Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams, famously known by her pen name Jean Rhys was a mid
20th century novelist. Her works were decades ahead of their time with themes such as exile, loss,
alienation and a passion for the underdog. Her most popular work Wide Sargasso Sea was a post-
colonial and a feminist retelling of Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre.
Jean Rhys was born on August 24, 1890 in the Caribbean Islands of Dominica. Her father,
Rhys Williams, was a Welsh doctor who emigrated to Dominica for his work. Her mother Minna
Lockhart was third generation Dominican Creole. During her childhood and adolescence Rhys was
rather lonely. Her mother was “cold and distant” claimed Rhys. She spent most of her time reading
and writing. She was fascinated by the servants that worked in her house and was interested in their
culture and language. At the age of 16 she went to London and attended the Perse School for Girls
in Cambridge. Initially she was excited about this trip however her experiences there soon changed
her thoughts and feelings about it. She was very well bullied by her classmates because of her
Creole background and different accent. Then she attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in
London in order to become an actress. Her education there did not last long as her instructor, being
unpleased by her accent and thinking that she can’t speak properly, asked her parents to take her
away. Contrary to her parents wish, she wasn’t willing to go back to Caribbeans so she started
working as a chorus girl. Rhys’ father died in the following year, in 1910, she was 20 years old and
things began to go off the rails.
In that same year, 1910, Rhys had her first love affair. She was the mistress of a wealthy and
respectable Englishman called Lancelot Hugh Smith. She was very charmed by Smith and
traumatized when the affair ended. Although he was a bachelor, he did not offer to marry her and
paid her and monthly allowance, which he continued to pay for a few years. This despair pushed
Rhys into writing and writing memoirs. This was her first attempt at writing since her adolescence,
since her time in Dominica. In 1917, she met Jean Lenglet and the two got engaged too after
meeting and got married two years later in 1919. The couple moved to Holland and then to Paris
soon after. They had a son called William Owen, who passed away within a few weeks after birth.
In the meantime Rhys had various jobs such as working in an office and becoming an English tutor,
and Lenglet had gotten involved in illegal activities which caused them to travel around Europe.
This relationship and this event pushed Rhys into a life of continuous exile. They kept on traveling
all around Europe from 1919 to 1922 and in 1923 Lenglet got arrested. Rhys was now a mother to a
daughter, alone, without a man to support her was helpless. She went to Ford Madox Ford to seek
help. Ford had published her short stories in the Transatlantic Review before. The two had a very
complex relationship. She got involved in this ménage à trois of Ford, his mistress and Rhys herself.
She wrote a novel called Quartet about this relationship, it was her first novel. After the relationship
