Jean Rhys: The West Indian Novels

Making use of the unpublished manuscripts and biographical sources of Jean Rhys as well as the published works, this book analyzes the cultural, historical and family influences on the Dominican-born author. Most notable of the unpublished works is “The Black Exercise Book”, a private journal Rhys kept in the 1930s, which helps to locate the sources of alienation, despair and self-destroying sexuality that were central to the author’s life and her literary efforts. Here O’Connor finds important artistic and personal reasons for Rhys’s perpetuation of the myth regarding her homeland, and reveals the importance of place in her work.