SOURCE: Carr, Helen. “Writing in the Margins.” In Jean Rhys, pp. 21-6. Plymouth, England: Northcote House, 1996.

In the following essay, Carr discusses Rhys as an autobiographical writer.

Although I have criticized those autobiographical readings of Rhys's work which identify her literally with her heroines and reduce the scope of her work to an individual plight, an autobiographical writer is of course what she is. The stories which appeared in The Left Bank and Other Stories (1927) are mainly vignettes based on her experience in Paris, a couple go back to her Dominican childhood and ‘Vienne’ draws on an early period in her marriage to Jean Lenglet. The source of the plot of Quartet (1928) is her relationship with Ford Madox Ford while Lenglet was in prison for currency irregularities. The character of George Horsfield in After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (1930) appears to be based on her second husband, Leslie Tilden Smith...