Jean Rhys | Helen Carr

This is a lucid and attractively written study of Jean Rhys, whose critical reputation continues to rise after long neglect. Neglected and forgotten for many years, the arresting, elliptical novels written by the Dominican-born Jean Rhys are now widely acclaimed. Her last and most famous novel, "Wide Sargasso Sea", her retelling of Jane Eyre, is a central text for the imaginative re-examination of gender and colonial power relations. Helen Carr's account draws on both recent feminist and postcolonial theory, and places Rhys's work in relation to modernist and postmodernist writing. Whilst all Rhys's novels are autobiographical, it is a mistake, Carr argues, to see them simply in individual terms: Rhys uses the material of her own life to structure a devastating critique of the greed and cruelty of the Establishment world, both of Europe and of Empire. First published in 1996, Helen Carr's revised edition takes full cognizance of the wide critical attention paid to Rhys since that date.