1 - Living on both sides, living to write

Summary

With this eye I see & no other … I had two longings & one was fighting the other.

I wanted to be loved & I wanted to be always alone.

(GEB)

It is crucially important to explore the contexts of Rhys's work, especially her placement of the role of writing in her life and of race, class, nationality, gender and religion. She was interestingly contradictory on these subjects, and inclined therefore to tell a story which was Janus-faced, capable of capturing opposing readings of the world which usually failed to communicate well with one another.

Rhys had a well-developed instinct for the submerged pattern within the raw material of life, she also, as a writer, created her own history, not only in her autobiography, but less guardedly in letters and fragments of unfinished autobiographical manuscript. Emotional honesty was her touchstone, selectivity and clarity her writing mantras. Honesty does not mean disclosure has to be complete: selectivity does not mean anything important has to be left out. Rhys chose to tell a very edited version of her life in Smile Please (1979) and left, in her will, an injunction against anyone writing her biography: she wanted to insist that attention be paid only to the work. There were clearly episodes in her life which she preferred not to discuss and which she argued were irrelevant to her literary achievement.