Rhys Matters New Critical Perspectives

Rhys Matters argues for the importance of Rhys's work to a more complete understanding of modernism, postcolonial studies, Caribbean studies, and women's and gender studies. This book is the first collection of essays focusing on Rhys's writing in over twenty years, and draws together original essays that make significant new interventions in Rhys scholarship. The collection surveys nearly all of Rhys's major works, as well as providing insights into her position in various disciplinary fields including literary studies, philosophy, material studies, and Caribbean studies. Ultimately, the collection demonstrates how, and why, Rhys matters now, in the broad view of twentieth-century studies.

Mary Wilson is Assistant Professor of English at Christopher Newport University, USA. She is the author of The Labors of Modernism: Domesticity, Servants, and Authorship in Modernist Fiction.

Kerry Johnson is Associate Professor of English and Associate Dean of Liberal Arts at Merrimack College, USA. She has published essays in the Journal of Caribbean Literatures, Modern Fiction Studies, and World Literature Written in English and is currently working on a book project, Landscape, Gender, and Nation in Modernist Fiction.

Foreword; Mary Lou Emery
Introduction; Mary Wilson and Kerry L. Johnson
PART I: ALTERNATIVES AND ALTERITIES: MARKET, TIME, LANGUAGE
1. Menu, Memento, Souvenir: Suffering and Social Imagination in Good Morning, Midnight; Andrea Zemgulys
2. Clockwork Women: Temporality and Form in Jean Rhys's Interwar Novels; Nicole Flynn
3. Language and Belonging in Jean Rhys's Voyage in the Dark; Ania Spyra
PART II: BEING AND BELIEVING: JUDEO-CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES AND IDENTITIES
4. Religion and Rhys; Steve Pinkerton
5. "No Pride, No Name, No Face, No Country": Jewishness and National Identity in Good Morning, Midnight; Jess Issacharoff
PART III: THE LOCATION OF IDENTITY: WRITING SPACE AND PLACE
6. The Country and the City in Jean Rhys's Voyage in the Dark; Regina Martin
7. '…that misty zone which divides life from death': The Concept of the Zombi in Jean Rhys's Short Fiction; Melanie Otto
8. Reclaiming the Left Bank: Jean Rhys's 'Topography' in Left Bank and Quartet; David Armstrong
PART IV: PLEASURE, POWER, HAPPINESS
9.The Trouble with 'Victim': Triangulated Masochism in Jean Rhys's Quartet; Jennifer Mitchell
10. The Good Life Will Start Again: Rest, Return, and Remainder in Good Morning, Midnight; Andrew Kalaidjian
11. The Un-happy Short Story Cycle: Jean Rhys's Sleep it off, Lady; Paul Ardoin