams. She was a mid-20th-century novelist

from the Caribbean island of Dominica.

She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.

Early life She was born in Roseau, Dominica, an island

of the British West Indies. She was educated in Dominica until the age of

16, when she was sent to England to live with her aunt.

As a child, she discovered her love for writing (diaries).

AlcoholismProstitution

AbandonmentAbortion

ContradictionFeminism 

“The little girl who wouldn't grow up, yet whose work depended, ultimately, upon

the maturity of experience.”

Writing career

Rhys used modified stream of consciousness to voice the experiences.

Rhys's greatest work was about a woman who is rejected by the man she loves and goes on to destroy herself.

"We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich, we can't all be lucky - and it would be so much less fun if we were... Some must cry so that others may be able to laugh the

more heartily.” 

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"She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and

uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion."

The Left Bank and Other Stories, 1927

Voyage in the Dark, 1934 Good Morning, Midnight,

1939 The Day They Burned

the Books, 1960 Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966 Penguin Modern Stories

1, 1969 (with others) My Day: Three Pieces,

1975 Sleep It Off Lady, 1976 Smile Please: An

Unfinished Autobiography, 1979

Rhys's life was profoundly marked by a sense of exile, loss, and alienation-dominant themes in her novels and short

stories. Despite critical acclaim at the end of her life, Rhys died in 1979 still doubting

the merit of her work.

Later years Characteristically, she remained

unimpressed by her belated ascent to literary fame, commenting, "It has come too late."

She died in Exeter on 14 May 1979, at the age of 88, before completing her autobiography, which she had begun dictating only months earlier.

In 1979, the incomplete text was published posthumously under the title, Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography.

“You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are “alone. We are alone in the most

beautiful place in the world.”

QUESTIONS

I USED TO LIVE HERE ONCE

1976

1.  Tell a short summary of the tale "I used to live here" from the denotative aspect.

2. Why does the story begin with such a long description of the stones? What do you think each stone refers to, in real life?

3. What guesses can you make about how the woman feels about this place? What her relationship to the place is like? 

4. How does the mood of the story change as the woman gets closer to the house?

5. Why do you think the children ignore the woman in the story?

6. How do you think the woman feels about the changes she sees in the place she's reaching?  

7. Do you think the woman is alive or not? Why? Tell examples from the story that support your thoughts.

8. What do you think the next fragment from the story refers to?

"Very fair children, as Europeans born in the West Indies so often are: as if

the white blood is asserting itself against all the odds."

9. What do you think she “knows for the first time” at the end of the story?

10. Is there any relationship between the story and Jean Rhys' life?