5 - Dangerous spirit, bitterly amused: Good Morning, Midnight

Summary

There was that quite ordinary joke that made me laugh so much because it was signed God. Just like that – G-O-D, God. Joke, by God. And what a sense of humour! Even the English aren't in it.

(GM, M, 1986: 185)

Hardly anyone in the village reads you know many cannot Its an unbelievable place and they do put their faith in Black Magic – to tell you the truth it frightens me now – I've been really frightened & thought it sinister – several times lately. Not a pleasant feeling … They are a dour lot, very religious Low Church the older ones. The younger ones a complete vacancy. Poor devils. But why should I pity them? They pity noone – …

(Letter to Selma Vas Dias, 1963)

Good Morning, Midnight, published on the eve of World War II in 1939, is brilliantly achieved, very tightly and complexly structured (Byrne 1985), and is certainly the funniest of Rhys's novels. Rhys's humour can be understood better if viewed through the lens of Caribbean humour which is so often political, full of wordplay, sceptical of institutions and power and essentially survivalist. Though Sasha appears to set her spiritual survival in question by the end of the novel, her ability to deconstruct those social institutions and arrangements which threaten her, and often with hilarious humour, is a marked aspect of her resilience.