Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys, CBE, born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams, was a mid-20th-century novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica, though she was mainly resident in England from the age of 16. She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea, written as a prequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 August 1894
long house shadow
I watched her die many times. In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty. Only the sun was there to keep us company. We shut him out. And why not? Very soon she was as eager for what's called loving as I was - more lost and drowned afterwards.
looks down-and red
I took the red dress down and put it against myself. 'Does it make me look intemperate and unchaste?' I said.
easy persons seems
It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong.
wall darkness like-you
It was the darkness that got you. It was heavy darkness, greasy and compelling. It made walls round you, and shut you in so that you felt like you could not breathe.
beautiful nice swings
A room? A nice room? A beautiful room? A beautiful room with bath? Swing high, swing low, swing to and fro...This happened and that happened... And then the days came and I was alone.
gaps way whiskey
Would you like a whiskey?' I say. 'I've got some.' (That's original. I bet nobody's ever thought of that way of bridging the gap before.)
betrayal doe traitor
And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?
unhappiness strangeness
...morbidly, attracted him to strangeness, to recklessnesss, even unhappiness.
sea sound rising
The rumble of the life outside was like the sound of the sea which was rising gradually around her.
rooms old-time
Quite like old times,' the room says.
white people trouble
They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.
smell rooms bugs
The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.
would-be longing thirsty
She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.
beautiful hurt mean
But why do you want to talk to me?' He is going to say: 'Because you look so kind,' or 'Because you look so beautiful and kind,' or, subtly, 'Because you look as if you'll understand....' He says: 'Because I think you won't betray me.' I had meant to get this mean to talk to me and tell me all about it, and then be so devastatingly English that perhaps I should manage to hurt him a little in return for all the many times I've been hurt.... 'Because I think you won't betray me, because I think you won't betray me....' Now it won't be so easy.