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Colonialism and the Modernist Moment in the Early Novels of Jean
Rhys explores the postcolonial significance of Rhys s modernist
period work, which depicts an urban scene more varied than that
found in other canonical representations of the period. Arguing
against the view that Rhys comes into her own as a colonial thinker
only in the post-WWII period of her career, this study examines the
austere insights gained by Rhys s active cultivation of her fringe
status vis-a-vis British social life and artistic circles, where
her sharp study of the aporias of marginal lives and the violence
of imperial ideology is distilled into an artistic statement
positing the outcome of the imperial venture as a state of
homelessness across the board, for colonized and metropolitans
alike. Bringing to view heretofore overlooked emigre populations,
or their children, alongside locals, Rhys s urbanites struggle to
construct secure lives not simply as a consequence of
commodification, alienation, or voluntary expatriation, but also as
a consequence of marginalization and migration. This view of Rhys s
early work asserts its vital importance to postcolonial studies, an
importance that has been overlooked owing to an over hasty critical
consensus that only one of her early novels contains significant
colonial content. Yet, as this study demonstrates, proper
consideration of colonial elements long considered only incidental
illuminates a colonial continuum in Rhys s work from her earliest
publications. "
Colonialism and the Modernist Moment in the Early Novels of Jean
Rhys explores the postcolonial significance of Rhys's modernist
period work, which depicts an urban scene more varied than that
found in other canonical representations of the period. Arguing
against the view that Rhys comes into her own as a colonial thinker
only in the post-WWII period of her career, this study examines the
austere insights gained by Rhys's active cultivation of her fringe
status vis-a-vis British social life and artistic circles, where
her sharp study of the aporias of marginal lives and the violence
of imperial ideology is distilled into an artistic statement
positing the outcome of the imperial venture as a state of
homelessness across the board, for colonized and 'metropolitans'
alike. Bringing to view heretofore overlooked emigre populations,
or their children, alongside locals, Rhys's urbanites struggle to
construct secure lives not simply as a consequence of
commodification, alienation, or voluntary expatriation, but also as
a consequence of marginalization and migration. This view of Rhys's
early work asserts its vital importance to postcolonial studies, an
importance that has been overlooked owing to an over hasty critical
consensus that only one of her early novels contains significant
colonial content. Yet, as this study demonstrates, proper
consideration of colonial elements long considered only incidental
illuminates a colonial continuum in Rhys's work from her earliest
publications.
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