SOURCE: "European or Caribbean: Jean Rhys and the Language of Exile," in Literature and Exile, edited by David Bevan, Rodopi, 1990, pp. 77-89.

In the following excerpt, Wilson explores the impact of Rhys's exile on her work.

The question of identity in Jean Rhys' life and fiction is inextricably bound to the condition of exile that shaped her perceptions and those of her characters. Rhys was truly a woman without a country. England, where she lived for most of her adult life, was a cold, unreceptive place for the writer. Recognition came too late to compensate for a lifetime of loneliness and financial difficulty. The question of Rhys' West Indian roots is even more problematic. The daughter of a Welsh father and a white Creole mother, Rhys felt exiled even before she moved to England because she was cut off from the black community in Dominica. Thus Rhys suffered...