Good Morning, Midnight: Jean Rhys (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Wisdom would probably consist in finding some middle path between these two poles of egotism, but if I had to choose, I guess I’d take Rhys’s route. I mean, I have no desire to end up a depressive alcoholic in a rented room—though that’s a definite possibility at this point—but that does seem a marginally better fate than becoming a priapic fifty-year-old pontificating about Nietzsche to his cronies.

I bought this novel not knowing what to expect from it, I saw it in a used bookshop and remembered I liked "Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys a lot, so why not try. Was it fate? Of coarse I felt bad for Sasha....( laughed a few times at funny stories)....but I loved this woman.... The way she was and the way she wasn’t!

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Mental illness? Depression? Alcoholism? What shelf should I put this under? Bleak? All in all, not a pretty story, but fascinating in its way, fast-paced, written in a stream-of-consciousness format. Its deep psychological insight kept my attention all the way through. And there’s always crying. She hates crying but so often it’s all she can do, it’s the only way of facing what can’t be faced when the armour is not there and the drink won’t mask the dark … She wants to be "normal" but cannot fit in, so she decides to drink herself to death. That doesn’t work well. Sasha meets new people she’s drinking with, but she hates them, is afraid of them, doesn’t trust them at all. The only thing she wants is to pass unnoticed, but ironically she cannot because of her beautiful fur coat which gives the wrong impression. Sasha once again reminisces about her relationship with Enno. They got married on a whim in London, got drunk that night, and traveled to Amsterdam. They each thought the other had a lot of money, but they were both wrong. Amsterdam was enjoyable, but Enno kept talking about how much better life would be for them once they got to Paris. After a few days, they hastily set off for Paris but ended up getting stranded in Brussels because they had almost no money. Thankfully, Sasha remembered a man she once went out with who lived in Brussels, so she borrowed money from him (enduring an uncomfortable kiss from him as a result). Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights. Since I was born, hasn't every word I've said, every thought I've thought, everything I've done, been tied up, weighted, chained? And mind you, I know that with all this I don't succeed. Or I succeed in flashes only too damned well. ...But think how hard I try and how seldom I dare. Think - and have a bit of pity. That is, if you ever think, you apes, which I doubt.

She meets another man, at a decisive moment knows that she has fallen in love and will love him forever, and for a few weeks perhaps things go well ... he has a job she teaches English makes a few sous but then things change the money stops coming in and as usual it turns out that forever lasts only so long, then it’s over. Cynthia Port, “‘Money, for the night is coming’: Jean Rhys and the Gendered Economies of Aging,” Women: A Cultural Review 12.2 (2001): p. 213. So I wanted to have a chat with Sasha ....and all young people hurting, loss, without much more than a dime to their name.... Sasha is not able to cope with her past, with her present, with people’s cruelty and indifference. They call her stupid, when it’s obvious that she’s mentally ill. They ask her why she didn’t drown herself in Seine. Though nowadays people with depression and anxiety get help, unfortunately the disregard is often still here. I’m originally from Russia and in my country depression is not a disease at all. Just stop being sad and lazy, right? Get out into the world! Snap out of it, will you?When she got home on the 25th, her tenants, Mr & Mrs Besant, were lurking in the hallway (they rented the upstairs rooms). According to Jean he said God, it’s funny, being a woman! And the other one – the one behind the bar – is she going to giggle or to say something about me in a voice loud enough for me to hear? That’s the way she’s feeling. Jean Rhys was struggling with depression herself, so her works are partly autobiographical and represent the condition very accurately. Since I’m having discussions with Violet through buddy reading - I don’t feel compelled to make this a lengthy review. But Violet got me going on BAD HAIR DAYS. I couldn’t NOT see the ‘word’ hair again with any neutrality - no matter what context - after Violet planted the ‘hair-seed’.

Well this was depressing. Not that it bothered me particularly, because we all know that I get drawn to depressing/tragic books like a moth to a flame (to use an overused expression).It seems appropriate to end with the poem for which this novel is named. It’s worth reading it alongside the novel:

Sasha Jansen, a middle-aged English woman, has returned to Paris after a long absence. Only able to make the trip because of some money lent to her by a friend, she is financially unstable and haunted by her past, which includes an unhappy marriage and her child's death. She has difficulty taking care of herself; drinking heavily, taking sleeping pills and obsessing over her appearance, she is adrift in the city that she feels connected to despite the great pain it has brought her. I cry for a long time - for myself, for the old woman with the bald head, for all the sadness of this damned world, for all the fools and all the defeated ... An actress, Selma vaz Dias, a Rhys fan, had adapted GMM as a radio play, and needed Jean’s permission, but everyone was telling her Jean Rhys was dead. (Jean, drunk for years, totally out of touch with literary London, almost – but not quite – forgotten.) Jean saw the ad and replied. And then, on 16 November, ANOTHER drunken row with the neighbours. Through her relationship with men, the novel explores typical gender roles. At times they are reversed. Typically speaking, literary representations of relationships tend to follow gender stereotyped behaviours. I don’t need to point them out, but in this they are subverted. And this does give Sasha some freedom, though she doesn’t fully explore it: she is far to damaged. The novel also openly discusses homosexuality, in men and women, which is ridiculously ahead of its time. The Victorians often betrayed such things, but it was cryptic and repressed: this is blatant. However, these modern themes were not enough to rejuvenate one so broken.What is it one looks for in others when one is that lonely? How differently and acutely observant and intuitive does that make a person? And how distrustful! She knows there is something in her that makes them see through her. Is it the sadness, the compliance, the vulnerability? It makes them so hateful, so pitiless. But there is no self-pity in Sasha Jensen, but a terrible ache, a yearning inside. It is something that can never be filled for its moment of birth is already over. I have no pride – no pride, no name, no face. No country. I don’t belong anywhere. Too sad, too sad…. I put my book down to think about how life was for me when in my 20’s. They ‘were’ some of my hardest years .....I ran away for a couple of years ( Paris and London too)....’running’ is the word....There were days ... I ate large amounts of sugar - instead of real food - the way Sasha drank. What is ironic about the Paris trip, which is meant to help her, is that it is probably the worst place in the world for her to be. Because hiding is not possible there. A return, as I found myself, is not an escape. She is oppressed by her memories, is forced to relive these memories as she stumbles around Paris, from one familiar place to the next. Here, she did this, my God; and there, well, there is where such and such happened. Yet Sasha’s anxiety is more complex than embarrassment or shame at having shown herself up or been shown up in certain restaurants or cafes; it goes beyond having her nose rubbed in her past experiences. Sasha’s anxiety extends to pretty much every sphere of her existence. If she goes somewhere she is convinced that people are looking at her, and talking about her, and judging her. She thinks herself old, and not attractive. Conversation, all interaction, is excruciating, for her and for the reader. I have come across very few characters that are as relentlessly terrified and lonely and unhappy as this one. She’s not a hot mess. She’s just a mess, period. The only reason she is still alive, she says, is because she doesn’t have the guts to end it all.