Jean Rhys and the Novel As Women's Text

“Harrison’s most original contribution to the study of Rhys’s work is in her powerful demonstration of the tragic incompatibility of Antoinette and Rochester in Wide Sargasso Sea. . . . Many new directions are suggested . . . by Harrison’s impressive appraisal of Rhys’s work. . . . [T]he book as a whole is powerfully suggestive, putting Rhys firmly on the map of women writers whose work amply repays painstaking critical attention.” — Times Literary Supplement

“Harrison’s critical analysis of Jean Rhys’s novels brings together an assessment and restatement of some important feminist literary criticism as grounding and preparation for a novel-by-novel discussion of Rhys’s writing. Unlike some other recent critics of Rhys, Harrison is concerned, first of all, to make clear the nature of writing in its connection with gender issues. Only after defining texts in relation to such considerations does she go on to consider previous critical readings of Rhys, including V.S. Pritchett’s and others. Harrison notes that Rhys, like other women writers, has been read by critics and reviewers against a canon shaped by male values. . . . The close readings of the novels follow. To sense the force of those readings, however, one should first give a close reading to Harrison’s early chapters, which lay the groundwork for her critical readings and interpretations.” — CHOICE

“Brilliant as textual analysis, provocative as a contribution to feminist aesthetics, [this book] makes the narrative strategies of women novelists speak their politics.” — Betsy Draine