SOURCE: "The Short Fiction," in Jean Rhys, Twayne Publishers, 1980, pp. 32-66.

In the following excerpt, Wolfe discusses the similarities between Rhys's short fiction of the 1960s and her later work.

That Jean Rhys's uncollected fiction and the stories in the recently published collection Sleep It Off, Lady resemble her collected work of the 1960s shows clearly in the subjects, characters, and techniques of "I Spy a Stranger." This story, which came out in Art and Literature [Vol. 8, Spring 1966] returns to the British pastime of picking on underdogs; in "A Solid House," Jean Rhys called this practice "witch-hunting." The object of the witch-hunt in "Stranger" hasn't a chance; as a middle-aged intellectual spinster with a background in foreign travel, she is a natural victim of her neighbors' war hysteria. The harshness of her fellow boarders outdoes that described in both ["The Lotus"] and "House." The most embattled, "Stranger" could...