The Worlding of Jean Rhys

(Hardback)

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Best known as the author of Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys continues to draw growing amounts of popular and scholarly attention. This book explores Rhys's sense of world, the cross-cultural and the international in her novels, stories, and autobiographical writing. The volume situates Rhys's writing in relation to the Dominican cultural production with which she was familiar, to Rhys's family's history on the island, and to European ethnographic discourses about white creole people. Special attention is given to the political and ethical locations of Rhys's authorial and narrative voices with respect to discourses of empire, gender, sex, race, class, ethnicity, and desire. The book demonstrates that an historical reading of Rhys's work poses questions for a number of current theoretical approaches. Where and how does Jean Rhys write herself, her fiction, and her characters into history To address this question, Sue Thomas has conducted wide-ranging primary and original research to elucidate Rhys's sense of world, the cross-cultural and the international in her novels, stories, and autobiographical writing. She situates Rhys's writing in relation to the Dominican cultural production and traffic with which she was familiar, to Rhys's family's history on the island, and to European ethnographic discourses about white creole people. In her reading of Rhys's fiction and autobiographical texts she analyzes the political and ethical locations of Rhys's authorial and narrative voices with respect to discourses of empire, gender, sex, race, class, ethnicity, and desire that shaped Rhys's sense of the materiality of the world. In doing so, Thomas draws out new dimensions of the racial, ethnic, and sexual formation of Rhys's modernism. As a result, she demonstrates that an historical reading of Rhys's work poses questions for a number of current theoretical approaches.

Reviews

"Again and again, this book sheds new light on Rhys's novels and stories by revealing and analysing the intertexts with which she was in dialogue--moral panics around prostitution in England and obeah in the West Indies, modernist primitivism and ethnographic discourses around creoleness. What emerges, finally, is an extraordinary rich picture of Rhys's writing. No-one has better situated that writing than Sue Thomas; and no-one has better analysed its dense particularities. The Worlding of Jean Rhys is a real landmark in the study of one of the twentieth century's most distinctive writers."-Peter Hulme Professor of Literature University of Essex
"In a compelling and meticulous analysis of previously unexplored elements of Rhy's work and its social, cultural, and psychic sources, Sue Thomas illuminates a wealth of new material. Bracing historical researach and a vivid, subtle narrative make The Worlding of Jean Rhys fascinating, provocative, and essential reading for all Rhys scholars."-Nora Gaines Founding EditorJean Rhys Review
"The author addresses gaps in previous Rhys scholarship.... [and] provides a careful re-creation of each [historical] event or context and demonstrates its relationship to Rhys's texts.... Recommended for all undergraduate and graduate collections."-Choice
[Thomas's] sense of historical and cultural context is very astute, and she is not afraid to make a bold connection....Thomas's book is essential reading. It is highly informative, scrupulous, intellectually engaging and willing to challenge and debate--in short, it is an extremely rewarding example of scholarly writing at its best and will greatly benefit every serious reader and scholar of Rhys.-THe Caribbean Writer
The author addresses gaps in previous Rhys scholarship.... [and] provides a careful re-creation of each [historical] event or context and demonstrates its relationship to Rhys's texts.... Recommended for all undergraduate and graduate collections.-Choice
"Thomas's sense of historical and cultural context is very astute, and she is not afraid to make a bold connection....Thomas's book is essential reading. It is highly informative, scrupulous, intellectually engaging and willing to challenge and debate--in short, it is an extremely rewarding example of scholarly writing at its best and will greatly benefit every serious reader and scholar of Rhys."-THe Caribbean Writer
"[Thomas's] sense of historical and cultural context is very astute, and she is not afraid to make a bold connection....Thomas's book is essential reading. It is highly informative, scrupulous, intellectually engaging and willing to challenge and debate--in short, it is an extremely rewarding example of scholarly writing at its best and will greatly benefit every serious reader and scholar of Rhys."-THe Caribbean Writer

Author Bio

SUE THOMAS is Senior Lecturer in English at La Trobe University. She has published extensively on Jean Rhys, late nineteenth- and twentieth-century women's writing, feminist theory, postcolonial writers, and Victorian and Edwardian periodicals. She is a member of the editorial boards of Jean Rhys Review, Australasian Victorian Studies Journal, and Meridian, and an advisory editor of New Literatures Review: Decolonising Literatures.