When Jean Rhys reading week was announced by joint hosts Jacqui and Eric, I suggested Quartet to my very small book group. We’re meeting on Wednesday evening to discuss it – smack bang in the middle of #ReadingRhys week – perfect timing.
Quartet was Jean Rhys’s first novel, coming a year after a collection of short stories she had produced with some help from writer Ford Maddox Ford. It is the first of four novels which are said to be highly autobiographical. Rhys’s unhappy love affairs and her time living in Paris seem to have influenced her writing. Around the time that Rhys was writing Quartet – she was living in Paris with Ford Maddox Ford and his common-law-wife (as it was then termed) Stella Bowen. The couple are fictionalised here in the characters of the Heidlers.
Marya Zelli is a young Englishwoman, married to Stephan, a Pole, the two are, superficially at least happy, Stephen ekes out a living for the two of them in Paris somehow. They live a disorganised kind of life, Marya never asking questions to which she may not want the answers, never questioning where their small amount of money comes from. Despite being twenty-eight – Marya frequently seems much younger.
“Stephan was secretive and a liar, but he was a very gentle and expert lover. She was the petted, cherished child, the desired mistress, the worshipped, perfumed goddess. She was all these things to Stephan – or so he made her believe.”
When Stephen is arrested, and then imprisoned for theft, Marya is left penniless, with no way of making a living, and it appears no one to help her. H J and Lois Heidler are a well to do couple, they are keen to take Marya under their wing, inviting her to move in with them. Marya is unsure, reluctant – she appeals to her husband on visiting day, he tells her to take them up on their offer. Marya is a woman who frequently seems unable to make decisions for herself, everything she does in this novel is directed by one of the other three people in the quartet of the title.
Soon after going to live with the Heidlers, Heidler makes advances to Marya, and she finds herself becoming more and more drawn to him, almost despite herself. Strangely, Lois Heidler is completely complicit in her husband’s pursuit of Marya. Marya is alone, penniless, with no resources she is torn between wanting to flee the peculiar and unsettling situation she finds herself in, and the knowledge that she has nothing else.
“ ‘I’ve realised, you see, that life is cruel and horrible to unprotected people. I think life is cruel. I think people are cruel.’ All the time she spoke she was thinking: ‘Why should I tell her all this?’ But she felt impelled to go on. ‘I may be completely wrong, of course, but that’s how I feel. Well, I’ve got used to the idea of facing cruelty. One can, you know. The moment comes when even the softest person doesn’t care a damn any more; and that’s a precious moment. One oughtn’t to waste it. You’re wonderfully kind, but if I come to stay with you it’ll only make me soft and timid and I’ll have to start getting hard all over again afterwards. I don’t suppose,’ she added hopelessly, ‘that you understand what I mean a bit.”
Marya is trapped into this ménage à trois, a victim of the society in which she lived. A society where women with no money and no husband or family are prey to the wealthy and or disreputable, who may not have their best interests at heart. Marya considers her lot alongside that of the prostitutes, she appears accepting of the idea of her body, and sex as being her only asset, not once does she consider any other possible way of living.
Marya becomes Heidler’s mistress, he and Lois direct everything she does. They advise her to leave Stephen to not visit him in prison. Yet, Marya does visit her unreliable husband, every week but one, for the entire year he is locked up. Marya knows that when Stephan is released he will be expelled from Paris, and now she is becoming increasingly dependent upon Heidler – needing him, in a way that suits him perfectly. The Heidlers are manipulative and unpleasant, their motives difficult to understand – perhaps they’re not important. Marya is helpless, incapable of changing her course, listless and depressed, she is also hard to sympathise with.
“He was still looking steadily at her. His eyes were clear, cool and hard, but something in the depths of them flickered and shifted. She thought: ‘He’d take any advantage he could — fair or unfair. Caddish he is.’ Then as she stared back at him she felt a great longing to put her head on his knees and shut her eyes. To stop thinking. Stop the little wheels in her head that worked incessantly. To give in and have a little peace. The unutterably sweet peace of giving in.”
In this novel Jean Rhys shows herself a master of imagery and place, the world of 1920’s Paris is brilliantly recreated, a world of café bars, restaurants and Paris streets in winter. The whole novel is wonderfully cinematic. There’s a mood, matching the dark heart of this novel which is intimately poignant and quite disturbing. The ending shocked me, there’s a pessimistic realism to it that made absolute sense however – I’ll say no more than that.
Quartet is a wonderful first novel, beautifully written and atmospheric, I was forced to read it quite slowly for various reasons, I’m rather glad I did. I have read Wide Sargasso Sea two or three times, and After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, but I am now looking forward to exploring more Jean Rhys novels, starting with Good Morning Midnight, which I hope to review at the end of the week.
I like her books as they were ahead of their time.I will re read MR MACKENZIE.The desperation of her women characters and how they rely on men creates a compelling drama.
Yes absolutely. The desperation and isolation of Marya comes across brilliantly.
This is one that I haven’t reread in a very long time, so thank you of reminding me of it. I love the way she takes autobiographical elements but then elevates them to the universal (feeling helpless, having to rely on the kindness of strangers, having few options open to you in this book but fear of ageing and death in other books).
Helplessness was certainly a big factor in this one. Marya seemed to feel she had few options which from a modern perspective seems strange perhaps.
Wonderful review, Ali. This is the Rhys I’d like to read next, probably not this week as I’m hoping to save it for the future. She gave a voice to women in Myra’s situation, women who were marginalised because they had no money, no husband and no real options in life…
I love this quote: ‘I’ve realised, you see, that life is cruel and horrible to unprotected people. I think life is cruel. I think people are cruel.’ – it’s textbook Rhys.
Hope you have a good discussion with your book group – I would be interested to hear how it goes.
Thank you. Looking forward to my book group discussion. I will let you know how we get on.
Thanks for the great little review. I am an admirer of Rhys’s writing and only recently read Quartet. What impressed me is her ability to make a character like Marya so sympathetic. It would be easy to judge her negatively and thus write her off. I have also read The Voyage Out and the highly revered Wide Sargasso Sea and taught Good Morning, Midnight numerous times. Of the four that fit together as a kind of semi-autobiographical series, I think Good Morning, Midnight must be the best. The writing is superb, so refined — every word counting for something, and the interpretive possibilities are myriad. But it is also sordid, perhaps the most sordid of the four. Surprisingly, my female students seem to really be taken up by it. They say that Rhys says things about the difficulty, really the dilemma — possibly even trauma — of being a woman that others don’t express. I have ordered the bio for my next Rhys read. She is potent stuff, so I find I can only ingest so much at a time! Great though that this reading week is taking place. Rhys deserves more recognition.
She does yes. Your students view is interesting to me because I have just started reading Good Morning Midnight.
Great review Ali. I’m pretty sure I haven’t read this one but I really want to now. She’s a writer who can be bleak, but she really captures the situation of women with no jobs or resources struggling to survive.
Bleak is actually a really good word to use for this one.
Loved this review Ali! I have just finished this book too and am still shocked over the brutality of the ending. Great point about Marya’s life being controlled by the other 3 in the quartet – this really does make her seem extremely childish and naïve. It’s interesting how her surroundings and even her appearance change as she becomes increasingly powerless.
Looking forward to Good Morning, Midnight next!
Marya didn’t seem much like a woman of twenty-eight did she. I’m reading Good Morning Midnight now.
I’ve put this on my to read list having seen your thoughts. I don’t have time to join the reading week but am using it as a way of seeing what recommendations people come up,with.
Yes I really want to read Voyage in the Dark now after seeing a couple of reviews.
It’s been a while since I read this, so like Marina I was delighted to be reminded of it.
I absolutely agree with every word of this:
“In this novel Jean Rhys shows herself a master of imagery and place, the world of 1920’s Paris is brilliantly recreated, a world of café bars, restaurants and Paris streets in winter. The whole novel is wonderfully cinematic. There’s a mood, matching the dark heart of this novel which is intimately poignant and quite disturbing.”
Nicely put. I think this is a good choice as a first Rhys (not that it was for you or for me). It is very impressive as a first novel as you say.
Thanks Max. A wonderful novel which my book group friends enjoyed enormously. I’ve now finished Good Morning Midnight too.
She’s such a stunning writer, and I am inspired (belatedly) by your reviews and Kaggsy’s to go back and reread (too late for the actual Rhys week, as is typical).
Never mind, Jean Rhys is worth reading anytime.
Thank you for your review. I read this quite quickly,over 3 or 4 days, being swept along by Marya’s fate in the hands of others. I too was shocked by the end but looking back her fate at the hand of Stephan and his departure with Mademoiselle Chardin fitted the themes of cruelty, helplessness and abandonment so exactly. How else could it have ended? I know WSS well and have been struck by the parallels.
Yes the ending was inevitable I think.
Oh dear. That sounds ominous indeed.
Well I don’t want to give anything away but it certainly was no fairy-tale ending, although neither was it entirely resolved.
[…] other thoughts on Quartet read Ali’s review and Abby’s review and do join in the discussions on Rhys, her life and all her writing […]
Hello, I’m here via a link to a review of the same book at Poppy Peacock Pens (https://poppypeacockpens.com/2016/09/17/quartet-by-jean-rhys/).
I agree with what you say about the sense of entrapment because of the society she lived in, and I bet that struck a chord with many of her female readers, even some of those who were ‘successful’ in that milieu.
Hello Lisa. Glad you enjoyed Quartet too. It has been lovely seeing so many people enjoying and sharing their thoughts about Jean Rhys’s work.
[…] 18/9/16 For other reviews of Quartet, see Poppy Peacock Pens, Heaven Ali and Abby […]
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[…] them with their own stories in different places. I began Jacqui and Eric’s #ReadingRhys week with Quartet, Rhys’s first published novel – which I had also suggested to my very small book group – we […]