A Wanderer and Captive in Paris: Urban Landscape of Female Vulnerability in Jean Rhys’ Interwar Novels

Abstract

The city becomes a “leading character” in the narrative of Caribbean writer Jean Rhys, who fictionalizes her autobiography to explore her painful experience in Paris during the interwar period. She intrudes on the psyche and urban paths of her two heroines in the novels Quartet and Good Morning, Midnight. The French capital seems to be an ordered, geometric territory in patriarchal hands. In contrast, women try to “feminize” it by choosing erratic, oblique routes, which intertwine its streets and their minds, past and present, trauma and self-destructive evasion. Besides, the public places of this large metropolis contribute to thwarted meetings, and its private spaces turn into prisons, where the female characters become the victims of gender violence and sadomasochistic behavior.