The possibility of being substantially right in [one] way while being specifically wrong entails a stable world and a steady viewer…. Jean Rhys is many miles from such confidence, and her subdued, hesitating heroines live under something like the reverse [of this] rule. They and their tormentors can be specifically, superficially right a lot of the time, and still get the whole of the substance wrong; and Rhys herself is anxious not to claim too much for her own broken and threatened perceptions….

[Jean Rhys's characters] have insights, but they have no means of sharing them. They can't find the right expression, and there is no one who will trust a word or a gesture in spite of its poverty. On the contrary, all communication is constantly entangled in a mass of misinterpretation. (p. 30)

There are no links in Rhys's fiction between a person's experience and the meaning...