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After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie
“Lucid, exact, and swift.… An essential part of the [Rhys] record.” ―V. S. Naipaul, New York Review of Books Julia Martin is in Paris and at the end of her rope. Once beautiful, she was taken care of by men. Now, after being dropped by her latest lover, Mr. Mackenzie, Julia is running out of luck and chances. A visit to London to see her ailing mother might offer an opportunity to start over―but it also brings her face to face with her distrustful sister, Norah, who can’t help but feel that Julia has only changed for the worse in the years since they last saw one another. And it proves difficult to escape the desultory romantic entanglements of Paris when a suitor follows her to England. Nowhere is Jean Rhys’s talent for fully inhabiting the minds of her characters more apparent than in After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie , her masterful second novel. Rhys lays bare the desires and contradictions of the mercurial Julia, and all those trapped in her orbit, in this haunting depiction of life after the end of a tumultuous affair.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1930
About the author
Jean Rhys
64 books1,282 followersJean Rhys, CBE (born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams; 24 August 1890–14 May 1979) was a British novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica. From the age of 16, she mainly resided in England, where she was sent for her education. She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.
She moved to England at the age of 16 years in 1906 and worked unsuccessfully as a chorus girl. In the 1920s, she relocated to Europe, travelled as a Bohemian artist, and took up residence sporadically in Paris. During this period, Rhys, familiar with modern art and literature, lived near poverty and acquired the alcoholism that persisted throughout the rest of her life. Her experience of a patriarchal society and displacement during this period formed some of the most important themes in her work.
She moved to England at the age of 16 years in 1906 and worked unsuccessfully as a chorus girl. In the 1920s, she relocated to Europe, travelled as a Bohemian artist, and took up residence sporadically in Paris. During this period, Rhys, familiar with modern art and literature, lived near poverty and acquired the alcoholism that persisted throughout the rest of her life. Her experience of a patriarchal society and displacement during this period formed some of the most important themes in her work.
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August 18, 2022
Oh, Julia! Poor old Julia. Sweet Julia. Another sad and lonely and stressed female protagonist with hardly a penny to her name who I couldn't help but fall in love with. Or at least love to pity. My heart was fluttering like a butterfly and sinking like a stone. I wanted nothing more than to offer her a shoulder to cry on, a nice home-cooked meal (as I recall she hardly ate a thing) and a relaxing warm bath with some of those scented candles places around the edges to at least take her troubles away for a while. Make her feel wanted again.
From Paris to London and back again, low-spirited and needy Julia Martin who has no home and no friends to call upon is trudging through life with a lead weight tied around an ankle. Stuck in Paris, she has parted from her lover (Mr Mackenzie) and is hiding from the world in a hotel room with a book and a bottle waiting for the sore and unhappy feelings to pass. To make matters worse she is notified by his lawyer stating that her weekly allowance will be discontinued. On a whim, she decides to go back to London, hoping for some kind of enlightenment, where her mother and sister reside. But on return she finds her mother gravely ill, and her sister and other relatives hardly that welcoming, believing she is simply out to scrounge for money. Nobody can put her up, so it's the hotel life again. With just enough to get by.
Julia, like other Rhys heroines, is precariously lodged. Going from a shabby hotel in Bloomsbury before moving to a boarding house in Notting Hill. She hides in her room and hardly believes it is worth the effort to look for love and companionship in London. She does eventually have a couple of male admirers, but they only tend to offer her money, albeit not a lot, rather than true affection. It is not a city that is kind to women. Rhys obviously didn't think much of London during her time there, describing it as sinister and soulless, and that comes across in Julia before she travels back to Paris. London sexually, is a hygienic and respectable place, with the action taking place behind the firmly shut doors of family houses, from which Julia is barred, or furtive and under the cover of darkness. Mr Horsfield, one of Julia's temporary lovers, creeps up the stairs of her boarding house at night, tells her ecstatically that she has given him back his youth, but in the morning he is ashamed of his attraction to her and sneaks off leaving a cowardly note. Bastard.
I really liked this, it had a simple, easy to read, no excess fat prose similar to Hemingway, and when it comes to tragic female figures in literature, especially the lonely ones who drink alone, and wake up each each day hoping for a change in fortune, I'm just a sucker. Leaving Mr Mackenzie can certainly be seen as the sister piece to 'Good Morning, Midnight' and It's quite easy to be seduced into reading Rhys’s fictions autobiographically, as her protagonists in Good Morning, Midnight and this mirror Rhys to some to some extent. I also only recently found out that Rhys and Ford Maddox Ford had a fling in Paris back in the day, and that he helped in publishing her first collection of stories. Quite the Gentleman.
It took me a while to read her again, but so glad I did. Voyage in the Dark is up next.
From Paris to London and back again, low-spirited and needy Julia Martin who has no home and no friends to call upon is trudging through life with a lead weight tied around an ankle. Stuck in Paris, she has parted from her lover (Mr Mackenzie) and is hiding from the world in a hotel room with a book and a bottle waiting for the sore and unhappy feelings to pass. To make matters worse she is notified by his lawyer stating that her weekly allowance will be discontinued. On a whim, she decides to go back to London, hoping for some kind of enlightenment, where her mother and sister reside. But on return she finds her mother gravely ill, and her sister and other relatives hardly that welcoming, believing she is simply out to scrounge for money. Nobody can put her up, so it's the hotel life again. With just enough to get by.
Julia, like other Rhys heroines, is precariously lodged. Going from a shabby hotel in Bloomsbury before moving to a boarding house in Notting Hill. She hides in her room and hardly believes it is worth the effort to look for love and companionship in London. She does eventually have a couple of male admirers, but they only tend to offer her money, albeit not a lot, rather than true affection. It is not a city that is kind to women. Rhys obviously didn't think much of London during her time there, describing it as sinister and soulless, and that comes across in Julia before she travels back to Paris. London sexually, is a hygienic and respectable place, with the action taking place behind the firmly shut doors of family houses, from which Julia is barred, or furtive and under the cover of darkness. Mr Horsfield, one of Julia's temporary lovers, creeps up the stairs of her boarding house at night, tells her ecstatically that she has given him back his youth, but in the morning he is ashamed of his attraction to her and sneaks off leaving a cowardly note. Bastard.
I really liked this, it had a simple, easy to read, no excess fat prose similar to Hemingway, and when it comes to tragic female figures in literature, especially the lonely ones who drink alone, and wake up each each day hoping for a change in fortune, I'm just a sucker. Leaving Mr Mackenzie can certainly be seen as the sister piece to 'Good Morning, Midnight' and It's quite easy to be seduced into reading Rhys’s fictions autobiographically, as her protagonists in Good Morning, Midnight and this mirror Rhys to some to some extent. I also only recently found out that Rhys and Ford Maddox Ford had a fling in Paris back in the day, and that he helped in publishing her first collection of stories. Quite the Gentleman.
It took me a while to read her again, but so glad I did. Voyage in the Dark is up next.
July 2, 2019
A root canal would be easier.....
.....than express all my thoughts and feelings about my first *Jean Rhys* Book. “After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie”, is 191 pages long .....packed with more depth, than most books twice as long. It feels ‘modern’, .... yet it was written in 1931.
Gorgeous, easy, intimate literary reading,......is so deliciously satisfying!
I purchased a used paper book from Amazon. I wish there had been a kindle to be honest...but now that I’ve read this slim book- I’m glad I own it. I ENJOY HAVING THIS AS A PHYSICAL BOOK....I loved re-reading sentences over again....thinking about them from several points of view. Thinking of them equally with my heart and mind.
The small print was bright & easy on my eyes. I don’t need reading glasses yet - but I admit the kindle is usually ‘most’ comfortable for faster reading. But I didn’t want to read this fast anyway!
Lately, I’ve primarily been reading from my Kindle or listening to audiobooks… but I was clearly reminded the benefits - again - from ‘physical-book-reading’!!! There ‘are’ actually some advantages. And, I’m surprised- why?
THE CHARACTERS - in this novel - ARE STILL LINGERING IN MY HEAD .....
JULIA MARTIN - ( protagonists ) - and Jean Rhys -( author)....both are lingering in my thoughts. I found it fun to read up about about Jean Rhys.
The writing is INCREDIBLE....( not fancy or super sophisticated- but subtly brilliant). It’s mostly a simple story....one that would appeal to most readers who value character-driven stories.
....Julia Martin...is “in Paris and at the end of her rope”.
....Mr. Mackenzie was her latest lover. The affair had ended unpleasantly. He dropped her and gave her an allowance for a short time.
When we first meet Julia, she’s staying in a dingy hotel on the Quai des Grands Augustins. She thought it would be a good hotel to hide in. She planned on staying until the sore and cringing feelings subsided from Mr. Mackenzie.
Julia’s first landlady was hostile towards her. “The landlady disapproved of Julia’s habit of coming home at night accompanied by a bottle. A man, yes; a bottle, no”.
Julia felt safe when she was locked in her room. She read most of the time. “But on some days her monotonous life was made confused and frightening by her thoughts. Then she could not stay still. She was obliged to walk up and down the room consumed with hatred of the world and everybody in it — and especially Mr. Mackenzie. Often she would talk to herself as she walked up and down”.
Julie, was lonely, single, aging, beauty was fading, she needed money, and was depressed.
“She found pleasure in memories, as an old woman might have done. Her mind was a confusion of memory and imagination. It was always places that she thought of, not people. She would lie thinking of the dark shadows of houses in a street white with sunshine; or of trees with slender black branches and young green leaves, like the trees of a London Square in spring; or of a dark-purple sea, the sea of a chromo or of some tropical country that she had never seen”.
“Nowadays something had happened to her; she was tired. She hardly ever thought of men, or of love”.
“Her eyes gave her away. But her eyes and the deep circles under them you saw that she was a dreamer, that she was vulnerable — too vulnerable ever to make a success of a career of chance”.
“She made herself up elaborately and carefully; yet it was clear that what she was doing had long ceased to be a labour of love and had become partly a mechanical process, partly a substitute for the mask she would have liked to wear”.
Before leaving Paris, Julia meets an Englishman named Mr. Horsfield. He gives her money that she refused from Mr. Mackenzie.....and suggested she go to London.
They will meet up again - as does Julia with Mr. Mackenzie, again, too.
Once in London... Julia goes home to see her sick mother, her sister Nora, and her Uncle Griffiths. She is shunned and judge by everyone in her family.
As soon as Julia had money in her hands... she couldn’t wait to buy new clothes. Beauty - and the clothes on her body - were her weapons of power when she wasn’t petrified about being poor - ( as in not being taken care of by men with money to spend on her). Julia was extra aware and sensitive to style - class - and status - She felt more protected if she had that expensive look about her.
Funny - I’m comfortable in schmata-rag-type-clothes ....more than anything fancy.
I can’t help but wonder how many other women, besides Julia, the 1930’s, felt their beauty was their most powerful source of value. Pretty sad and depressing.
But .....I found it funny that Twitter canceled the Dalai Lama’s account over his sexist statement about female beauty today.
Back to this novel.....
I love this excerpt: ( makes me laugh and roll my eyes)...
“She thought: Of all the idiotic things I ever did, the most idiotic was selling my fur coat. She began bitterly to remember the coat that she had possessed. The sort that last forever, astrakhan, with a huge skunk collar. She had sold it at the time of her duel with Maitre Legros”.
“She told herself that if only she had the sense to keep a few things, this return need not have been quite so ignominious, quite so desolate. People thought twice before they were rude to anybody wearing a good fur coat; it was protective coloring, as it were”.
Most of the time I worried for Julia.
Other times, I wished her to grow a pair.
This is a terribly pitiful story.....but the writing is sooooo good.
This quote on the back of my book is an awesome way to describe this slim-jim novel:
“Seductively irresistible, like being mesmerized by a cobra....Sweet, intoxicating, melancholy..... exquisite torture..... but if it doesn’t kill you, it might make you stronger”. Ron Rosenbaum from the New Yorker.
MADE ME LAUGH....because it’s so accurate.
Three cheers for my first Jean Rhys book .....with the very eye-catching book cover.
.....than express all my thoughts and feelings about my first *Jean Rhys* Book. “After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie”, is 191 pages long .....packed with more depth, than most books twice as long. It feels ‘modern’, .... yet it was written in 1931.
Gorgeous, easy, intimate literary reading,......is so deliciously satisfying!
I purchased a used paper book from Amazon. I wish there had been a kindle to be honest...but now that I’ve read this slim book- I’m glad I own it. I ENJOY HAVING THIS AS A PHYSICAL BOOK....I loved re-reading sentences over again....thinking about them from several points of view. Thinking of them equally with my heart and mind.
The small print was bright & easy on my eyes. I don’t need reading glasses yet - but I admit the kindle is usually ‘most’ comfortable for faster reading. But I didn’t want to read this fast anyway!
Lately, I’ve primarily been reading from my Kindle or listening to audiobooks… but I was clearly reminded the benefits - again - from ‘physical-book-reading’!!! There ‘are’ actually some advantages. And, I’m surprised- why?
THE CHARACTERS - in this novel - ARE STILL LINGERING IN MY HEAD .....
JULIA MARTIN - ( protagonists ) - and Jean Rhys -( author)....both are lingering in my thoughts. I found it fun to read up about about Jean Rhys.
The writing is INCREDIBLE....( not fancy or super sophisticated- but subtly brilliant). It’s mostly a simple story....one that would appeal to most readers who value character-driven stories.
....Julia Martin...is “in Paris and at the end of her rope”.
....Mr. Mackenzie was her latest lover. The affair had ended unpleasantly. He dropped her and gave her an allowance for a short time.
When we first meet Julia, she’s staying in a dingy hotel on the Quai des Grands Augustins. She thought it would be a good hotel to hide in. She planned on staying until the sore and cringing feelings subsided from Mr. Mackenzie.
Julia’s first landlady was hostile towards her. “The landlady disapproved of Julia’s habit of coming home at night accompanied by a bottle. A man, yes; a bottle, no”.
Julia felt safe when she was locked in her room. She read most of the time. “But on some days her monotonous life was made confused and frightening by her thoughts. Then she could not stay still. She was obliged to walk up and down the room consumed with hatred of the world and everybody in it — and especially Mr. Mackenzie. Often she would talk to herself as she walked up and down”.
Julie, was lonely, single, aging, beauty was fading, she needed money, and was depressed.
“She found pleasure in memories, as an old woman might have done. Her mind was a confusion of memory and imagination. It was always places that she thought of, not people. She would lie thinking of the dark shadows of houses in a street white with sunshine; or of trees with slender black branches and young green leaves, like the trees of a London Square in spring; or of a dark-purple sea, the sea of a chromo or of some tropical country that she had never seen”.
“Nowadays something had happened to her; she was tired. She hardly ever thought of men, or of love”.
“Her eyes gave her away. But her eyes and the deep circles under them you saw that she was a dreamer, that she was vulnerable — too vulnerable ever to make a success of a career of chance”.
“She made herself up elaborately and carefully; yet it was clear that what she was doing had long ceased to be a labour of love and had become partly a mechanical process, partly a substitute for the mask she would have liked to wear”.
Before leaving Paris, Julia meets an Englishman named Mr. Horsfield. He gives her money that she refused from Mr. Mackenzie.....and suggested she go to London.
They will meet up again - as does Julia with Mr. Mackenzie, again, too.
Once in London... Julia goes home to see her sick mother, her sister Nora, and her Uncle Griffiths. She is shunned and judge by everyone in her family.
As soon as Julia had money in her hands... she couldn’t wait to buy new clothes. Beauty - and the clothes on her body - were her weapons of power when she wasn’t petrified about being poor - ( as in not being taken care of by men with money to spend on her). Julia was extra aware and sensitive to style - class - and status - She felt more protected if she had that expensive look about her.
Funny - I’m comfortable in schmata-rag-type-clothes ....more than anything fancy.
I can’t help but wonder how many other women, besides Julia, the 1930’s, felt their beauty was their most powerful source of value. Pretty sad and depressing.
But .....I found it funny that Twitter canceled the Dalai Lama’s account over his sexist statement about female beauty today.
Back to this novel.....
I love this excerpt: ( makes me laugh and roll my eyes)...
“She thought: Of all the idiotic things I ever did, the most idiotic was selling my fur coat. She began bitterly to remember the coat that she had possessed. The sort that last forever, astrakhan, with a huge skunk collar. She had sold it at the time of her duel with Maitre Legros”.
“She told herself that if only she had the sense to keep a few things, this return need not have been quite so ignominious, quite so desolate. People thought twice before they were rude to anybody wearing a good fur coat; it was protective coloring, as it were”.
Most of the time I worried for Julia.
Other times, I wished her to grow a pair.
This is a terribly pitiful story.....but the writing is sooooo good.
This quote on the back of my book is an awesome way to describe this slim-jim novel:
“Seductively irresistible, like being mesmerized by a cobra....Sweet, intoxicating, melancholy..... exquisite torture..... but if it doesn’t kill you, it might make you stronger”. Ron Rosenbaum from the New Yorker.
MADE ME LAUGH....because it’s so accurate.
Three cheers for my first Jean Rhys book .....with the very eye-catching book cover.
August 26, 2015
"It was the darkness that got you. It was heavy darkness, greasy and compelling. It made walls round you, and shut you in so that you felt you could not breathe. You wanted to beat at the darkness and shriek to be let out. And after a while you got used to it. Of course. And then you stopped believing that there was anything else anywhere.".
My third Rhys and I feel that her female protagonists aren't the most likeable characters but they are human so quite relatable.At least it's very easy to remember that they are human and to feel for what they're going through.
There was so much despair in this book and it was easy to spot the feminist threads. Julie, a woman who married to be free is trying hard to make it in Paris. Reliance on men,and fears of getting older and so on all make her think, "My life's like death. It's like being buried alive. It isn't fair, it isn't fair."
There always seems to be a feeling of impending doom in the book. This is a book of broken dreams, of disappointments, of unfairness, where the value of a woman is apparently on the decline after age 30. But it was a great book that had me transfixed enough to read in one sitting.
My third Rhys and I feel that her female protagonists aren't the most likeable characters but they are human so quite relatable.At least it's very easy to remember that they are human and to feel for what they're going through.
There was so much despair in this book and it was easy to spot the feminist threads. Julie, a woman who married to be free is trying hard to make it in Paris. Reliance on men,and fears of getting older and so on all make her think, "My life's like death. It's like being buried alive. It isn't fair, it isn't fair."
There always seems to be a feeling of impending doom in the book. This is a book of broken dreams, of disappointments, of unfairness, where the value of a woman is apparently on the decline after age 30. But it was a great book that had me transfixed enough to read in one sitting.
September 10, 2012
There she goes a little heartache; there she goes a little pain. Make no mistake, she sheds her skin like a snake, gonna walk the plank again...
I cannot stop reading Jean Rhys. This might not be such a wise decision as Ms. Rhys tends to wallow in her darkness a bit more than most, but what can I say? She speaks my language.
Shhhhhhhh.... Listen closely. Jean has something she'd like to say.
That's what this book feels like: it feels like Jean and I are sitting in some dark French cafe and she's telling very important truths in hushed tones through the smokey haze while I lean in and hang on her every word. She's sipping her Pernod and telling me all about loneliness and what it's like when beauty fades and how miserably she has allowed herself to be treated and how miserably she has treated others. (Of course she's speaking all of this through the thoughts of Julia, but I don't buy this "Julia" business for a second.)
Jean Rhys once said, "If I could choose I would rather be happy than write ... If I could live my life all over again, and choose ... " But you didn't choose happiness, Jean. No. You chose to write, and I for one am eternally grateful for your sacrifice. Because after one loses a child, the desire may be very strong to give up on life. But you, you may very well have given up on life, but you also wrote about it. And you wrote about it in such a way that everyone who reads your words feels your loss. We all feel your ache and your need, and guess what? We can relate.
Jean talks a lot about the sort of stuff a once beautiful woman tells herself as she ages. Not only does she tell us from the female perspective, but she gets inside the heads of the men in her life as well. Or is she merely projecting? Hmmm.... "It was curious to speculate about the life of a woman like that and to wonder what she appeared to herself to be - when she looked in the glass for instance. Because of course, she must have some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living."
It's obvious to me that Jean Rhys, once a beautiful woman...
... spent a great deal of time and mental energy ruminating about every new crease, every grey hair, every slight change of appearance. David Foster Wallace once said,"Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you." If only Jean could have heard that, she might have saved herself a lot of despair. I wanted to smash those damn mirrors she kept looking into and tell her: your worth cannot be defined by your looks, lady. You are a gift. You are special. Turn away from the looking glass, my lovely.. your life is waiting.
February 27, 2012
I had suspicions of prison visitations when reading Voyage in the Dark that turned out to be all too throw away the key true in Quartet. Quartet had me thinking about hiding out in cinemas to avoid facing the soul equivalent of the bill collector (and long past due). I am afraid of what my dark inkling stains for After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie coming true in the fourth book of my "The Complete Novels" Jean Rhys book (Good Morning, Midnight is next).
The back of my book hints that these were autobiographical novels, like dried tear stains of sorts. The girl from the Caribbean who doesn't have the kick to make it as a chorus girl, or the kicking to handle the stolen sheets in a man's bed. The next girl's husband is in jail and she goes along with becoming the vagina to poke at for a meanly rich husband and wife. I have forgotten which famous man was which man in one of those books. Joselito said he was ugly and I believe him. Julia was nineteen the first time, too, and did not make a scene. The theatrics come when she thinks there should be a what's next and there never, ever is. It wouldn't be hard to imagine Marya or Anna ending up like Julia. They all had their hands out helplessly to take whatever would be offered to them. They all thought there should be something next.
Indeed, from what I know of Jean Rhys I have been feeling around with words on my tongue (well, fingertips. You know what I mean) to say something about poetic justice. Not catharsis, definitely not that. It happened and they were not worse for being so hungry. Now I'm not so sure. I felt a meanness. I am starting to suspect a violence towards self that isn't only drinking and screwing to death. Ditches, alleyways and crawling streets. (Julia despises the streets that Marya hunted. Again, I felt a sliding from the last vestiges of what the hands thought they could get in this older woman. Could be one of those prison mug shots of the pretty girl who goes in for a DUI. Then the next time she comes in she looks a bit harder but you can still tell it's the same girl. The last time it's not her. They don't ever look better. Chewed up and spit out.)
This time Rhys also writes the thoughts of the many men (and there are many more men). I thought it was interesting how their thoughts are like a back of the mind repulsion. A knee jerk reaction you can't stop yourself from making, almost as if it isn't their own thought but what Rhys (or Julia herself) would be most afraid of facing when she wanted or needed something from them. Julia sometimes feels the pulling back. Other times she sees what she wants to see, as they see their worst suspicions of her in that there is that something she wants to see from them (put $$ in my parentheticals and you'll see her eyes in their eyes). I felt a hatred from Rhys about the victim pitier that this older lady is. Despised by her family, even the practically Alzheimers death's door mama rises her brain sludge up enough to spew the bog of eternal stench of judgement. The sister also feeds herself from the spoon she was born in the mouth with. Not silver. Whatever a low-low working class that's respectable because there are other people lower than them is called. I felt something that wasn't like for this sister, Norah. It's a greed, not the hunger, that Rhys must have hated in her too. And if she kept writing about this for so long there must have been something she wanted very badly. Enough to start to beat up on Julia for wanting it. I don't know what it is called. I had felt something akin to me before, in 'Voyage', in that dark sadness of what feeds another person, and now I don't want to relate to this at all. I'm so hungry.
I think it was the kind of feeling that comes from what you think the worst thing someone else could possibly be thinking about you. All of the time. If it gives at all it is from desperation. The taking thing, again. I don't want to relate to thinking the worst. Pity it is such a pity.
Now I don't really and truly know about autobiographical. But I do know about what I suspect and I feel like my suspicions have been pretty right on. Feel bad for me. Don't feel bad for me.
The photo selection was great this time. It's called "Streetwalker". (Again with the hooker!)
This lady has her face in her hand. It's pretty obvious despite how shadowy it is because her shoulders are defeated. Her back is to a wall in a side side street. I thought it was perfect that this lady is breaking down in a not entirely lonely place. Someone COULD come along. That's Julia. She would break down and she'd say she wanted to be alone but there would have to be that chance that she wasn't. If someone scorned her she'd tell herself she should have been alone.
Oh yeah, and I felt the only hope that Julia could ever have is if she's alone in a room entirely by herself. I liked the way that she fixated on pictures on walls when she's feeling confessional (mostly to herself but it's like she needs a figurehead to be there to pour onto and then she can imagine that the figurehead is telling her it's all gonna be okay). She would have stared at these pictures in this Jean Rhys book too. I like the way that she doesn't know if the pictures are any good or not. I have been saying to myself that if I started getting into photographs in a big way I'd never sleep again.
And this isn't my favorite Jean Rhys but I still love it because I can read everyone and it is everything to me to have that. Even though I don't think I can take this much heart break all of the time. Someone has to think something nice and this time I don't think that Jean Rhys was forgiving of all that hunger. She would be listening and saying, "But are you after something from me?" I am, but I get downtrodden thinking the worst. She's making it hard. (Maybe that's the point of getting old.)
The back of my book hints that these were autobiographical novels, like dried tear stains of sorts. The girl from the Caribbean who doesn't have the kick to make it as a chorus girl, or the kicking to handle the stolen sheets in a man's bed. The next girl's husband is in jail and she goes along with becoming the vagina to poke at for a meanly rich husband and wife. I have forgotten which famous man was which man in one of those books. Joselito said he was ugly and I believe him. Julia was nineteen the first time, too, and did not make a scene. The theatrics come when she thinks there should be a what's next and there never, ever is. It wouldn't be hard to imagine Marya or Anna ending up like Julia. They all had their hands out helplessly to take whatever would be offered to them. They all thought there should be something next.
Indeed, from what I know of Jean Rhys I have been feeling around with words on my tongue (well, fingertips. You know what I mean) to say something about poetic justice. Not catharsis, definitely not that. It happened and they were not worse for being so hungry. Now I'm not so sure. I felt a meanness. I am starting to suspect a violence towards self that isn't only drinking and screwing to death. Ditches, alleyways and crawling streets. (Julia despises the streets that Marya hunted. Again, I felt a sliding from the last vestiges of what the hands thought they could get in this older woman. Could be one of those prison mug shots of the pretty girl who goes in for a DUI. Then the next time she comes in she looks a bit harder but you can still tell it's the same girl. The last time it's not her. They don't ever look better. Chewed up and spit out.)
This time Rhys also writes the thoughts of the many men (and there are many more men). I thought it was interesting how their thoughts are like a back of the mind repulsion. A knee jerk reaction you can't stop yourself from making, almost as if it isn't their own thought but what Rhys (or Julia herself) would be most afraid of facing when she wanted or needed something from them. Julia sometimes feels the pulling back. Other times she sees what she wants to see, as they see their worst suspicions of her in that there is that something she wants to see from them (put $$ in my parentheticals and you'll see her eyes in their eyes). I felt a hatred from Rhys about the victim pitier that this older lady is. Despised by her family, even the practically Alzheimers death's door mama rises her brain sludge up enough to spew the bog of eternal stench of judgement. The sister also feeds herself from the spoon she was born in the mouth with. Not silver. Whatever a low-low working class that's respectable because there are other people lower than them is called. I felt something that wasn't like for this sister, Norah. It's a greed, not the hunger, that Rhys must have hated in her too. And if she kept writing about this for so long there must have been something she wanted very badly. Enough to start to beat up on Julia for wanting it. I don't know what it is called. I had felt something akin to me before, in 'Voyage', in that dark sadness of what feeds another person, and now I don't want to relate to this at all. I'm so hungry.
I think it was the kind of feeling that comes from what you think the worst thing someone else could possibly be thinking about you. All of the time. If it gives at all it is from desperation. The taking thing, again. I don't want to relate to thinking the worst. Pity it is such a pity.
Now I don't really and truly know about autobiographical. But I do know about what I suspect and I feel like my suspicions have been pretty right on. Feel bad for me. Don't feel bad for me.
The photo selection was great this time. It's called "Streetwalker". (Again with the hooker!)
This lady has her face in her hand. It's pretty obvious despite how shadowy it is because her shoulders are defeated. Her back is to a wall in a side side street. I thought it was perfect that this lady is breaking down in a not entirely lonely place. Someone COULD come along. That's Julia. She would break down and she'd say she wanted to be alone but there would have to be that chance that she wasn't. If someone scorned her she'd tell herself she should have been alone.
Oh yeah, and I felt the only hope that Julia could ever have is if she's alone in a room entirely by herself. I liked the way that she fixated on pictures on walls when she's feeling confessional (mostly to herself but it's like she needs a figurehead to be there to pour onto and then she can imagine that the figurehead is telling her it's all gonna be okay). She would have stared at these pictures in this Jean Rhys book too. I like the way that she doesn't know if the pictures are any good or not. I have been saying to myself that if I started getting into photographs in a big way I'd never sleep again.
And this isn't my favorite Jean Rhys but I still love it because I can read everyone and it is everything to me to have that. Even though I don't think I can take this much heart break all of the time. Someone has to think something nice and this time I don't think that Jean Rhys was forgiving of all that hunger. She would be listening and saying, "But are you after something from me?" I am, but I get downtrodden thinking the worst. She's making it hard. (Maybe that's the point of getting old.)
March 16, 2024
Her: "It was the darkness that got you. It was heavy darkness, greasy and compelling. It made walls round you, and shut you in so that you felt you could not breathe. You wanted to beat at the darkness and shriek to be let out. And after a while you got used to it. Of course. And then you stopped believing that there was anything else anywhere."
Him: "He wondered whether it had been worth while to spend the only money he ever had, or was ever likely to have, in travelling about Spain and the south of France, because he had a vague idea that the sight of the sun would cure all his ills and would develop the love of life and humanity in which he felt that he was lamentably deficient."
I swear, I don't go looking for sad books about sad people, they find me.
Now that my adventure with Jean Rhys is coming to a close, with only one novel left to read, I look back on the journey with a heavy heart. We started out very strong, with Wide Sargasso Sea, we continued strongly enough with a bleak experiences of a young adult, alone and far away from home in Voyage in the dark. Then we encountered the muddy oxygenless waters of mediocrity and recycling of Quartet. And now we are here.
The theming of this one is just as in all of her other books: loneliness, otherness, being a woman without any skill or desire to work, depression. This time her stand-in character is in a deep depression from the very beginning. And she's a tricky character to follow, her self-hate combined with narcissism is repulsive, she's one of the most passive characters there can be, and as a reader hopes she'll wake up, act in any way, she just sinks in deeper and deeper. Perhaps that’s why Rhys' self-insert heroine works better when she’s an aristocratic Bertha from Jane Eyre, after all we are trained to read about the powerless women of leisure in those times, but even though she writes about the 1920s here, which are much closer to the 19th century than to our days, it's hard to tolerate this type of woman. We still keep meeting this type in contemporary works like My year of rest and relaxation and those I just can't stomach.
Eimear McBride once said: “I despise wafty, goalless female protagonists” and that’s how I feel myself, and that’s how I increasingly feel getting older. This book has 110 pages in my edition and it took me 5 days to get through. Yet I'd say it must be one of the best examples of trying to capture a depressed mind that I've read.
Him: "He wondered whether it had been worth while to spend the only money he ever had, or was ever likely to have, in travelling about Spain and the south of France, because he had a vague idea that the sight of the sun would cure all his ills and would develop the love of life and humanity in which he felt that he was lamentably deficient."
I swear, I don't go looking for sad books about sad people, they find me.
Now that my adventure with Jean Rhys is coming to a close, with only one novel left to read, I look back on the journey with a heavy heart. We started out very strong, with Wide Sargasso Sea, we continued strongly enough with a bleak experiences of a young adult, alone and far away from home in Voyage in the dark. Then we encountered the muddy oxygenless waters of mediocrity and recycling of Quartet. And now we are here.
The theming of this one is just as in all of her other books: loneliness, otherness, being a woman without any skill or desire to work, depression. This time her stand-in character is in a deep depression from the very beginning. And she's a tricky character to follow, her self-hate combined with narcissism is repulsive, she's one of the most passive characters there can be, and as a reader hopes she'll wake up, act in any way, she just sinks in deeper and deeper. Perhaps that’s why Rhys' self-insert heroine works better when she’s an aristocratic Bertha from Jane Eyre, after all we are trained to read about the powerless women of leisure in those times, but even though she writes about the 1920s here, which are much closer to the 19th century than to our days, it's hard to tolerate this type of woman. We still keep meeting this type in contemporary works like My year of rest and relaxation and those I just can't stomach.
Eimear McBride once said: “I despise wafty, goalless female protagonists” and that’s how I feel myself, and that’s how I increasingly feel getting older. This book has 110 pages in my edition and it took me 5 days to get through. Yet I'd say it must be one of the best examples of trying to capture a depressed mind that I've read.
November 17, 2017
Πώς έπεσε στα χέρια μου αυτό το βιβλίο:
Ξεκίνησα ένα μεσημέρι για τη δουλειά. Πήρα το μετρό και στο Μοναστηράκι άλλαξα για ηλεκτρικό. Στις πλατφόρμες λαοθάλασσα και το τραίνο άφαντο. Κανείς δεν ήξερε τί συνέβη κι εγώ έκανα στροφή – σιχτιρίζοντας – ξανακατέβηκα στο μετρό – σιχτιρίζοντας – βγήκα Σύνταγμα για ταξί –πλέον είχα περάσει σε επίπεδο τουρέτ - δεν είχα λεφτά, πήγα σήκωσα, μετά έπρεπε να χαλάσω το χαρτονόμισμα (γιατί άμα πλήρωνα την κούρσα με 20ρικο θα έπιανε και τον οδηγό τουρέτ) κι εκεί ήταν που πήρε το μάτι μου ένα πωλητήριο για το Χαμόγελο του Παιδιού. Κι εκεί, σε έναν πάγκο, παίζοντας αγκωνιές με μια άλλη κοπέλα (που κι αυτή καλά – καλά δεν ήταν) που είχε ανακατώσει όλα τα βιβλία, το είδα. Κι ο χρόνος σταμάτησε. Για μια στιγμή. Και μετά όλα ξανάρχισαν πάλι, αλλά πλέον είχα το βιβλίο και δεν με ένοιαζε τίποτα. Κι όταν το βράδυ διαπίστωσα πως ήταν έκδοση το 1982, άκοπη, για 34 χρόνια δεν το είχε διαβάσει κανένας... κατάλαβα. Θυμήθηκα και κάτι θεωρίες περί μιμιδίων που μας έλεγαν στο πανεπιστήμιο και αισθάνθηκα μια τρυφερή ανατριχίλα.
Το βιβλίο αυτό εκδόθηκε στα 1930. Μέσα από την ιστορία αναδεικνύεται το μελαγχολικό και παρακμιακό κλίμα του μεσοπολέμου. Η ιστορία μιας γυναίκας που αρχίζει να γερνάει που μια ζωή επιβίωνε με την ομορφιά της. Κι όχι δεν υπήρξε ποτέ πόρνη. Είναι μια γυναίκα μοναχική ένα θύμα που καμιά φορά μέσα στην απελπισία της δαγκώνει, μια μορφή που θυμίζει κάτι ανάμεσα σε αυτοκαταστροφική ηρωίδα του Τένεσι Ουίλιαμς και την κλασική ξεπεσμένη demi-mondaine των μυθιστορημάτων του 19ου αιώνα.
Είναι τόσο παραστατικός ο τρόπος που αποδίδει χωρίς πλατειασμούς η συγγραφέας τον ψυχισμό των ηρώων, με μια απαράμιλλη ισορροπία ανάμεσα στις σκέψεις τους και τους διαλόγους τους, είναι τέτοιο το στήσιμο της ιστορίας και οι περιγραφές που δένουν οργανικά με τα υπόλοιπα στοιχεία, που δεν μπορώ παρά να σταθώ γεμάτη θαυμασμό μπροστά σε αυτό το κομψοτέχνημα. Ανάμεσα σε όσα μας λέει η συγγραφέας υπάρχουν άλλα τόσα που αποσιωπούνται κι εκεί, μέσα σε αυτές τις σιωπές, χτίζεται ολόκληρο το ανθρώπινο δράμα.
Θα μπορούσε αυτό το έργο να κατηγοριοποιηθεί ως γυναικεία λογοτεχνία; Όχι. Είναι γραμμένο από γυναίκα. Και προορισμένο για όλους. Όλους. Μάλιστα κάτι μου λέει πως ειδικά οι άντρες αναγνώστες θα μπορούσαν να κατανοήσουν πολλά για τον γυναικείο ψυχισμό διαβάζοντας αυτό το έργο. Η κεντρική ηρωίδα, η Τζούλια Μάρτιν είναι μια γυναίκα σπασμένη. Κομματιασμένη. Ανήμπορη. Κάτι πήγε στραβά στη ζωή της. Κάπου μέσα στα χρόνια της νιότης άφησε να χαθεί το πιο δυνατό και σταθερό κομμάτι του εαυτού της.
Σπαταλήθηκε, και τώρα που νιώθει πως έχει στερέψει, το μόνο που κάνει είναι να ζητάει. Έχει έναν περίεργο τρόπο να ζητιανεύει, να εξεγείρεται απέναντι σε αυτήν την εξαρτητική στάση που την καθιστά παράσιτο κι έπειτα να ξανακυλάει στην αρχική κατάσταση. Δεν αισθάνεται ικανή να εργαστεί. Δεν έχει την ικανότητα, τα προσόντα ούτε και το κέφι να ξεφύγει από τον βαλτώδη βυθό που βουλιάζει. Τόσο στο Παρίσι όσο και στο Λονδίνο όπου εκτυλίσσεται η ιστορία, τα βρώμικα ποτάμια, η ψύχρα και η ομίχλη είναι αυτά που ως εξωτερικά αισθητήρια φαίνεται να απορροφούν την ουσία της, ότι απέμεινε από τον ζωντανό εαυτό της. Ως άμυνα θέλει να κοιμάται και να πίνει. Όποια κι αν είναι η ουσία που την καθιστά αυτό που είναι, η ουσία αυτή, η τόσο σημαντική για την ύπαρξή της, την εγκαταλείπει:
«Τώρα έκλαιγε γιατί θυμότανε τη ζωή της που ήταν μια ασταμάτητη σειρά από ταπεινώσεις και σφάλματα, από πόνο και γελοία προσπάθεια. Όλων των ανθρώπων οι ζωές ήτανε έτσι. Κι την ίδια στιγμή, μ’ ένα μαγικό τρόπο, λίγη από την ουσία της ξεπήδησε σαν μια μεγάλη φλόγα προς τα ουράνια. Ήταν μεγάλη. Ήταν μια φλόγα που ανέβαινε θαρραλέα όχι για να εκλιπαρήσει αλλά για ν’ απειλήσει. Έπειτα η φλόγα κατάπεσε, άχρηστη, μη έχοντας πουθενά φτάσει».
Υπάρχει κάτι από τον κόσμο των νεκρών που έρχεται να γεμίσει το κενό που αφήνει πίσω της η ζωή που φεύγει. Από τότε που ήταν μικρή, στη εξαιρετική σκηνή με τις πεταλούδες στο δάσος, η Τζούλια ξέρει πως κάτι υπάρχει πίσω της, κάτι που την καταδιώκει και την διεκδικεί, θέλει να την πιάσει κι αυτή αγωνίζεται να ξεφύγει από το αναπόδραστο:
«Όταν η Τζούλια ξανάνοιξε τα μάτια της είχε νυχτώσει. Στην ιδέα ότι θα έμενε μόνη μέσα σ’ αυτό το σκοτεινό δωμάτιο την έπιασε πανικός και εκεί που ντυνόταν, κοίταξε δύο φορές πίσω της απότομα και τρομαγμένα».
Αυτός ο πανικός θα συναντήσει την κορύφωσή του στη σκηνή της σκάλας με τον κύριο Χόρσφιλντ όπου υπάρχει κάτι από την σκοτεινή, γοτθική αίσθηση παράνοιας που συναντά κανείς στα πιο κλασικά μυθιστορήματα της αγγλικής λογοτεχνίας, βγαλμένο λες μέσα από τις αναθυμιάσεις εκείνης της γης.
Ίσως θα μπορούσε κάποιος να κατηγορήσει την Τζούλια πως της αξίζουν τα όσα παθαίνει. Ωστόσο δεν διαφέρει από την αδερφή της τη Νόρα, που υποτίθεται πως υπήρξε πάντα της ένα υπόδειγμα ηθικής. Κι η Νόρα είναι καταδικασμένη να βαδίσει, χωρίς να το θέλει μέσα στο ίδιο ακριβώς σκοτάδι. Χωρίς ελπίδα διαφυγής.
Οι άνδρες από την άλλη παρουσιάζονται με έναν στερεοτυπικό τρόπο. Οι περισσότεροι κουβαλάνε τα ψυχολογικά σύνδρομα του πρώτου παγκοσμίου πολέμου. (Κι εδώ αναρωτήθηκα πώς μπόρεσε εκείνη η γενιά να ξανακύλησε τόσο γρήγορα, μετά από εκείνη την εφιαλτική εμπειρία των χαρακωμάτων σε έναν δεύτερο παγκόσμιο πόλεμο. Όσοι έζησαν και τους δύο, αναρωτιέμαι τί απέμεινε από αυτούς, για να πορεύονται ύστερα). Οι άνδρες ποθούν την Τζούλια, κάτι στην μελαγχολική της γοητεία τους τραβάει, αλλά με την πρώτη ευκαιρία θέλουν να φύγουν, θέλουν να μην φέρουν ευθύνη για την εύθραυστη ύπαρξή της. Κάποτε πλήρωναν πολλά για να την έχουν. Τώρα είναι διατεθειμένοι να πληρώσουν όσα μπορούν για να την ξεφορτωθούν. Λεφτά. Λεφτά για μπορεί η Τζούλια να πληρώνει την fine της και το νοίκι σε κάποια παρακμιακή πανσιόν. Ζει με αλκοόλ και ύπνο και μια αίσθηση παραίτησης που λειτουργεί ως βαλβίδα αποσυμπίεσης όταν το αγχος για το αύριο την βαραίνει υπερβολικά.
Κάτι άλλο που θυμάμαι πως το είχα λατρέψει επίσης κι όταν διάβασα τους Τιμπώ του Ροζέ Μαρτέν ντυ Γκαρ είναι η ατμόσφαιρα της εποχής. Η Ευρώπη, μετά την αισιοδοξία του Fin de siècle και το γερό χαστούκι του πρώτου παγκοσμίου πολέμου ζει μέσα σε ένα μανιοκαταθλιπτικό μαρασμό, με εξάρσεις και υποχωρήσεις και ένα βαρύ παρελθόν να την υποχρεώνει να συμμορφώνεται με τα προσχήματα. Αυτό το κλίμα, συνθέτει τον ψυχισμό των ανθρώπων της εποχής και αποτυπώνεται τόσο γλαφυρά στο μυθιστόρημα, που μου προκαλεί θαυμασμό. Μικρές στιγμές της καθημερινότητας της εποχής, σχέδια σε μια παλιά ταπετσαρία, η φωτιά που ζεσταίνει ένα λονδρέζικο διαμέρισμα και ένα στούντιο ακρόασης μουσικής της Pathephone, όλα, συμβάλλουν με τρόπο αποτελεσματικό στο χτίσιμο μιας ατμόσφαιρας μοναδικής.
Η Jean Rhys έγραψε για τελευταία φορά στα 1939 και έπειτα ξανάγραψε μόνο άλλη μια φορά στα 1966 ένα μυθιστόρημα που την έκανε διάσημη (το Wide Sargasso Sea) ένα πρίκουελ της ιστορίας της Τζέην Έυρ. Όμως όπως δήλωσε κάποτε και η ίδια, η επιτυχία άργησε να έρθει. Η ίδια φαίνεται πως πάντα αισθανόταν ξένη, στο περιθώριο μιας κοινωνίας που ποτέ δεν της έκανε τη χάρη να την αποδεχτεί. Γεννημένη κάτω από τον ήλιο της Καραϊβικής φαίνεται πως δεν έγινε ιδιαίτερα αποδεκτή όταν στα 16 την έστειλαν σε σχολείο στην Αγγλία. Διαβάζοντας γι’ αυτήν, φαίνεται πως έκανε επιλογές που της κόστισαν και που αν ήταν στο χέρι της θα γύριζε τον χρόνο πίσω για να τις αλλάξει. Μας άφησε ωστόσο τα λογοτεχνικά της διαμάντια κι αυτό είναι κάτι που μου γεννά ένα βαθύ αίσθημα ευγνωμοσύνης.
Ξεκίνησα ένα μεσημέρι για τη δουλειά. Πήρα το μετρό και στο Μοναστηράκι άλλαξα για ηλεκτρικό. Στις πλατφόρμες λαοθάλασσα και το τραίνο άφαντο. Κανείς δεν ήξερε τί συνέβη κι εγώ έκανα στροφή – σιχτιρίζοντας – ξανακατέβηκα στο μετρό – σιχτιρίζοντας – βγήκα Σύνταγμα για ταξί –πλέον είχα περάσει σε επίπεδο τουρέτ - δεν είχα λεφτά, πήγα σήκωσα, μετά έπρεπε να χαλάσω το χαρτονόμισμα (γιατί άμα πλήρωνα την κούρσα με 20ρικο θα έπιανε και τον οδηγό τουρέτ) κι εκεί ήταν που πήρε το μάτι μου ένα πωλητήριο για το Χαμόγελο του Παιδιού. Κι εκεί, σε έναν πάγκο, παίζοντας αγκωνιές με μια άλλη κοπέλα (που κι αυτή καλά – καλά δεν ήταν) που είχε ανακατώσει όλα τα βιβλία, το είδα. Κι ο χρόνος σταμάτησε. Για μια στιγμή. Και μετά όλα ξανάρχισαν πάλι, αλλά πλέον είχα το βιβλίο και δεν με ένοιαζε τίποτα. Κι όταν το βράδυ διαπίστωσα πως ήταν έκδοση το 1982, άκοπη, για 34 χρόνια δεν το είχε διαβάσει κανένας... κατάλαβα. Θυμήθηκα και κάτι θεωρίες περί μιμιδίων που μας έλεγαν στο πανεπιστήμιο και αισθάνθηκα μια τρυφερή ανατριχίλα.
Το βιβλίο αυτό εκδόθηκε στα 1930. Μέσα από την ιστορία αναδεικνύεται το μελαγχολικό και παρακμιακό κλίμα του μεσοπολέμου. Η ιστορία μιας γυναίκας που αρχίζει να γερνάει που μια ζωή επιβίωνε με την ομορφιά της. Κι όχι δεν υπήρξε ποτέ πόρνη. Είναι μια γυναίκα μοναχική ένα θύμα που καμιά φορά μέσα στην απελπισία της δαγκώνει, μια μορφή που θυμίζει κάτι ανάμεσα σε αυτοκαταστροφική ηρωίδα του Τένεσι Ουίλιαμς και την κλασική ξεπεσμένη demi-mondaine των μυθιστορημάτων του 19ου αιώνα.
Είναι τόσο παραστατικός ο τρόπος που αποδίδει χωρίς πλατειασμούς η συγγραφέας τον ψυχισμό των ηρώων, με μια απαράμιλλη ισορροπία ανάμεσα στις σκέψεις τους και τους διαλόγους τους, είναι τέτοιο το στήσιμο της ιστορίας και οι περιγραφές που δένουν οργανικά με τα υπόλοιπα στοιχεία, που δεν μπορώ παρά να σταθώ γεμάτη θαυμασμό μπροστά σε αυτό το κομψοτέχνημα. Ανάμεσα σε όσα μας λέει η συγγραφέας υπάρχουν άλλα τόσα που αποσιωπούνται κι εκεί, μέσα σε αυτές τις σιωπές, χτίζεται ολόκληρο το ανθρώπινο δράμα.
Θα μπορούσε αυτό το έργο να κατηγοριοποιηθεί ως γυναικεία λογοτεχνία; Όχι. Είναι γραμμένο από γυναίκα. Και προορισμένο για όλους. Όλους. Μάλιστα κάτι μου λέει πως ειδικά οι άντρες αναγνώστες θα μπορούσαν να κατανοήσουν πολλά για τον γυναικείο ψυχισμό διαβάζοντας αυτό το έργο. Η κεντρική ηρωίδα, η Τζούλια Μάρτιν είναι μια γυναίκα σπασμένη. Κομματιασμένη. Ανήμπορη. Κάτι πήγε στραβά στη ζωή της. Κάπου μέσα στα χρόνια της νιότης άφησε να χαθεί το πιο δυνατό και σταθερό κομμάτι του εαυτού της.
Σπαταλήθηκε, και τώρα που νιώθει πως έχει στερέψει, το μόνο που κάνει είναι να ζητάει. Έχει έναν περίεργο τρόπο να ζητιανεύει, να εξεγείρεται απέναντι σε αυτήν την εξαρτητική στάση που την καθιστά παράσιτο κι έπειτα να ξανακυλάει στην αρχική κατάσταση. Δεν αισθάνεται ικανή να εργαστεί. Δεν έχει την ικανότητα, τα προσόντα ούτε και το κέφι να ξεφύγει από τον βαλτώδη βυθό που βουλιάζει. Τόσο στο Παρίσι όσο και στο Λονδίνο όπου εκτυλίσσεται η ιστορία, τα βρώμικα ποτάμια, η ψύχρα και η ομίχλη είναι αυτά που ως εξωτερικά αισθητήρια φαίνεται να απορροφούν την ουσία της, ότι απέμεινε από τον ζωντανό εαυτό της. Ως άμυνα θέλει να κοιμάται και να πίνει. Όποια κι αν είναι η ουσία που την καθιστά αυτό που είναι, η ουσία αυτή, η τόσο σημαντική για την ύπαρξή της, την εγκαταλείπει:
«Τώρα έκλαιγε γιατί θυμότανε τη ζωή της που ήταν μια ασταμάτητη σειρά από ταπεινώσεις και σφάλματα, από πόνο και γελοία προσπάθεια. Όλων των ανθρώπων οι ζωές ήτανε έτσι. Κι την ίδια στιγμή, μ’ ένα μαγικό τρόπο, λίγη από την ουσία της ξεπήδησε σαν μια μεγάλη φλόγα προς τα ουράνια. Ήταν μεγάλη. Ήταν μια φλόγα που ανέβαινε θαρραλέα όχι για να εκλιπαρήσει αλλά για ν’ απειλήσει. Έπειτα η φλόγα κατάπεσε, άχρηστη, μη έχοντας πουθενά φτάσει».
Υπάρχει κάτι από τον κόσμο των νεκρών που έρχεται να γεμίσει το κενό που αφήνει πίσω της η ζωή που φεύγει. Από τότε που ήταν μικρή, στη εξαιρετική σκηνή με τις πεταλούδες στο δάσος, η Τζούλια ξέρει πως κάτι υπάρχει πίσω της, κάτι που την καταδιώκει και την διεκδικεί, θέλει να την πιάσει κι αυτή αγωνίζεται να ξεφύγει από το αναπόδραστο:
«Όταν η Τζούλια ξανάνοιξε τα μάτια της είχε νυχτώσει. Στην ιδέα ότι θα έμενε μόνη μέσα σ’ αυτό το σκοτεινό δωμάτιο την έπιασε πανικός και εκεί που ντυνόταν, κοίταξε δύο φορές πίσω της απότομα και τρομαγμένα».
Αυτός ο πανικός θα συναντήσει την κορύφωσή του στη σκηνή της σκάλας με τον κύριο Χόρσφιλντ όπου υπάρχει κάτι από την σκοτεινή, γοτθική αίσθηση παράνοιας που συναντά κανείς στα πιο κλασικά μυθιστορήματα της αγγλικής λογοτεχνίας, βγαλμένο λες μέσα από τις αναθυμιάσεις εκείνης της γης.
Ίσως θα μπορούσε κάποιος να κατηγορήσει την Τζούλια πως της αξίζουν τα όσα παθαίνει. Ωστόσο δεν διαφέρει από την αδερφή της τη Νόρα, που υποτίθεται πως υπήρξε πάντα της ένα υπόδειγμα ηθικής. Κι η Νόρα είναι καταδικασμένη να βαδίσει, χωρίς να το θέλει μέσα στο ίδιο ακριβώς σκοτάδι. Χωρίς ελπίδα διαφυγής.
Οι άνδρες από την άλλη παρουσιάζονται με έναν στερεοτυπικό τρόπο. Οι περισσότεροι κουβαλάνε τα ψυχολογικά σύνδρομα του πρώτου παγκοσμίου πολέμου. (Κι εδώ αναρωτήθηκα πώς μπόρεσε εκείνη η γενιά να ξανακύλησε τόσο γρήγορα, μετά από εκείνη την εφιαλτική εμπειρία των χαρακωμάτων σε έναν δεύτερο παγκόσμιο πόλεμο. Όσοι έζησαν και τους δύο, αναρωτιέμαι τί απέμεινε από αυτούς, για να πορεύονται ύστερα). Οι άνδρες ποθούν την Τζούλια, κάτι στην μελαγχολική της γοητεία τους τραβάει, αλλά με την πρώτη ευκαιρία θέλουν να φύγουν, θέλουν να μην φέρουν ευθύνη για την εύθραυστη ύπαρξή της. Κάποτε πλήρωναν πολλά για να την έχουν. Τώρα είναι διατεθειμένοι να πληρώσουν όσα μπορούν για να την ξεφορτωθούν. Λεφτά. Λεφτά για μπορεί η Τζούλια να πληρώνει την fine της και το νοίκι σε κάποια παρακμιακή πανσιόν. Ζει με αλκοόλ και ύπνο και μια αίσθηση παραίτησης που λειτουργεί ως βαλβίδα αποσυμπίεσης όταν το αγχος για το αύριο την βαραίνει υπερβολικά.
Κάτι άλλο που θυμάμαι πως το είχα λατρέψει επίσης κι όταν διάβασα τους Τιμπώ του Ροζέ Μαρτέν ντυ Γκαρ είναι η ατμόσφαιρα της εποχής. Η Ευρώπη, μετά την αισιοδοξία του Fin de siècle και το γερό χαστούκι του πρώτου παγκοσμίου πολέμου ζει μέσα σε ένα μανιοκαταθλιπτικό μαρασμό, με εξάρσεις και υποχωρήσεις και ένα βαρύ παρελθόν να την υποχρεώνει να συμμορφώνεται με τα προσχήματα. Αυτό το κλίμα, συνθέτει τον ψυχισμό των ανθρώπων της εποχής και αποτυπώνεται τόσο γλαφυρά στο μυθιστόρημα, που μου προκαλεί θαυμασμό. Μικρές στιγμές της καθημερινότητας της εποχής, σχέδια σε μια παλιά ταπετσαρία, η φωτιά που ζεσταίνει ένα λονδρέζικο διαμέρισμα και ένα στούντιο ακρόασης μουσικής της Pathephone, όλα, συμβάλλουν με τρόπο αποτελεσματικό στο χτίσιμο μιας ατμόσφαιρας μοναδικής.
Η Jean Rhys έγραψε για τελευταία φορά στα 1939 και έπειτα ξανάγραψε μόνο άλλη μια φορά στα 1966 ένα μυθιστόρημα που την έκανε διάσημη (το Wide Sargasso Sea) ένα πρίκουελ της ιστορίας της Τζέην Έυρ. Όμως όπως δήλωσε κάποτε και η ίδια, η επιτυχία άργησε να έρθει. Η ίδια φαίνεται πως πάντα αισθανόταν ξένη, στο περιθώριο μιας κοινωνίας που ποτέ δεν της έκανε τη χάρη να την αποδεχτεί. Γεννημένη κάτω από τον ήλιο της Καραϊβικής φαίνεται πως δεν έγινε ιδιαίτερα αποδεκτή όταν στα 16 την έστειλαν σε σχολείο στην Αγγλία. Διαβάζοντας γι’ αυτήν, φαίνεται πως έκανε επιλογές που της κόστισαν και που αν ήταν στο χέρι της θα γύριζε τον χρόνο πίσω για να τις αλλάξει. Μας άφησε ωστόσο τα λογοτεχνικά της διαμάντια κι αυτό είναι κάτι που μου γεννά ένα βαθύ αίσθημα ευγνωμοσύνης.
April 16, 2014
You might have expected the song I Enjoy Being a Girl to have been written by a couple of men (Rogers & Hammerstein) because it has lyrics like
When I have a brand new hairdo
With my eyelashes all in curls
I float as the clouds on air do
I enjoy being a girl
But it distressed me a little bit to find out that I’m a Woman, which is hardly feminist but nevertheless thrillingly celebratory:
I can rub & scrub this old house til it's shinin like a dime
Feed the baby, grease the car, & powder my face at the same time
Get all dressed up, go out and swing til 4 a.m. and then
Lay down at 5, jump up at 6, and start all over again
'Cause I'm a woman! W-O-M-A-N, I'll say it again
Was written by another two guys, Lieber & Stoller, two of early rock & roll’s finest (Yakety Yak, Love Potion No 9, On Broadway). And I really didn’t like discovering that You Don’t Own Me, a declaration of female independence if ever there was one (Lesley Gore, 1964, held off the number one spot only by the all-devouring Beatles)
You don't own me, I'm not just one of your many toys
You don't own me, don't say I can't go with other boys
You don't own me, don't try to change me in any way
You don't own me, don't tie me down 'cause I'd never stay
was written by yet another two guys, John Madara and David White, who’d also knocked off At the Hop and later wrote the beautiful 1-2-3 by Len Barry.
So I was thinking.... if Jean Rhys was a singer (I can imagine her louchely shimmying up to the microphone in front of a seedy little ensemble in some Parisian nightclub in 1932) – she’d never have sung those songs though, partly because they hadn’t been written. She’d have sung something like the yearning Connie Boswell song
In the middle of a sigh we stumbled into paradise
In the twinkle of an eye we lost it again
or the perennial single girl ballad The Man I Love
Maybe I shall meet him Sunday,
Maybe Monday, maybe not
Still I'm sure to meet him one day
Maybe Tuesday will be my good news day
and But not For Me would have been a natural
They're writing songs of love, but not for me
A lucky star's above, but not for me
With love to lead the way
I've found more skies of grey
than any Russian play could guarantee
and also the philosophical What is this Thing Called Love?
I was a hum-drum person
Leading a life apart
When love flew in through my window wide
And quickened my hum-drum heart
Love flew in through my window
I was so happy then
But after love had stayed a little while
Love flew out again
and for her finale, I think she would have told the band to play really slow while she whispered
Grab your coat and get your hat, leave your worry at the doorstep
Just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street
Can’t you hear that pitter pat and that happy tune is your step
Life can be so sweet on the... sunny side of the street
Goodnight, everybody
It would have destroyed the audience. Imagine that.
As it is, her little books are still destroying the audience. Bleak and cheerless, and leaving you gasping for more.
When I have a brand new hairdo
With my eyelashes all in curls
I float as the clouds on air do
I enjoy being a girl
But it distressed me a little bit to find out that I’m a Woman, which is hardly feminist but nevertheless thrillingly celebratory:
I can rub & scrub this old house til it's shinin like a dime
Feed the baby, grease the car, & powder my face at the same time
Get all dressed up, go out and swing til 4 a.m. and then
Lay down at 5, jump up at 6, and start all over again
'Cause I'm a woman! W-O-M-A-N, I'll say it again
Was written by another two guys, Lieber & Stoller, two of early rock & roll’s finest (Yakety Yak, Love Potion No 9, On Broadway). And I really didn’t like discovering that You Don’t Own Me, a declaration of female independence if ever there was one (Lesley Gore, 1964, held off the number one spot only by the all-devouring Beatles)
You don't own me, I'm not just one of your many toys
You don't own me, don't say I can't go with other boys
You don't own me, don't try to change me in any way
You don't own me, don't tie me down 'cause I'd never stay
was written by yet another two guys, John Madara and David White, who’d also knocked off At the Hop and later wrote the beautiful 1-2-3 by Len Barry.
So I was thinking.... if Jean Rhys was a singer (I can imagine her louchely shimmying up to the microphone in front of a seedy little ensemble in some Parisian nightclub in 1932) – she’d never have sung those songs though, partly because they hadn’t been written. She’d have sung something like the yearning Connie Boswell song
In the middle of a sigh we stumbled into paradise
In the twinkle of an eye we lost it again
or the perennial single girl ballad The Man I Love
Maybe I shall meet him Sunday,
Maybe Monday, maybe not
Still I'm sure to meet him one day
Maybe Tuesday will be my good news day
and But not For Me would have been a natural
They're writing songs of love, but not for me
A lucky star's above, but not for me
With love to lead the way
I've found more skies of grey
than any Russian play could guarantee
and also the philosophical What is this Thing Called Love?
I was a hum-drum person
Leading a life apart
When love flew in through my window wide
And quickened my hum-drum heart
Love flew in through my window
I was so happy then
But after love had stayed a little while
Love flew out again
and for her finale, I think she would have told the band to play really slow while she whispered
Grab your coat and get your hat, leave your worry at the doorstep
Just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street
Can’t you hear that pitter pat and that happy tune is your step
Life can be so sweet on the... sunny side of the street
Goodnight, everybody
It would have destroyed the audience. Imagine that.
As it is, her little books are still destroying the audience. Bleak and cheerless, and leaving you gasping for more.
October 31, 2023
Rhys uses a technique I've never seen used in quite this way. Where the reader expects dialogue, Rhys will instead pull away to an interlocutor's thoughts of the scene unfolding, and toggle, if you will, between thought and speech. The device allows Rhys to slow down the action thereby enriching it. Here's a quote from page 108 in which Julia — no longer young and turned to drink — goes back to an old lover asking for money.
Then, when the man had brought the whisky and retired, he [the old lover] said: 'There's your whisky. Go on, drink it up?
For the first time she looked straight into his eyes. She said: 'My dear, I wouldn't harrow you for the world. "No harrowing" is my motto.'
She drank the whisky. Gaiety spread through her. Why care a damn?
She said: 'Look here, why talk about harrowing? Harrowing doesn't come into it. I've had good times - lots of good times.'
She thought: 'I had a shot at the life I wanted. And I failed... All right! I might have succeeded, and if I had people would have licked my boots for me. There wouldn't have been any of this cold-shouldering. Don't tell me; leave me alone. If I hate, I've a right to hate. And if I think people are swine, let me think it....'
She said: 'Anyhow, I don't know how I could have done differently. I wish I'd been cleverer about it, that's all. Do you think I could have done differently?'
He looked away from her, and said: 'Don't ask me. I'm not the person to ask that sort of thing, am I? I don't know. Probably you couldn't. You know, Julietta, the war taught me a lot?'
'Did it?' she said, surprised. 'Did it though?'
'Yes. Before the war I'd always thought that I rather despised people who didn't get on?'
'Despised,' thought Julia. "Why despised?'
'I despised a man who didn't get on. I didn't believe much in bad luck. But after the war I felt differently. I've got a lot of mad friends now. I call them my mad friends'
—
I'm not sure this truncated passage expresses how well the author uses this technique throughout. But its effect is startling, moving.
Then, when the man had brought the whisky and retired, he [the old lover] said: 'There's your whisky. Go on, drink it up?
For the first time she looked straight into his eyes. She said: 'My dear, I wouldn't harrow you for the world. "No harrowing" is my motto.'
She drank the whisky. Gaiety spread through her. Why care a damn?
She said: 'Look here, why talk about harrowing? Harrowing doesn't come into it. I've had good times - lots of good times.'
She thought: 'I had a shot at the life I wanted. And I failed... All right! I might have succeeded, and if I had people would have licked my boots for me. There wouldn't have been any of this cold-shouldering. Don't tell me; leave me alone. If I hate, I've a right to hate. And if I think people are swine, let me think it....'
She said: 'Anyhow, I don't know how I could have done differently. I wish I'd been cleverer about it, that's all. Do you think I could have done differently?'
He looked away from her, and said: 'Don't ask me. I'm not the person to ask that sort of thing, am I? I don't know. Probably you couldn't. You know, Julietta, the war taught me a lot?'
'Did it?' she said, surprised. 'Did it though?'
'Yes. Before the war I'd always thought that I rather despised people who didn't get on?'
'Despised,' thought Julia. "Why despised?'
'I despised a man who didn't get on. I didn't believe much in bad luck. But after the war I felt differently. I've got a lot of mad friends now. I call them my mad friends'
—
I'm not sure this truncated passage expresses how well the author uses this technique throughout. But its effect is startling, moving.
December 20, 2020
This time, Julia Martin is actually the one *left*, and she has to face the harsh truth: she's used her luck, having had many unsuccessful affairs, and now lives in a shabby Paris hotel. Another harsh truth is that her looks are fading (she is in her late 30s), and the maintenance checks from Mr. M of the title stop, so she has to face her family in London again, after a long time, not knowing if her luck can change or not.
Part of the reason Julia's looks are fading are because of her drinking, partly also because of her lack of good clothes. Her behavior patterns are also a reason why things are looking grim - the patterns only work for as long as she looks fine. They have cost her, silently, many things, like fraying sympathy from her family, the men she has affairs with, and those people she meets at hotels and on the street (a particularly heartbreaking one occurs in last pages, as ).
The life in the hotels in the book kind of reflects her situation: narrowness, worn things, disapproval from other people on her behavior (incl. cleaning maids).
The men in her life vary, but it's clear her current state is observed in their thoughts - we get to read thoughts of many people in this book, not just hers - Mr Mackenzie, the hypocrite ex,
The visit to London is important. London viewed here is one of the outsider, reflecting the author's and Julia's mother's culture-shock as she arrived from Caribbean - the cold (even when the sun appears), the fog, her weariness at being in the same shabby places again, the darkness. The anonymousness and uncaring nature of the crowd feels to her much worse than on previous visits. The neighborhood descriptions made me think of how they have changed since then, some areas become less poor, the poverty and cheap places now other places than what's here.
.
And her visits to Acton, in western London, where
It's sometimes hard to read how Julia's state of mind changes. She's tired most of the time (and increasingly numb), drinks a bit too much and often, sabotages relationships left and right - I wish she could realise this part of why she's so isolated and lacking in luck ...it really shows clearly that sometimes your behavior troubles are so hard to see because they've been going on so long and resist change.
Habits + behavior patterns... but seeing only some of the outside parts of it (your looks, your affairs, that desperate asking of money all the time).
I think the breaking point for her spirit comes in the aftermath of
The story was quite thought-provoking, making me think: is there any behavior or habits in me that might make my life worse in the long run? And another things might be getting more motivation to manage your money well 8) I loved the arrangement and the use of language in this story, nothing very melodramatic (except perhaps once and very briefly) in the scences, and you got a good feel of London and Paris of that time here, the weather, the people, the places. A very lovely second book to read from Rhys for me.
Part of the reason Julia's looks are fading are because of her drinking, partly also because of her lack of good clothes. Her behavior patterns are also a reason why things are looking grim - the patterns only work for as long as she looks fine. They have cost her, silently, many things, like fraying sympathy from her family, the men she has affairs with, and those people she meets at hotels and on the street (a particularly heartbreaking one occurs in last pages, as ).
The life in the hotels in the book kind of reflects her situation: narrowness, worn things, disapproval from other people on her behavior (incl. cleaning maids).
The men in her life vary, but it's clear her current state is observed in their thoughts - we get to read thoughts of many people in this book, not just hers - Mr Mackenzie, the hypocrite ex,
The visit to London is important. London viewed here is one of the outsider, reflecting the author's and Julia's mother's culture-shock as she arrived from Caribbean - the cold (even when the sun appears), the fog, her weariness at being in the same shabby places again, the darkness. The anonymousness and uncaring nature of the crowd feels to her much worse than on previous visits. The neighborhood descriptions made me think of how they have changed since then, some areas become less poor, the poverty and cheap places now other places than what's here.
.
And her visits to Acton, in western London, where
It's sometimes hard to read how Julia's state of mind changes. She's tired most of the time (and increasingly numb), drinks a bit too much and often, sabotages relationships left and right - I wish she could realise this part of why she's so isolated and lacking in luck ...it really shows clearly that sometimes your behavior troubles are so hard to see because they've been going on so long and resist change.
Habits + behavior patterns... but seeing only some of the outside parts of it (your looks, your affairs, that desperate asking of money all the time).
I think the breaking point for her spirit comes in the aftermath of
The story was quite thought-provoking, making me think: is there any behavior or habits in me that might make my life worse in the long run? And another things might be getting more motivation to manage your money well 8) I loved the arrangement and the use of language in this story, nothing very melodramatic (except perhaps once and very briefly) in the scences, and you got a good feel of London and Paris of that time here, the weather, the people, the places. A very lovely second book to read from Rhys for me.
October 29, 2016
A dark, tragic disturbing tale of a once glamorous woman Julia.
Now down on her luck after leaving Mr Mackenzie.
Her looks are fading and Julia survives on her maintenance cheques from previous lovers.
Living in a dismal Paris hotel.
Julia then returns to London where she visits her sister and ailing mother.
This is such a sad book which is beautifully written.
One woman's struggle to survive against the odds.
Very engrossing and way ahead of its time.
Hard to believe it was written in 1930.
Now down on her luck after leaving Mr Mackenzie.
Her looks are fading and Julia survives on her maintenance cheques from previous lovers.
Living in a dismal Paris hotel.
Julia then returns to London where she visits her sister and ailing mother.
This is such a sad book which is beautifully written.
One woman's struggle to survive against the odds.
Very engrossing and way ahead of its time.
Hard to believe it was written in 1930.
October 4, 2023
4.5 stars
This is my second Rhys book, and like the first I'd read, The Quartet, it centres a British woman stranded in Paris and financially dependent on her lovers. Julia, like Marya before her, is down on her luck, and spends the little money she receives on drink and clothes.
Because of this vulnerable position, and what she claims as failing in life on both a social and economic level, she plunges into a state of utter despair. Unlike Marya before her though Julia returns to London–on a whim–where she confronts the reality of her dying mother and judging family.
When the family reunites we meet Julia’s sister Norah. Antithetical to Julia in every way, she’s the dutiful daughter that remained to care and look after their ill mother while Julia drifted abroad. This conflict where Norah represents sacrifice and duty, and Julia whose representation would be best left to her own words: “If all good, respectable people had one face, I'd spit in it.” reminded me of the wonderful Munro short story “The Peace of Utrecht”, which also has two sisters with one who stayed home and cared for their mother while the other left, only Julia doesn’t return home married and with children, but alone, poor, and mentally and physically exhausted. The characterization of these two sisters as well as that final argument where Norah and Julia finally reveal their true feelings to each other was just brilliant.
Reading this I felt that the depictions of illness, despair, and death read simple yet true. Just as with the first book she shows what Austen did too, the importance given to money and (heterosexual) marriage in society, and how much they define and shape humanness, status, and survival. Only while much had changed in the century that separates Austen and Rhys, and both being very different individuals and artists. Rhys's protagonists however drift and are desperate, find themselves in the margins and alienated, not deemed respectable, suffering since they yearn for the security such status promises while they lack it. Rhys still maintains great control over her material, and I'm glad that I'm reading her novels chronologically since one can trace the development in her writing from the first one, which was also quite good, to this one.
This is my second Rhys book, and like the first I'd read, The Quartet, it centres a British woman stranded in Paris and financially dependent on her lovers. Julia, like Marya before her, is down on her luck, and spends the little money she receives on drink and clothes.
Because of this vulnerable position, and what she claims as failing in life on both a social and economic level, she plunges into a state of utter despair. Unlike Marya before her though Julia returns to London–on a whim–where she confronts the reality of her dying mother and judging family.
When the family reunites we meet Julia’s sister Norah. Antithetical to Julia in every way, she’s the dutiful daughter that remained to care and look after their ill mother while Julia drifted abroad. This conflict where Norah represents sacrifice and duty, and Julia whose representation would be best left to her own words: “If all good, respectable people had one face, I'd spit in it.” reminded me of the wonderful Munro short story “The Peace of Utrecht”, which also has two sisters with one who stayed home and cared for their mother while the other left, only Julia doesn’t return home married and with children, but alone, poor, and mentally and physically exhausted. The characterization of these two sisters as well as that final argument where Norah and Julia finally reveal their true feelings to each other was just brilliant.
Reading this I felt that the depictions of illness, despair, and death read simple yet true. Just as with the first book she shows what Austen did too, the importance given to money and (heterosexual) marriage in society, and how much they define and shape humanness, status, and survival. Only while much had changed in the century that separates Austen and Rhys, and both being very different individuals and artists. Rhys's protagonists however drift and are desperate, find themselves in the margins and alienated, not deemed respectable, suffering since they yearn for the security such status promises while they lack it. Rhys still maintains great control over her material, and I'm glad that I'm reading her novels chronologically since one can trace the development in her writing from the first one, which was also quite good, to this one.
October 26, 2015
There's a quote on the back, something like "As stark and as ominous as a skeleton", and there it is. The skeleton, belonging to everyone, utterly ordinary yet a source of dread. The utter bleakness of this first Quartet of Rhys novels in the 20s and 30s, is that they all seem all too clear and habitual and believable. They're difficult to dispute. The best ray of hope (not a refutation, but at least a counter-example), however, is that however autobiographically Rhys may have been writing here, she was writing. Something none of her protagonists managed -- to make of their experiences some essential meaning and purpose. So there's the bitter darkness of Rhys writing, and its built-in path to escape. Much the same quality as Anna Kavan's earlier works have -- a similar stifling sensation giving way to the knowledge that art, at least for some, really did allow survival on something like one's own terms.
June 17, 2020
4.5 rounded up
I think I've found a new favourite in Jean Rhys. The subject matter and themes were in some ways similar to The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne but this definitely made for less uncomfortable reading.
The protagonist, Julia, is adrift in post-War Paris after having just been ditched by her latest lover - the eponymous Mr Mckenzie. She moves between cheap hotels, men and bars, on the hunt for another man to fund her lifestyle. Julia is the classic version of (and I hate this coinage) the “un-likeable female protagonist” of recent fiction (think Ottessa Moshfegh and the like), yet she is somehow still someone we end up rooting for and caring about her fate at the hands of these ambivalent men.
Highly recommended, and I’m looking forward to reading more of Rhys's fiction.
I think I've found a new favourite in Jean Rhys. The subject matter and themes were in some ways similar to The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne but this definitely made for less uncomfortable reading.
The protagonist, Julia, is adrift in post-War Paris after having just been ditched by her latest lover - the eponymous Mr Mckenzie. She moves between cheap hotels, men and bars, on the hunt for another man to fund her lifestyle. Julia is the classic version of (and I hate this coinage) the “un-likeable female protagonist” of recent fiction (think Ottessa Moshfegh and the like), yet she is somehow still someone we end up rooting for and caring about her fate at the hands of these ambivalent men.
Highly recommended, and I’m looking forward to reading more of Rhys's fiction.
July 3, 2022
(4.5)
'The things one did. Life was perfectly mad, really. And here was silence--the best thing in the world.'
'It was a mild day. The sky was the rare, hazy, and tender blue of the London sky in spring. There was such sweetness in the air that it benumbed you. It woke up in you a hope that was a stealthy pain.'
'There was a vase of flame-coloured tulips in the hall -- surely the most graceful of flowers. Some thrust their heads forward like snakes, and some were very erect, stiff, virginal, rather prim. Some were dying, with curved grace in their death.'
'The things one did. Life was perfectly mad, really. And here was silence--the best thing in the world.'
'It was a mild day. The sky was the rare, hazy, and tender blue of the London sky in spring. There was such sweetness in the air that it benumbed you. It woke up in you a hope that was a stealthy pain.'
'There was a vase of flame-coloured tulips in the hall -- surely the most graceful of flowers. Some thrust their heads forward like snakes, and some were very erect, stiff, virginal, rather prim. Some were dying, with curved grace in their death.'
March 21, 2020
Rhys is best known for “Wide Sargasso Sea”, however, her earlier books deliver an emotional punch with an economy of words. Her lesser known works, such as this one, are worthy of a second look.
Rhys was half white and half Caribbean Creole. Her early life clearly had a profound effect on her and very much shows up in her writing. There is a bit of Rhys herself in her early works.
There is a melancholy and underlying sadness in everything she writes, as it is with Julia in this one. You may not like Julia, but how could you not feel sympathy?
Rhys was half white and half Caribbean Creole. Her early life clearly had a profound effect on her and very much shows up in her writing. There is a bit of Rhys herself in her early works.
There is a melancholy and underlying sadness in everything she writes, as it is with Julia in this one. You may not like Julia, but how could you not feel sympathy?
March 19, 2020
Published in 1930 about a woman who wanted something unusual from life, adventure? travel? not to live in drab poverty forever? But she was an adult before women had the vote (or were enfranchised much at all) and certainly when it was rarely allowed for women to aspire to anything like a satisfying, self-supporting occupation. No no no, dear. Women keep homes and make babies and if they die doing so then another can be found to take their place. But what if you married young, your baby died, it was WWI, so the men died, the world was insane, “a mad, reckless time”, and all you knew how to do was have a series of increasingly empty affairs with men to keep yourself alive - clearly a lifestyle with diminishing returns.
So perforce, she increasingly disassociates from everyone, and everything, grasping at sadder and flimsier straws; revealing a truth of women’s lives still.
“Her eyes gave her away. By her eyes and the deep circles under them you saw that she was a dreamer, that she was vulnerable - too vulnerable ever to make a success of a career of chance.”
Of Mr. Mackenzie (a minor character):
“His code was perfectly adapted to the social system and in any argument he could have defended it against any attack whatsoever. However, he never argued it, because that was part of the code. You didn’t argue about these things. Simply, under certain circumstances, you did this, and under other circumstances, you did that.”
Of another male's thoughts (all we need to know? or perhaps projection):
"It was curious to speculate about the life of a woman like that and to wonder what she appeared to herself to be - when she looked in the glass for instance. Because of course, she must have some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living."
Because, as all women of a certain age know, once you are past your beauty prime - why go on living? See below.
(in the cinema, in London):
“The girls were perky and pretty, but it was strange how many of the older women looked drab and hopeless, with timid, hunted expressions. They looked ashamed of themselves, as if they were begging the world in general not to notice that they were women or to hold it against them.”
Trying to remember her childhood:
“When you are a child you are yourself and you know and see everything prophetically. And then suddenly something happens and you stop being yourself; you become what others force you to be. You lose your wisdom and your soul.”
This she accepts in a matter of fact manner. As she realizes she’s losing the only commodity she has that is suitable for sale (youth & sexiness) she becomes increasingly mentally fragile and detached. She is certain that her emotions are of no import to anyone. On the night of her mother’s funeral, her face shows she has been crying. When asked by a man who, we think, does care on some level, what is wrong, she replies, ‘nothing’.
Because so much has not changed in the last century - women eventually become invisible - much of this book reverbs deeply still. As contemporary writer Marge Piercy said of it: “For a woman reading it, it is as stark, as ominous as a skeleton.”
Highly recommended - but not when you're feeling depressed. ;/
So perforce, she increasingly disassociates from everyone, and everything, grasping at sadder and flimsier straws; revealing a truth of women’s lives still.
“Her eyes gave her away. By her eyes and the deep circles under them you saw that she was a dreamer, that she was vulnerable - too vulnerable ever to make a success of a career of chance.”
Of Mr. Mackenzie (a minor character):
“His code was perfectly adapted to the social system and in any argument he could have defended it against any attack whatsoever. However, he never argued it, because that was part of the code. You didn’t argue about these things. Simply, under certain circumstances, you did this, and under other circumstances, you did that.”
Of another male's thoughts (all we need to know? or perhaps projection):
"It was curious to speculate about the life of a woman like that and to wonder what she appeared to herself to be - when she looked in the glass for instance. Because of course, she must have some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living."
Because, as all women of a certain age know, once you are past your beauty prime - why go on living? See below.
(in the cinema, in London):
“The girls were perky and pretty, but it was strange how many of the older women looked drab and hopeless, with timid, hunted expressions. They looked ashamed of themselves, as if they were begging the world in general not to notice that they were women or to hold it against them.”
Trying to remember her childhood:
“When you are a child you are yourself and you know and see everything prophetically. And then suddenly something happens and you stop being yourself; you become what others force you to be. You lose your wisdom and your soul.”
This she accepts in a matter of fact manner. As she realizes she’s losing the only commodity she has that is suitable for sale (youth & sexiness) she becomes increasingly mentally fragile and detached. She is certain that her emotions are of no import to anyone. On the night of her mother’s funeral, her face shows she has been crying. When asked by a man who, we think, does care on some level, what is wrong, she replies, ‘nothing’.
Because so much has not changed in the last century - women eventually become invisible - much of this book reverbs deeply still. As contemporary writer Marge Piercy said of it: “For a woman reading it, it is as stark, as ominous as a skeleton.”
Highly recommended - but not when you're feeling depressed. ;/
March 9, 2016
It needs to be said that Rhys is one of the most difficult novelists I have ever read. Her characters are not sympathetic, they are not beautiful, their lives are not interesting or fascinating. But this is exactly the point and the strength of her narratives: they are unmistakably, painfully real.
If I had to use one word to describe this novel, it would be 'bleak'. Julia seems only a shell of a person, someone who is barely alive, barely functioning after having been left - yes, not the other way around - by Mr Mackenzie. Little by little we find out Julia has been made what she is, a woman who cannot make her own way, a woman who was beautiful, very beautiful once, and men would take care of her in exchange for her company. And now, she is losing her beauty, and with that the interest of men, and with that any kind of income and any kind of respectable life. Julia is not at all likeable, and I do not in any way consider her way of living a suitable mode for any woman, leeching off men, but what becomes clear, slowly but surely, is that Julia has been made the person she is. She cannot change now, it is impossible, and this is the tragedy of her existence. There is no space for women like her in society - only the young and beautiful matter, while the older are discarded, without friends or family, without any human connection. And that's the message of this novel. Bleak does not quite cover it, really.
If I had to use one word to describe this novel, it would be 'bleak'. Julia seems only a shell of a person, someone who is barely alive, barely functioning after having been left - yes, not the other way around - by Mr Mackenzie. Little by little we find out Julia has been made what she is, a woman who cannot make her own way, a woman who was beautiful, very beautiful once, and men would take care of her in exchange for her company. And now, she is losing her beauty, and with that the interest of men, and with that any kind of income and any kind of respectable life. Julia is not at all likeable, and I do not in any way consider her way of living a suitable mode for any woman, leeching off men, but what becomes clear, slowly but surely, is that Julia has been made the person she is. She cannot change now, it is impossible, and this is the tragedy of her existence. There is no space for women like her in society - only the young and beautiful matter, while the older are discarded, without friends or family, without any human connection. And that's the message of this novel. Bleak does not quite cover it, really.
July 16, 2018
Any novel that you read immediately before or after Jean Rhys’ After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie may pale in comparison. Morality and even basic human decency are largely irrelevant to the relationships explored in After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie. It’s not that men or women are needlessly cruel. It’s just that morality plays almost no part in most relationships between Rhys’ men and women. ”People are such beasts, such mean beasts. . . They’ll let you die for want of a decent word, and then they’ll lick the feet of anybody they can get anything out of. And do you think I’m going to cringe to a lot mean, stupid animals? If all good, respectable people had one face, I’d spit in it. I which they all had one face so that could spit in it.”
Rhys portrays Julia Martin and her several consorts with bleak and fearless honesty. Men want sex and perhaps a little companionship. Julia needs money for her room, money for food, money for an occasional brandy and modest entertainment. With one or two of Julia’s men, there’s some basic and lasting fellow feeling. With others, there’s a simple exchange of sex for money, masquerading under a transparent charade of minimal affection.
Julia’s been supported since her late teens by a succession of men. Her first affair ”had ended quietly and decently, without fuss or scenes or hysteria. When you were nineteen, and it was the first time you had been let down, you did not make scenes. You felt as if your back was broken, as if you would never move again. But you did not make a scene. That started later on, when the same thing had happened five or six times over, and you were supposed to be getting used to it.” By the time Julia reaches thirty-six, when this story occurs, her ”career of ups and downs had rubbed most of the hall-marks off her, so that it was not easy to guess at her age, her nationality, or the social background to which she properly belonged.” Julia’s been tossed this way and that by life, and she struggles to find the energy to survive: ”she wasn’t the hard-bitten sort. She was the soft sort. Anybody could tell that. Afraid of life. Had to screw herself up to it all the time. He had liked that at first. Then it had become a bit of a bore.” Julia realizes that she’s aging and no longer as attractive as when she was younger. Walking down a dark Parisian street at night, she’s followed by a young man who guesses that she’s a streetwalker. He catches up with her and then sees her face: ”’Oh, la, la,’ he said. ‘Ah non, alors,’ He turned about and walked away. “Well,’ said Julia aloud, ‘that’s funny. The joke’s on me this time.’” And then, “As she walked she saw nothing but the young man’s little eyes, which had looked at her with such deadly and impartial criticism.”
Julia has no long-term plan, no middle class notion of how to remove herself from depending on handouts from her male consorts. Her existence consists of ”a disconnected episode to be placed with all the other disconnected episodes which made up her life.” She decides about her future based upon either need or chance. Here’s Julia, deciding about whether to leave bleak Paris and return to bleak London: ”If a taxi hoots before I count three, I’ll go to London. If not, I won’t.” Julia returns to London to her dying and estranged mother who recognizes nobody but whom she still loves; to her estranged sister who distrusts, despises, but still may love her; and to her Uncle Griffiths who only distrusts and despises her: ”underneath that expression [of Julia’s], people like her were preparing the filthy abuse they would use, the dirty tricks they would try to play.” Julia’s mother’s death and Julia’s return to London reminds her that her life had been a long succession of humiliations and mistakes and pains and ridiculous efforts. Everybody’s life was like that.”
Jean Rhys was a fearless novelist. Rhys never sought popular approval by populating her novels with likable or sympathetic characters holding conventional, or even any, moral codes. Rhys’ characters typically find no solace in religion or ritual: her characters, like her writing, are pure and unfettered, direct and to the point. Rhys seems to have said to us: like them or not, I don’t care, but that’s who they are and they’re no different from most of you.
After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie was published in 1931. It remains a discomfiting, timeless, wonderful novel, just as fresh now as when it was first published. A solid 5 stars.
Rhys portrays Julia Martin and her several consorts with bleak and fearless honesty. Men want sex and perhaps a little companionship. Julia needs money for her room, money for food, money for an occasional brandy and modest entertainment. With one or two of Julia’s men, there’s some basic and lasting fellow feeling. With others, there’s a simple exchange of sex for money, masquerading under a transparent charade of minimal affection.
Julia’s been supported since her late teens by a succession of men. Her first affair ”had ended quietly and decently, without fuss or scenes or hysteria. When you were nineteen, and it was the first time you had been let down, you did not make scenes. You felt as if your back was broken, as if you would never move again. But you did not make a scene. That started later on, when the same thing had happened five or six times over, and you were supposed to be getting used to it.” By the time Julia reaches thirty-six, when this story occurs, her ”career of ups and downs had rubbed most of the hall-marks off her, so that it was not easy to guess at her age, her nationality, or the social background to which she properly belonged.” Julia’s been tossed this way and that by life, and she struggles to find the energy to survive: ”she wasn’t the hard-bitten sort. She was the soft sort. Anybody could tell that. Afraid of life. Had to screw herself up to it all the time. He had liked that at first. Then it had become a bit of a bore.” Julia realizes that she’s aging and no longer as attractive as when she was younger. Walking down a dark Parisian street at night, she’s followed by a young man who guesses that she’s a streetwalker. He catches up with her and then sees her face: ”’Oh, la, la,’ he said. ‘Ah non, alors,’ He turned about and walked away. “Well,’ said Julia aloud, ‘that’s funny. The joke’s on me this time.’” And then, “As she walked she saw nothing but the young man’s little eyes, which had looked at her with such deadly and impartial criticism.”
Julia has no long-term plan, no middle class notion of how to remove herself from depending on handouts from her male consorts. Her existence consists of ”a disconnected episode to be placed with all the other disconnected episodes which made up her life.” She decides about her future based upon either need or chance. Here’s Julia, deciding about whether to leave bleak Paris and return to bleak London: ”If a taxi hoots before I count three, I’ll go to London. If not, I won’t.” Julia returns to London to her dying and estranged mother who recognizes nobody but whom she still loves; to her estranged sister who distrusts, despises, but still may love her; and to her Uncle Griffiths who only distrusts and despises her: ”underneath that expression [of Julia’s], people like her were preparing the filthy abuse they would use, the dirty tricks they would try to play.” Julia’s mother’s death and Julia’s return to London reminds her that her life had been a long succession of humiliations and mistakes and pains and ridiculous efforts. Everybody’s life was like that.”
Jean Rhys was a fearless novelist. Rhys never sought popular approval by populating her novels with likable or sympathetic characters holding conventional, or even any, moral codes. Rhys’ characters typically find no solace in religion or ritual: her characters, like her writing, are pure and unfettered, direct and to the point. Rhys seems to have said to us: like them or not, I don’t care, but that’s who they are and they’re no different from most of you.
After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie was published in 1931. It remains a discomfiting, timeless, wonderful novel, just as fresh now as when it was first published. A solid 5 stars.
September 5, 2012
After leaving Mr Mackenzie Julia Martin thought about a shotgun to the head but she didn't have a shotgun or something like cyanide but she was friends with no pharmacist or to become a graceful manic flysplat underground train leaper but the very idea made her tired or hanging but what about the poor hotel maids, not their fault after all and wouldn't they be cursing or the simple tumble from the 12th floor, that might do but she didn't have much of a head for heights or stick her finger in the ubiquitous socket but the man before Mr Mackenzie said that an electric shock can propel a person all the way across a room, it sounded so dramatic, it sounded like the Olympics only backwards, it wasn't her style at all, or drowning, yes, that could be nice, except she couldn't swim, but wouldn't that be an advantage? She supposed so, but again, what if some silly man fished her out like the man before the man before Mr Mackenzie did in London, now sleeping pills was okay, yes, but she had used them all up trying to actually sleep, what a silly, so what about going to the zoo and sneaking into the tiger cage, that had flair, yes, she liked that, with a note saying "please send remains to Mr Mackenzie" but what she actually did do was keep drinking, and drinking, and drinking, and eventually, that did it.
March 11, 2019
I loved this just as much as Good Morning, Midnight. Julia wanders around Paris, London, and Paris again moving from cheap hotel to boardinghouse living off the money she can get from men. Middle class and middle-aged she has no prospects of marriage and no likelihood of employment. It's sad and depressing but has Rhys's wonderful clean, unsentimental writing.
May 6, 2020
Another devastating novel by Jean Rhys. (I'm reading/re-reading them in order of composition and this is her third.)
After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie one is a bit of a departure from her first two books, Voyage in the Dark and Quartet, insomuch as the text moves much more freely through the interior thoughts and impressions of the various characters and how they perceive and interpret each other. The narrative therefore creates less the tale of an alienated woman’s struggle against a hostile and abusive world (as seen in the other two novels) and more of a kind of panorama of souls crushed by their own indifference—each with a selfishness built of their own fears and disappointments. At first I found this panoramic shifting viewpoint less honest, somehow, that the first two novels and yearned for Julia’s perspective alone—to feel a purer empathy for her. As the novel progressed, however, I came to appreciate also seeing Julia from the outside, as the others interpreted her and her actions, and seeing how the other characters—Mr. Mackenzie, Horsefield, Uncle Griffiths, Mr. James, and Norah, Julia’s sister—each suffer their own interior alienation, and ultimately forgive themselves for their indifference and inability to feel or act upon their empathy for others. While, in the novel’s early scenes, these narrative driftings into other points of view seemed primarily to show how unfeeling the other characters were, as the narrative progresses, it actually fleshes out the other characters and deepened my view of Julia as well, neither saint nor total victim, but merely another semi-culpable soul traversing the wasteland of human selfishness known as society. While her sensitivity at first prompted my empathy more than the other, harder characters, of course it became, in the end, not much different than the selfish lack of understanding or inability to offer help of the various wealthy male characters.
As a species we have a lot of trouble believing that others suffer as we do and empathizing with that suffering rather than focusing on our own emotional and economic survival and feeling justified in preserving ourselves always with the excuse that things are hard, we’ve not had it easy, why should I go out of my way for you...etc. The biggest difference, of course, is that the male characters here have the economic means to help so their niggardliness makes them look more self-interested. In the end they are not—it’ s just that, as Julie says of Mr. James when he makes her feel bad for being needy, “It’s so easy to make a person who hasn’t got anything seem wrong.” Not that Julia deserves her fate—it’s just that aging, society, getting on...are all pitiless things.
After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie one is a bit of a departure from her first two books, Voyage in the Dark and Quartet, insomuch as the text moves much more freely through the interior thoughts and impressions of the various characters and how they perceive and interpret each other. The narrative therefore creates less the tale of an alienated woman’s struggle against a hostile and abusive world (as seen in the other two novels) and more of a kind of panorama of souls crushed by their own indifference—each with a selfishness built of their own fears and disappointments. At first I found this panoramic shifting viewpoint less honest, somehow, that the first two novels and yearned for Julia’s perspective alone—to feel a purer empathy for her. As the novel progressed, however, I came to appreciate also seeing Julia from the outside, as the others interpreted her and her actions, and seeing how the other characters—Mr. Mackenzie, Horsefield, Uncle Griffiths, Mr. James, and Norah, Julia’s sister—each suffer their own interior alienation, and ultimately forgive themselves for their indifference and inability to feel or act upon their empathy for others. While, in the novel’s early scenes, these narrative driftings into other points of view seemed primarily to show how unfeeling the other characters were, as the narrative progresses, it actually fleshes out the other characters and deepened my view of Julia as well, neither saint nor total victim, but merely another semi-culpable soul traversing the wasteland of human selfishness known as society. While her sensitivity at first prompted my empathy more than the other, harder characters, of course it became, in the end, not much different than the selfish lack of understanding or inability to offer help of the various wealthy male characters.
As a species we have a lot of trouble believing that others suffer as we do and empathizing with that suffering rather than focusing on our own emotional and economic survival and feeling justified in preserving ourselves always with the excuse that things are hard, we’ve not had it easy, why should I go out of my way for you...etc. The biggest difference, of course, is that the male characters here have the economic means to help so their niggardliness makes them look more self-interested. In the end they are not—it’ s just that, as Julie says of Mr. James when he makes her feel bad for being needy, “It’s so easy to make a person who hasn’t got anything seem wrong.” Not that Julia deserves her fate—it’s just that aging, society, getting on...are all pitiless things.
April 1, 2020
This is the delectable Jean Rhys at her very best. She has our central character deliciously sussed out. We know her shortcomings and want to help her out - it's a tough life out there for Julia Martin. Hell, it's a goddam jungle.
Some of this underdog protagonist's wry observations are as bluntly incisive as Rhys's narrative observation of her:
'Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.'
'It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong.'
'If all good, respectable people had one face, I'd spit in it.'
And so on.
Released in 1931, three years after Quartet, this was Rhys's second published novel, which she wrote and had published when she was 41. One reviewer called this material from her early period 'sordid'. It would be another 36 years before the starchy literary establishment acknowledged her with the 1967 WH Smith Literary Award, of which she said only, in that characteristic understated way she had with irony and words: 'It has come too late.'
I laugh out loud and cry a little whenever I read Mackenzie, just as I so often do reading any of this formidable author's work.
This novel should, like all her others of this period, have been far more successful than it was in its day, just as its Jean Rhys should have been given far greater recognition, far sooner, for her extraordinary talent. She was a proud pariah though and swallowed down her lot, along with a rather lot of gin and who could blame her?
It would be criminal for any serious reader or writer to let this or any other Jean Rhys novel escape their attention. Treat yourself to this fabulously rocky, rollercoaster ride down the gurgler in silk stockings - you deserve it.
Then read it again and see what you missed.
Some of this underdog protagonist's wry observations are as bluntly incisive as Rhys's narrative observation of her:
'Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.'
'It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong.'
'If all good, respectable people had one face, I'd spit in it.'
And so on.
Released in 1931, three years after Quartet, this was Rhys's second published novel, which she wrote and had published when she was 41. One reviewer called this material from her early period 'sordid'. It would be another 36 years before the starchy literary establishment acknowledged her with the 1967 WH Smith Literary Award, of which she said only, in that characteristic understated way she had with irony and words: 'It has come too late.'
I laugh out loud and cry a little whenever I read Mackenzie, just as I so often do reading any of this formidable author's work.
This novel should, like all her others of this period, have been far more successful than it was in its day, just as its Jean Rhys should have been given far greater recognition, far sooner, for her extraordinary talent. She was a proud pariah though and swallowed down her lot, along with a rather lot of gin and who could blame her?
It would be criminal for any serious reader or writer to let this or any other Jean Rhys novel escape their attention. Treat yourself to this fabulously rocky, rollercoaster ride down the gurgler in silk stockings - you deserve it.
Then read it again and see what you missed.
May 19, 2016
"It is a terrible book about the final floundering to destruction of a friendless and worthless but pitiful woman. It is terrible, but it is superb." — Rebecca West
"What a relatable protagonist!" — me
"What a relatable protagonist!" — me
July 23, 2016
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2015...
First published in 1930, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie was Jean Rhys’ second novel. Set in Paris in the late 1920s, it features a woman in her thirties, Julia Martin. For the past six months, Julia has been surviving on an allowance of 300 francs per week which she receives from her ex-lover, Mr Mackenzie.
When we first meet Julia, she is living in a room in a tawdry hotel in Paris – the sort of place where the staircase smells of the landlady’s cats. She is down on her luck, tired of life, and her looks have started to fade. Here’s a brief but telling description of Julia:
Her eyes gave her away. By her eyes and the deep circles under them you saw that she was a dreamer, that she was vulnerable – too vulnerable ever to make a success of a career of chance.
She made herself up elaborately and carefully; yet it was clear that what she was doing had long ceased to be a labour of love and had become partly a mechanical process, partly a substitute for the mask she would have liked to wear. (pg 11)
As the story unfolds, we gather that Julia’s affair with Mr Mackenzie ended rather unpleasantly. He has distanced himself from Julia, and all transactions take place by way of his solicitor, Henri Legros. One Tuesday, Julia receives a letter from Legros informing her that the weekly allowance will be discontinued – enclosed is a final payment of 1,500 francs. Even though she had always expected this would happen one day, Julia feels bruised and discarded. There is no place for her in their world:
When she thought of the combination of Mr Mackenzie and Maître Legros, all sense of reality deserted her and it seemed to her that there were no limits at all to their joint powers of defeating and hurting her. Together the two perfectly represented organized society, in which she had no place and against which she had not a dog’s chance. (pg. 17)
Consequently, Julia decides to confront Mr Mackenzie, and she follows him to a restaurant with the aim of having it out. At this point in the novel, Rhys does something very interesting – the point of view switches from Julia to Mr Mackenzie, and we get a sense of his perspective. Mackenzie is in his late forties, comfortably off, and rather lacking in compassion or honourable moral values:
He had more than once allowed himself to be drawn into affairs which he had regretted bitterly afterwards, though when it came to getting out of these affairs his business instinct came to his help, and he got out undamaged. (pg. 19)
As Mackenzie waits for his order at the restaurant, a place he had visited with Julia when they were together, his thoughts turn to their affair:
He had lied; he had made her promises which he never intended to keep; and so on, and so on. All part of the insanity, for which he was not responsible.
Not that many lies had been necessary. After seeing him two or three times she had spent the night with him at a tawdry hotel. Perhaps that was the reason why, when he came to think of it, he had never really liked her. (pg. 19)
Julia’s arrival at the restaurant heralds one of the pivotal scenes in the novel. It’s too intricate, too subtle to describe here, but it’s a great piece of writing. Julia refuses her ex-lover’s payoff and leaves with her dignity reasonably intact; Mackenzie hopes that no one has witnessed their exchange. Luckily for Julia, the encounter is noted by an Englishman named George Horsfield, who is sitting at the next table. When Julia leaves the restaurant, Horsfield follows. Julia has had a difficult life, and it shows – she appears tired and depressed. Horsfield befriends Julia, gives her 1,500 francs and advises her to return to London for a while.
On her arrival in London, Julia takes a room at a shabby hotel in Bloomsbury. What follows is a series of bruising encounters as Julia re-establishes contact with her family, most notably her sister, Norah and her Uncle Griffiths. In direct contrast to Julia, Norah has done the ‘right thing’ by staying at home to care for their invalid mother. Norah and Uncle Griffiths clearly disapprove of Julia’s decision to go her own way in Paris. (Julia had been married but subsequently left her husband. Uncle Griffiths is of the opinion that she ought to have extracted some kind of financial settlement from this man). Griffiths dismisses Julia with a one-pound note – he simply doesn’t care and wants little more to do with her.
Julia’s attempts to gain support from an ex-lover, Neil James, prove equally disheartening. James promises that he will send Julia some money so that she can have a little rest. In the end, he sends £20 and makes it clear that there will be no more handouts. Even Horsfield, now back in London, seems to be withdrawing his support. He seems to find her attractive one minute, unappealing the next. (Rhys also gives us access to Horsfield’s viewpoint from time to time.)
This is my second reading of Mr Mackenzie. It’s quite a difficult novel to describe, but I wanted to try to write about it before going on to read more of Rhys’ work. The writing is superb, the characters are complex and nuanced. Rhys appears to have mined her own past, her own experiences of the harsh reality of life as a lone woman in the city. Julia seems trapped; she is weary of life and drinks as a means of blunting the pain of her situation. Her life reads like a series of fragmented episodes, and there is little hope of a bright outlook. Rhys exposes the hypocrisy and cruelty of society at the time: no one seems to care about Julia; she is shunned by her family and acquaintances. Her predicament reminded me a little of the final stages of Lily Bart’s situation in The House of Mirth, another bruising and unforgettable story.
I have another couple of novels by Rhys: Voyage in the Dark and Good Morning, Midnight. I’d also like to read her first novel, Quartet.
I’m finding it difficult to describe the impact of reading After Leaving Mr Mackenzie – it’s a brilliant piece of work. I’ll finish with a quote that seems to capture something of Julia’s life, the constant swings from depression to glimmers of hope and back to despair once more:
She was crying now because she remembered that her life had been a long succession of humiliations and mistakes and pains and ridiculous efforts. Everybody’s life was like that. At the same time, in a miraculous manner, some essence of her was shooting upwards like a flame. She was great. She was a defiant flame shooting upwards not to plead but to threaten. Then the flame sank down again, useless, having reached nothing. (pg. 94-95)
After Leaving Mr Mackenzie is published in the UK by Penguin Modern Classics
First published in 1930, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie was Jean Rhys’ second novel. Set in Paris in the late 1920s, it features a woman in her thirties, Julia Martin. For the past six months, Julia has been surviving on an allowance of 300 francs per week which she receives from her ex-lover, Mr Mackenzie.
When we first meet Julia, she is living in a room in a tawdry hotel in Paris – the sort of place where the staircase smells of the landlady’s cats. She is down on her luck, tired of life, and her looks have started to fade. Here’s a brief but telling description of Julia:
Her eyes gave her away. By her eyes and the deep circles under them you saw that she was a dreamer, that she was vulnerable – too vulnerable ever to make a success of a career of chance.
She made herself up elaborately and carefully; yet it was clear that what she was doing had long ceased to be a labour of love and had become partly a mechanical process, partly a substitute for the mask she would have liked to wear. (pg 11)
As the story unfolds, we gather that Julia’s affair with Mr Mackenzie ended rather unpleasantly. He has distanced himself from Julia, and all transactions take place by way of his solicitor, Henri Legros. One Tuesday, Julia receives a letter from Legros informing her that the weekly allowance will be discontinued – enclosed is a final payment of 1,500 francs. Even though she had always expected this would happen one day, Julia feels bruised and discarded. There is no place for her in their world:
When she thought of the combination of Mr Mackenzie and Maître Legros, all sense of reality deserted her and it seemed to her that there were no limits at all to their joint powers of defeating and hurting her. Together the two perfectly represented organized society, in which she had no place and against which she had not a dog’s chance. (pg. 17)
Consequently, Julia decides to confront Mr Mackenzie, and she follows him to a restaurant with the aim of having it out. At this point in the novel, Rhys does something very interesting – the point of view switches from Julia to Mr Mackenzie, and we get a sense of his perspective. Mackenzie is in his late forties, comfortably off, and rather lacking in compassion or honourable moral values:
He had more than once allowed himself to be drawn into affairs which he had regretted bitterly afterwards, though when it came to getting out of these affairs his business instinct came to his help, and he got out undamaged. (pg. 19)
As Mackenzie waits for his order at the restaurant, a place he had visited with Julia when they were together, his thoughts turn to their affair:
He had lied; he had made her promises which he never intended to keep; and so on, and so on. All part of the insanity, for which he was not responsible.
Not that many lies had been necessary. After seeing him two or three times she had spent the night with him at a tawdry hotel. Perhaps that was the reason why, when he came to think of it, he had never really liked her. (pg. 19)
Julia’s arrival at the restaurant heralds one of the pivotal scenes in the novel. It’s too intricate, too subtle to describe here, but it’s a great piece of writing. Julia refuses her ex-lover’s payoff and leaves with her dignity reasonably intact; Mackenzie hopes that no one has witnessed their exchange. Luckily for Julia, the encounter is noted by an Englishman named George Horsfield, who is sitting at the next table. When Julia leaves the restaurant, Horsfield follows. Julia has had a difficult life, and it shows – she appears tired and depressed. Horsfield befriends Julia, gives her 1,500 francs and advises her to return to London for a while.
On her arrival in London, Julia takes a room at a shabby hotel in Bloomsbury. What follows is a series of bruising encounters as Julia re-establishes contact with her family, most notably her sister, Norah and her Uncle Griffiths. In direct contrast to Julia, Norah has done the ‘right thing’ by staying at home to care for their invalid mother. Norah and Uncle Griffiths clearly disapprove of Julia’s decision to go her own way in Paris. (Julia had been married but subsequently left her husband. Uncle Griffiths is of the opinion that she ought to have extracted some kind of financial settlement from this man). Griffiths dismisses Julia with a one-pound note – he simply doesn’t care and wants little more to do with her.
Julia’s attempts to gain support from an ex-lover, Neil James, prove equally disheartening. James promises that he will send Julia some money so that she can have a little rest. In the end, he sends £20 and makes it clear that there will be no more handouts. Even Horsfield, now back in London, seems to be withdrawing his support. He seems to find her attractive one minute, unappealing the next. (Rhys also gives us access to Horsfield’s viewpoint from time to time.)
This is my second reading of Mr Mackenzie. It’s quite a difficult novel to describe, but I wanted to try to write about it before going on to read more of Rhys’ work. The writing is superb, the characters are complex and nuanced. Rhys appears to have mined her own past, her own experiences of the harsh reality of life as a lone woman in the city. Julia seems trapped; she is weary of life and drinks as a means of blunting the pain of her situation. Her life reads like a series of fragmented episodes, and there is little hope of a bright outlook. Rhys exposes the hypocrisy and cruelty of society at the time: no one seems to care about Julia; she is shunned by her family and acquaintances. Her predicament reminded me a little of the final stages of Lily Bart’s situation in The House of Mirth, another bruising and unforgettable story.
I have another couple of novels by Rhys: Voyage in the Dark and Good Morning, Midnight. I’d also like to read her first novel, Quartet.
I’m finding it difficult to describe the impact of reading After Leaving Mr Mackenzie – it’s a brilliant piece of work. I’ll finish with a quote that seems to capture something of Julia’s life, the constant swings from depression to glimmers of hope and back to despair once more:
She was crying now because she remembered that her life had been a long succession of humiliations and mistakes and pains and ridiculous efforts. Everybody’s life was like that. At the same time, in a miraculous manner, some essence of her was shooting upwards like a flame. She was great. She was a defiant flame shooting upwards not to plead but to threaten. Then the flame sank down again, useless, having reached nothing. (pg. 94-95)
After Leaving Mr Mackenzie is published in the UK by Penguin Modern Classics
November 2, 2010
Depressing 'here n' there'...but a Profound Literary Accomplishment,
I completed this book on a flight from LA to NY on 10/11/2000. This was my first reading experience by Jean Rhys.
I learned that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis included Jean Rhys on her roster of favorite authors. That's why I bought the book. I was curious to learn what 'tickled her fancy'. At first...the book was 3 stars...but after a day or two had passed I realized that the book had quite an impact on me. I had just finished an A+ book (The Notorious Dr. August)...so, maybe that's why I didn't give this 5 stars initially.
It explores loneliness, living on the edge, dealing with death, depression, the cheeriness of childhood, and the search for love. So, you can probably imagine why Jacqueline Kennedy loved this author.
I felt the main character, Julia, was easily identifiable by Jackie. Mr MacKenzie was her Onassis and Mr. Horsfield was her own Mr. Tempelsman in many ways.
Although, I saw Julia as a sort of prostitute "in cognito" style. I did gasp when I read 'She's gone'. 'Gone'. That was the word. It struck me because my own sister-in-law called me with those exact words when my mother passed away. And when she wrote 'Nothing matters. Nothing can be worse than how I feel now, nothing.' I gasped again because in my eulogy to my mother I started it with those two words "Nothing matters"...as that was how I felt initially. Therefore, if you know anyone dealing with grief this book should help during some trying moments. Overall, the book leaves you slightly depressed at the end. It went full circle.
There were some extraordinarily good lines in this book. One favorite:
Every day is a new day. Every day you are a new person.
I completed this book on a flight from LA to NY on 10/11/2000. This was my first reading experience by Jean Rhys.
I learned that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis included Jean Rhys on her roster of favorite authors. That's why I bought the book. I was curious to learn what 'tickled her fancy'. At first...the book was 3 stars...but after a day or two had passed I realized that the book had quite an impact on me. I had just finished an A+ book (The Notorious Dr. August)...so, maybe that's why I didn't give this 5 stars initially.
It explores loneliness, living on the edge, dealing with death, depression, the cheeriness of childhood, and the search for love. So, you can probably imagine why Jacqueline Kennedy loved this author.
I felt the main character, Julia, was easily identifiable by Jackie. Mr MacKenzie was her Onassis and Mr. Horsfield was her own Mr. Tempelsman in many ways.
Although, I saw Julia as a sort of prostitute "in cognito" style. I did gasp when I read 'She's gone'. 'Gone'. That was the word. It struck me because my own sister-in-law called me with those exact words when my mother passed away. And when she wrote 'Nothing matters. Nothing can be worse than how I feel now, nothing.' I gasped again because in my eulogy to my mother I started it with those two words "Nothing matters"...as that was how I felt initially. Therefore, if you know anyone dealing with grief this book should help during some trying moments. Overall, the book leaves you slightly depressed at the end. It went full circle.
There were some extraordinarily good lines in this book. One favorite:
Every day is a new day. Every day you are a new person.
August 2, 2014
Quietly devastating.
February 7, 2021
A novel full of poignant pain quietly endured, as Julia Martin, always needy and half-resigned, flounders through life. Searching for companionship and genuine affection, she's met with tacit hostility and complacent disapproval of her already distant relatives, and the men she encounters can offer her nothing but a small pittance both of money and human warmth that never last very long. Makes one think how little we really need in this life of 'might-have-been's,' but half the time what we get has either gone stale and rotten or rather useless in itself, something one receives with a hollow smile.
August 4, 2018
Jean Rhys was the pen name of Ella Williams. Born in the Caribbean island of Dominica, Rhys lived most of her adult life in England. Rhys published several books, beginning with The Left Bank, a collection of short stories, in 1927. That was followed by a series of short novels over the next dozen years. Postures, later republished as Quartet, was published in 1928. (I reviewed Quartet here.) After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, Rhys’ second novel, came out in 1930, and was followed by Voyage in the Dark in 1934, and Good Morning, Midnight in 1939. Although these books are now regarded as classics of modernism, at the time they didn’t exactly set the world on fire. After Good Morning, Midnight, Rhys disappeared from sight, enough so that a BBC producer who was producing a radio version of Good Morning, Midnight in the mid-1950’s actually took out ads in newspapers, asking about Rhys’ whereabouts. It turned out that Rhys was still alive. She published just two more books during her lifetime, the critically acclaimed Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966, which finally brought her out of obscurity, and Sleep it Off Lady, a collection of short stories which appeared in 1976. Rhys died in 1979 at the age of either 88 or 84. (The Penguin edition of After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie gives her birth year as 1894, Wikipedia says 1890.)
Rhys’ novels from the 1920’s and 1930’s generally deal with the lives of women who are dependent on men for their financial security. I’ve read Quartet, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, and Good Morning, Midnight, and they all fit together very well. Rhys’ lead female characters don’t have enough education to find a profession, so they end up drifting from man to man, eking out an existence thanks to the generosity of their male companions. Rhys had a very interesting comment in her interview with The Paris Review in 1979, the year she died:
“When I was excited about life, I didn’t want to write at all. I’ve never written when I was happy. I didn’t want to. But I’ve never had a long period of being happy. Do you think anyone has? I think you can be peaceful for a long time. When I think about it, if I had to choose, I’d rather be happy than write. You see, there’s very little invention in my books. What came first with most of them was the wish to get rid of this awful sadness that weighed me down.” Jean Rhys, The Paris Review interview, 1979.
After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie tells the story of Julia Martin, who has, well, left Mr. Mackenzie as the novel opens. We follow Julia as the checks from Mr. Mackenzie suddenly stop arriving, and she returns to London after ten years in Paris. In London, Julia reckons with her sister Norah, who has been caring for their invalid mother, now at death’s door.
I don’t want to give too much away by adding more plot summary, and anyway, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie is not a novel that depends much on its plot. Of note to literary fans: in the novel there is a quote from Almayer’s Folly, Joseph Conrad’s first novel, published in 1895, which indicates that Conrad’s work must have been an influence on Rhys. Like Conrad, who was Polish by birth, Rhys no doubt felt herself an outsider to British culture.
There are many excellent quotes in After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie that demonstrate Jean Rhys’ keen observance of human nature. Some of my favorites are:
“Her mind was a confusion of memory and imagination.” (p.9)
“Once you started letting the instinct of pity degenerate from the general to the particular, life became completely impossible.” (p.34)
“It was as if I were before a judge, and I were explaining that everything I had done had always been the only possible thing to do. And of course I forgot that it’s always so with everybody, isn’t it?” (p.40)
“Perhaps the last ten years had been a dream; perhaps life, moving on for the rest of the world, had miraculously stood still for her.” (p.48)
If you’re interested in modernism, or in great writing, you need to read Jean Rhys.
Rhys’ novels from the 1920’s and 1930’s generally deal with the lives of women who are dependent on men for their financial security. I’ve read Quartet, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, and Good Morning, Midnight, and they all fit together very well. Rhys’ lead female characters don’t have enough education to find a profession, so they end up drifting from man to man, eking out an existence thanks to the generosity of their male companions. Rhys had a very interesting comment in her interview with The Paris Review in 1979, the year she died:
“When I was excited about life, I didn’t want to write at all. I’ve never written when I was happy. I didn’t want to. But I’ve never had a long period of being happy. Do you think anyone has? I think you can be peaceful for a long time. When I think about it, if I had to choose, I’d rather be happy than write. You see, there’s very little invention in my books. What came first with most of them was the wish to get rid of this awful sadness that weighed me down.” Jean Rhys, The Paris Review interview, 1979.
After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie tells the story of Julia Martin, who has, well, left Mr. Mackenzie as the novel opens. We follow Julia as the checks from Mr. Mackenzie suddenly stop arriving, and she returns to London after ten years in Paris. In London, Julia reckons with her sister Norah, who has been caring for their invalid mother, now at death’s door.
I don’t want to give too much away by adding more plot summary, and anyway, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie is not a novel that depends much on its plot. Of note to literary fans: in the novel there is a quote from Almayer’s Folly, Joseph Conrad’s first novel, published in 1895, which indicates that Conrad’s work must have been an influence on Rhys. Like Conrad, who was Polish by birth, Rhys no doubt felt herself an outsider to British culture.
There are many excellent quotes in After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie that demonstrate Jean Rhys’ keen observance of human nature. Some of my favorites are:
“Her mind was a confusion of memory and imagination.” (p.9)
“Once you started letting the instinct of pity degenerate from the general to the particular, life became completely impossible.” (p.34)
“It was as if I were before a judge, and I were explaining that everything I had done had always been the only possible thing to do. And of course I forgot that it’s always so with everybody, isn’t it?” (p.40)
“Perhaps the last ten years had been a dream; perhaps life, moving on for the rest of the world, had miraculously stood still for her.” (p.48)
If you’re interested in modernism, or in great writing, you need to read Jean Rhys.
August 10, 2020
Rhys wonderfully portrays the character of Julia a victim of adverse circumstance who exists in small grubby hotels in London and Paris attracting damaged men who try for a while to offer her rescue. The streets are dark, the hotels resonant with broken dreams, the streets full of men looking for various connections. A short novel beautifully wrought encapsulating the meaning of absence and loss
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