SOURCE: "Jean Rhys on Insult and Injury," in Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. XI, No. 2, Fall, 1978, pp. 55-65.

In the following essay, Baldanza provides analysis of the recurring themes, narrative strategies, and female protagonists in Rhys's fiction.

In discussing the seeming monotony of tone in the work of many distinguished literary figures, Alberto Moravia remarked that most major writers have only one string to their lute, so that the fundamental question ought not to be one of the variety of their effects, but of the complexity and intensity with which they do what they do well. Although few readers outside coteries would call Jean Rhys a major writer, Moravia's remark is nevertheless quite apposite to her fiction. Miss Rhys works, in terms of both theme and technique, in a severely limited range—but, since another essay in this collection discusses her Impressionist methods, I shall concentrate on...