"of the five collected novels, the one that hit home the hardest was Voyage in the Dark. Reading it was a painful voyage into my own cluelessness and powerlessness, a voyage that many young women of my generation, on the cusp of the women's movement, had embarked upon...Rhys's portrayals of young women who fall prey to rapacious situations, canaries in the mine shaft of patriarchy, smart girls with nowhere to go but the wrong man's arms or Anna Karenina's train tracks, spoke to many of us embarking on our journeys...by allowing her female characters a full range of feelings and not airbrushing them into simple virtuous victimhood, Rhys liberates us all from the danger of a single, monochrome self and story...That ability to imagine a life so intimately and richly is Jean Rhys's gift to us. For that she should have been knighted. Instead, I'd like to imagine her even rather happy (perhaps!) with what her stories have become: food to nourish all our souls."
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Women authors from the United KingdomImmigrants to the United KingdomNovelists from the United KingdomShort story writers from the United KingdomEssayists from the United Kingdom
Original Language: English
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Julia Alvarez. from Introduction to Voyage in the Dark
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean_Rhys
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Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys, CBE (/riːs/ REESS; born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams; 24 August 1890 – 14 May 1979) was a novelist who was born on Dominica and from the age of 16 on resided mainly in England.
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