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'Back & Down': Narrative, Psychoanalysis, and Progress in the Novels of Jean Rhys

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'Back & Down': Narrative, Psychoanalysis, and Progress in the Novels of Jean Rhys ‘Back & Down’: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, and Progress in the Novels of Jean Rhys by J. Kathryn Cook A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Psychoanalytic Studies University College London University of London 2016 1 DECLARATION I, J. Kathryn Cook, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. J. Kathryn Cook, 23 June 2016 2 ABSTRACT The aim of this thesis is to examine Jean Rhys’s novels from a psychoanalytic perspective. While Rhys’s fiction is undeniably autobiographically informed, the intent of this study is to explore the life of the fiction rather than that of its author. Each of Rhys’s five novels – Quartet (1929), After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1931), Voyage in the Dark (1934), Good Morning, Midnight (1939), and Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) – chronicles the suffering, trauma, and loss experienced by its respective protagonist. As such, Rhys's oeuvre is imbued with a sense of fragmentation that renders her work particularly rich literary material for psychoanalytic criticism, though to date little has been applied to her works. Looking at each of the author's five individual novels as connected in terms of the issues they explore, this thesis tracks the development of Rhys's works as she systematically explores issues of trauma, maternity, desire, and loss through her characters. My argument is that Rhys’s novels represent a literary and psychological progressions inwards, in which her heroines increasingly tolerate psychological spaces infused with strife, demonstrate self-awareness, and develop empathy; my thesis will explore how and by what means this process occurs. Drawing on existing criticism on Rhys’s work, which consists predominantly of feminist and postcolonial studies, I will look at the issues and themes of Rhys’s oeuvre in conjunction with the psychoanalytic works and theories of Freud and Lacan. This study aims to be an interdisciplinary examination of Rhys’s texts and hopes to offer a potentially valuable and largely unexplored way of reading and appreciating her work. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to extend my most sincere gratitude to both of my PhD advisors, Lionel Bailly and Juliet Mitchell, whose guidance, expertise, enthusiasm, and encouragement made this endeavour not only possible but enjoyable. The freedom they allowed me in determining the parameters of my dissertation and the patience they demonstrated as I painstakingly worked out what these were is indicative not only their selflessness as supervisors, but of their kindness and compassion as individuals. I am also eternally indebted to Greg Dart, who brought After Leaving Mr Mackenzie to my attention and whose shared interest in Rhys’s work first inspired this thesis. I could not have asked for a better initiation into Rhys’s world than the one he provided. I would also like to thank my examiners, Patrick Luyten and Patricia Moran. Their insightful feedback and kind approach made my viva such a joy and this work is infinitely better for their input and counsel. I am beyond grateful to Diana Athill and Diana Melly for generously sharing with me their personal experiences and memories of Rhys and for providing a more grounded and tangible understanding of a very complicated author. I am thankful to both Brian Clack and Manuel Batsch for their comments and suggestions; their sharp and discerning minds have encouraged me to think beyond that which feels safe and I am forever appreciative of their time and feedback. I am also profoundly grateful for my singularly gifted classmates and friends, who over the course of four years have shared much needed commiseration, countless coffees, even countlesser bottles of wine, sound advice, and innumerable brilliant ideas. Eliza Cubit, in particular, made the final stages of the writing process bearable and I could not have finished without her company. I am also grateful to Olive Burke, whose true understanding and application of psychoanalysis added a different dimension to my thesis and my understanding of the practice of analysis. Your quiet brilliance and support is embedded throughout these pages. My unending, heartfelt gratitude I also owe to my mom, whose limitless love and support in all my pursuits has made yet another impossible degree possible. And finally to my partner, Charlie, who suffered alongside me as I made sense of something I never thought I would fully understand. Without him, I would have been lost in Rhys's mad world; he more than anyone is responsible for seeing this work to its completion. 4 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 6 METHOD 31 CHAPTER ONE: Quartet 54 CHAPTER TWO: After Leaving Mr Mackenzie 93 CHAPTER THREE: Voyage in the Dark 138 CHAPTER FOUR: Good Morning, Midnight 182 CHAPTER FIVE: Wide Sargasso Sea 231 CONCLUSION 294 BIBLIOGRAPHY 301 5 INTRODUCTION At the end one is forced back – away from other people away from books away from trees flowers & grass back & down. They say madness that way to madness no the ness is to resist the most powerful. With this eye I see & no other. I cannot see with other people’s eyes. With my own eyes I must see. I cannot help what I see. –Jean Rhys1 This quote, taken from one of Jean Rhys’s personal notebooks, highlights the importance of interior space that characterises Rhys’s approach to her highly personal oeuvre. The author’s five novels, Quartet (1929), After Leaving Mr Mackenzie (1931), Voyage in the Dark (1934), Good Morning, Midnight (1939), and Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) each explore the realms not only of physical and geographical spaces but also, and more importantly, internal, mental, and emotional spaces these novels’ characters occupy. In Rhys’s fiction, place is never simply geographical, nor is trajectory solely a matter of direction; both are complicated, often deeply layered concepts. It is therefore imperative not only to map the literal territories of Rhys’s narratives, but the deeper, internal, and psychological places her works explore: places that are ‘back & down’; places of ‘madness’; places, in other words, of the psyche. The premise of this thesis is that Rhys’s five novels are autobiographically informed narratives that track the progression of a capacity to tolerate these internal spaces, while developing self-awareness and an increased capacity for empathy. In order to explore this premise and illustrate the interiority of Rhys’s texts, this study will address the author’s five major works from a psychoanalytic perspective, with 1 Rhys, Jean, ‘Green Exercise Book, The Jean Rhys Collection’ (McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa). 6 particular attention to Freud’s primary texts and Lacan’s seminars. More specific methodological intentions regarding this approach, as well as existing psychoanalytic criticism on Rhys, will be outlined in the following chapter. The rationale for this approach, however, is best explicated by the aesthetics of the texts themselves. Linett suggests that the internally focused novels Rhys produced embody ‘a literary means by which to represent particular mental processes […]. In order to portray her protagonists' fragmented minds’.2 The result is a series of novels that ‘lay bare in brilliantly sketched […] detail their characters' mental lives’.3 Because Rhys’s narratives tend to focus on the interiority of her characters’ lives rather than their external worlds, her work – which Laura Frost notes repeatedly ‘stages vignettes with a staccato rhythm, non sequiturs, tonal disjunctions, inappropriate affect, a lack of narrative explanation or continuity’4 – has undergone harsh criticism by those who prefer more traditional, cohesive, and plot-driven narratives. What critics such as these find problematic, however – such as Rhys’s affinity for textual gaps, confused stream-of-consciousness narration, uncomfortable emotions, sordid realities, and ambiguous endings – are the same elements that make her work particularly appropriate for psychoanalytic literary criticism. Due to the autobiographical nature of Rhys’s narratives, it is necessary to address the question of who or what is being analysed within her oeuvre and useful to set explicit boundaries therein. Because it is often difficult to know where Rhys ends and her characters begin, critical studies have often conflated the two. This dynamic is further complicated by the fact that in her later life Rhys herself ‘constantly invoked her 2 Linett, Maren, ‘“New Words, New Everything”: Fragmentation and Trauma in Jean Rhys’, Twentieth Century Literature, 51 (2005), 437–66 (p. 438). 3 Ibid. 4 Frost, Laura, ‘The Impasse of Pleasure: Patrick Hamilton and Jean Rhys’, in The Problem with Pleasure: Modernism and Its Discontents (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), pp. 162–208 (p. 191). 7 characters to describe her own life, blending the latter with her fictions’.5 Rhys often said, both in her writing and in interviews, that she could not create without drawing from her life: ‘I can’t make things up, I can’t invent […] I just write about what happened. Not that my books are entirely my life – but almost’.6 Because Rhys only felt comfortable writing what she knew – and the only thing she truly felt she knew was herself7 – her fiction embodies aspects of her turbulent life, difficult relationships, and personal struggles. Despite the obvious and myriad similarities between Rhys and her characters, however, Elaine Savory warns against a pure conflation of author and fiction, which she argues can lead to an oversimplification of the texts. [W]hen the source is Rhys herself it is wise to remember that she created the narrative of her life […] as an ongoing fictional text. It was true in the sense of being honest in its interpretation, its reading, of her experience: it did not attempt to be literally faithful to small detail and to the shapelessness of actual life.
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