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In this seminar we will study the works of Jean Rhys, who was born in 1890 in Dominica, a small Caribbean island, then a part of the British Empire, which she left as a young woman for England and France. She published her first short story in 1924, her first collection of short stories in 1927 and four novels between 1928 and 1939. She became famous only late in life with Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), her final novel. We will begin by reading and discussing the Caribbean short stories and the metropolitan short stories, which are set in Paris and London, and will then focus on two of her novels: Voyage in the Dark (1934) and Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), her response to Charlotte Brontë's Victorian classic Jane Eyre (1848). As her fiction is often interpreted in relation to her biography, we will also give some attention to her autobiographical fragment Smile Please (1979).
The short stories, the extracts from Rhys' autobiography and from Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre, and selected criticism will be provided. Participants are asked to buy Voyage in the Dark and Wide Sargasso Sea (Penguin editions). |
