Colonialism and the Modernist Moment in the Early Novels of Jean Rhys (Routledge Series) Book

Colonial Rys: The Modernist Period presents Jean Rhys as an insightful colonial observer of the European modernist modernist moment, demonstrating that there is significant colonial content in all of her major early works, not only in the single, obviously colonial novel of the period. Whereas previous colonial studies focus more strictly on matters of style, such as Rhys's dialogism, in establishing the coloniality of what are called--in contradistinction to her "Caribbean"novels--her "European" novels, this study brings to light highly developed colonial polemics that are integral to the European texts, shaping their stories and plots. This reassessment of Rhys's European novels, which is based on close readings of the colonial allusions and contexts of the texts, points to a connection between them and the colonial novel of the period, namely that each of them addresses in some way the implications of colonial and imperial history, most particularly in terms of European culture and society. In arguing that Rhys is a keen diagnostician of and commentator on Euromodernist culture, this book points to a new dimension of her early writing, aligning her Conrad and Joyce as a significant colonial voice of Modernism, and making it possible to say, finally, that all of Rhys's early novels are vital precursors of Wide Sargasso Sea, that there is an unbroken colonial continuum in Rhys's writing from its beginning to its end.Read More