Jean Rhys Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Rosalind Miles

SOURCE: "Man the Enemy," in The Female Form: Women Writers and the Conquest of the Novel, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987, pp. 132-47.

In the following excerpt, Miles discusses the depiction of female alienation and social subjugation in Rhys's fiction. "In the work of Jean Rhys," writes Miles, "female self-distrust and despair finds its extremest voice."

'Men—they're so funny—they simply must have you,' said Estelle. 'It's all they want—you. It's imperative they make love to you there and then or, well, they'll die. And then whoops, it's all over and they're not even sure why you're there, in the bed beside them, taking up so much room. It's not that they lied to you in the first place. It's just that they're different. We don't want the sex all that much—although it's perfectly nice—we want the love afterwards. We make love to win love, and they to lose it'.

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