Jean Rhys published five novels in her life, all of them dealing with lost and fragile women struggling to survive off their
sexuality. Based on her affair with the writer Ford Madox Ford, Rhys' first novel, Quartet, tells the story of Marya, a young English woman living a bohemian life in 1920's Paris with her husband Stephan, a Pole. Marya has fits of being happy when she notes that 'Sometimes just the way the light fell would make me unutterably happy' - but at the back of her mind is always the fear of being broke and alone. One day it happens: Stephan is arrested and she finds herself adrift in the city without any money. It isn't long before the wolves in sheep's clothing arrive in the forms of Hugh Heidler and his wife Lois. Offering Marya friendship and protection, they ensconce her in their flat, but when Heidler starts showing a more than friendly interest in her Marya soon finds out that charity comes with a price tag. And it isn't so easy to walk away when you enjoy being tormented as much as Marya does.
A theme in all Jean Rhys' novels is innocence that becomes damaged and preyed-upon but never quite achieves the transformation into cynicism. Her novels are tragedies - alcoholism, kitchen-table abortions, authorial malevolence stalk her heroines like Oedipus's furies - but they are also celebrations of sensitivity. Jean Rhys' heroines see the world through sharpened lenses. Everything is either brilliant or scary or both. In Good Morning, Midnight the heroine Sasha Jensen makes this juxtaposition when she describes the Parisian fashion house where she worked: 'Imitation Louis Quinze chairs, painted screens, three or four elongated dolls, beautifully dressed, with charming and malicious oval faces'. She goes on to describe her humiliation by the manager, the sadistic Mr. Blank. These women never grow up; they just grow old or die, usually with lashings of pity from both themselves and the author. But they do it very sensuously. Light on water, veronal dreams, drinking Pernod alone in Montparnasse bars - Jean Rhys evokes them all in language of beauty and economy.