“Russians in Paris:” Exploring the Eastern European Presence in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight
The University of Alabama
Abstract: Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight is populated with characters of diverse nationalities. Most scholarship treats the protagonist, Sasha, as Caribbean or British, and examines the text with these national and cultural backgrounds in mind. While Sasha’s nationality remains ambiguous, she chooses to associate with Russian émigrés in Paris and adopts Russian stereotypes in her personality, behavior, and dress. Sasha’s fascination with Russia is a projection of her own sense of “otherness,” but it also functions as a broader commentary on the large Russian émigré community living in Paris during the interwar period. I propose a reading of Sasha as a self-identified Russian, meaning that she uses historically variant concepts of Russianness to process her precarious psychological and economic present, as well as her past. With this conceptualization of Sasha in mind, I explore the significance of her fabricated Russian identity in the pre-war Stalinist era and as a foil to stereotypical British depictions of Russians in fiction.
Key Words: Jean Rhys, Russia, national identity, stereotypes, Paris Exhibition
Introduction
Early in Jean Rhys’s 1939 novel Good Morning, Midnight, the protagonist Sasha Jansen remembers a gift she received from her husband over ten years previously: a Cossack cap and imitation astrakhan coat.[1] The accessories prompted her to change her name from Sophia to Sasha and to embark on a journey of identity creation and national ambiguity: she becomes an imitation Russian in the 1920s, when Western European cultural perceptions of Russia were shifting to take into account the impact of the Russian Revolution. Moving seamlessly between past and present, the novel chronicles Sasha’s navigation of relationships, friendships, and her own troubled history in Paris. The narrative shifts between past and present as Sasha relives memories from her first time in Paris in the 1920s. The main storyline in 1937 centers around Sasha’s precarious financial status and crippling depression as she flaneuses the streets of Paris and meets a variety of characters. As Sasha interacts with characters of different nationalities, she unfailingly gravitates toward Russians, which allows the narrative to demonstrate both her affinities with these displaced others and the limitations of her self-fabrication. Four Russian characters enter Sasha’s life: Nicolas Delmar and his unnamed friend, Serge the painter, and the student Sasha tutors in English during the mid-1920s. Delmar and Serge are the most significant characters, and the sole focus of my analysis, because they act as foils for Sasha’s internal conflicts. Sasha’s identity depends on the opinions of others and how they perceive her. Paradoxically, she projects her own opinions onto others. She judges each Russian character by her own standards of Russianness as they subvert the national and cultural stereotypes she embodies. Sasha cares about the aesthetics of being Russian and associating with Russians, rather than their history and national identity. As a result, her perceptions of Russian culture often conflict with the historical realities of the Soviet Union. The Russian characters never correct Sasha’s illusions or discuss their past with her because they share Sasha’s sense of national, cultural, and personal isolation. Sasha and the Russians develop a mutual, unspoken agreement to avoid conversations about the past. From the time Sasha accepts her Russian-themed gifts and changes her name, her idea of the country and its culture becomes part of her identity. This reading of Sasha as a self-identified Russian explores the textual and historical implications of her choice. Specifically, Sasha offers an ambivalent and contradictory identification with elements of both tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union—the appearance of wealth and decadence while criticizing capitalism. Her fabricated sense of self matches her ideological ambivalence.
Sasha’s self-constructed Russian identity is a combination of the stereotypes she embodies in her behavior, personality, and dress. Her personality and appearance reflect stereotypes associated with imperial Russia, but she also internalizes Western perceptions of the Soviet Union. Specifically, Sasha takes on an “othered” identity more closely associated with the Soviet Union. She is also deeply critical of capitalism, even though she cannot subdue her own desire to appear wealthy. Since both periods of Russian history are crucial to my reading, I distinguish between the terms based on chronology, rather than Sasha’s interpretations of what is “Russian” or “Soviet,” and I broadly refer to Sasha’s fabricated sense of self as Russian. Her Russian identity takes shape through her relationships with men, in particular Delmar and Serge, and becomes distinctively idiosyncratic when her interactions with Russians are compared to her interactions with people of other nationalities. The Russian characters demonstrate forms of cultural absenteeism, a deliberate or forced association with another culture or nationality, while subverting stereotypical British portrayals of Russians in fiction. Their backgrounds—Delmar is Ukrainian and Serge is Jewish—help form a broader commentary on the large Russian émigré community living in Paris during the interwar period that contrasts with Sasha’s more romanticized, white, Russian vision. First, I compare the Russians to Sasha’s relationships with men of other nationalities, including the French gigolo Rene. I then offer a place-based interpretation of the Exhibition scene, where Sasha and Rene visit the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exhibition of Arts and Techniques in Modern Life) and its landmark symbols of communism and fascism. Finally, I suggest that Sasha identifies as the version of Russia she constructs through her relationships with the men listed above. Sasha’s fabricated sense of identity incorporates elements from tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union. Reading the Russian elements of Rhys’s novel not only deconstructs her typical British-Caribbean binary and contributes to the study of fiction between the periods of British Russophilia and Russophobia, but it places Rhys within a larger trend of interwar writers who include Russian characters and culture in their novels. There is a substantial body of scholarship on Russian elements in works by Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, and other writers, and Good Morning, Midnight warrants the same recognition.[2]
Russian Characters in British Fiction
Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight occupies a unique cultural and historical space for the representation of Russians and Russian stereotypes in British fiction. The novel is set and published between the period of British Russophilia (1895-1920s) [3] and post-war Russophobia. Sasha’s self-constructed identity appears to mirror British cultural stereotypes about Russians from the Russophilia period. During that time, writers and scholars became interested in Russian politics and culture. The works of Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky were in vogue, influencing writers such as Katherine Mansfield and others. One could easily pigeonhole Sasha into the early twentieth century trend of Russophilia; however, Russian literature and culture fell out of fashion over ten years before Good Morning, Midnight was written. British interest was waning by the time Sasha decided to self-identify as Russian in 1923 or 1924. Her decision to make and maintain a Russian identity becomes a marker of age, supplementing the sense of lost youth that permeates her self-perception and appearance to others. For Rhys, though, the novel’s Eastern European presence is more than a relic of prior decades: it is a deliberately constructed bridge between the allure of tsarist Russia Sasha channels and the suspicious fascination with the Soviet Union that followed. From a historical perspective, the novel takes place during one of the darkest decades in Russian history, with Stalin’s purges and famines as an absent backdrop to characters like Delmar and Serge. By the mid-1930s, British interest in Russia shifted to daily life in the Soviet Union: “In 1935 alone, 64 Russian or Soviet-related books were reviewed in The Times Literary Supplement … with titles such as Law and Justice in Soviet Russia, Modern Moscow, and We Soviet Women” (Kozicharow 242). Interest in the Soviet Union was less robust than in the earlier period of Russophilia. The shift from rich literary and cultural admiration to nonfiction studies of the results of a foreign political experiment is quite stark, but understandable in the context of the NEP (New Economic Policy) era. Despite waning British interest in Russia and Soviet life, the presence of Russian characters in British fiction (particularly as antagonists in spy novels and crime fiction) increased as the twentieth century progressed.[4] Setting the novel amid this shift in British depictions of Russia was likely coincidental on Rhys’s part, since she visited Paris and viewed the Exhibition in 1937, which is the same year Good Morning, Midnight takes place. Even though the novel was inspired by Rhys’s time in Paris, the changing British literary climate lends itself well to Sasha’s fabricated Russian sense of self. She seeks the appearance of wealth and mystique that characterizes imperial Russia and the period of British Russophilia, but she also cultivates a sense of otherness and class consciousness associated with the Soviet Union and the shift in British literary interest.
Russian characters have always populated British fiction. Western imaginings treat the country with a combination of mystery and suspicion. Regardless of the level of interest in “real” Russians, British writers created their own version of Russia and its people through stereotypes. For British writers, the Russian Revolution added an air of suspicion and subversiveness to the already enigmatic country on the fringes of the European mainstream. During the Russophilia phase, Russian characters made relatively infrequent appearances in British literary fiction compared to their prevalence in genre fiction from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. However, Russia was always a staple in adventure fiction and early spy novels, which characterized Russia as a police state and often dramatized the idea of the Russian soul. Works by Henry Seton Merriman, W. Somerset Maugham, and even Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes created an image of a backward country and people who existed just beyond Western Europe’s comprehension. These authors approached Russia with curiosity and a degree of suspicion. They portrayed some Russians as philosophically superior and even cognizant of a higher plane of existence as a result of living in a troubled political climate. At the same time, authors presented the Russian autocracy in a wholly negative light and the British vision of the Russian people was sometimes conflated with that of the government. This proves true in literature written before and after the Russian Revolution. The rise of detective fiction also helped popularize Russian characters and contributed to lasting negative stereotypes that blossomed in the Cold War era (Boichuk 139). Ivan Boichuk traces the history of Russian stereotypes in “The Presence of Selected Russian Fictional Characters in English Detective Fiction.” Despite the niche genre, Boichuk’s catalog of stereotypes prove broadly applicable in pre-war and post-war contexts:
Good Morning, Midnight stands out among stereotypical depictions because none of the actual Russian characters fit neatly into Boichuk’s categories. Rhys’s Russians function as a response to prominent stereotypes and a silent repudiation of Sasha’s performance of Russianness. Rhys counters the stereotypes by addressing them obliquely: Delmar and Serge hesitate when drinking with Sasha, they deliberately avoid conversations about politics, and rather than “morally degenerate” schemes, they only work together to convince Sasha to purchase a painting. Rhys also delves into the positive connotations of Russia listed above. While the Russian characters can be classified as “others” in the context of their lives in Paris, more of Boichuk’s terms (decadent regarding furs, immoderate, and alcoholic) apply to Sasha than any of the Russian characters. In fact, she deliberately embodies Russian stereotypes throughout the novel and makes them part of her personal identity.Many of them are perceived as negative, like ‘ferocious,’ ‘morally degenerate,’ ‘cruel,’ ‘decadent’ (particularly connected to furs), ‘immoderate,’ ‘superfluous,’ ‘barbarously splendid,’ ‘revolutionary’ (in the political sense), ‘other,’ ‘alcoholic,’ and ‘peasant-like.’ These are the tropes most often assigned to the working or under classes. On the positive side are ideas of ‘nobility,’ ‘aristocracy,’ ‘outstanding intelligence,’ ‘dedication,’ and even ‘heroism.’ (Boichuk 147)
Sasha’s Nationality and Name
Cross-cultural protagonists and ambiguous nationalities are a central part of Rhys scholarship, so Sasha’s self-identification with Russia breaks up the typical British-Caribbean binary associated with Rhys’s work and situates it in a more internationally-aware frame. Since Sasha’s nationality is never explicitly stated, existing scholarship subjects her to a British-Caribbean binary in line with other Rhys protagonists. Critics universally acknowledge the national uncertainty and fluidity in Good Morning, Midnight, yet the characterization of Sasha’s nationality results from a combination of textual ambiguity and critical tendencies to impose an autobiographical reading. Erica Johnson argues in “Creole Errance” that Good Morning, Midnight is a non-autobiographical novel with a Creole protagonist, but many scholars consider this novel Rhys’s most autobiographical work by relying on loose interpretations of a Caribbean presence. Even though it has autobiographical elements, the novel is hardly a continuation of the same binational identity explored in other novels like 1934’s Voyage in the Dark. The book presents far more evidence that Sasha is British, with no Caribbean ties, and some scholars take this stance.[5] Although Good Morning, Midnight is not always read as one of Rhys’s Caribbean works, it appears in several texts on Caribbean identity, culture, and displacement such Christina-Georgiana Voicu’s Exploring Cultural Identities in Jean Rhys’s Fiction. Yanoula Athanassakis takes a neutral position, claiming Sasha “is of obscure origins, not clearly British, but probably at least has British citizenship,” while arguing that she has a “uniquely Caribbean” perspective on otherness and alienation (5). Both strands of scholarship build their arguments on the assumption of British or Caribbean identity, leaving little space for negotiating other possibilities. The trends in prior scholarship have limited exploration of the ambiguity of Sasha’s nationality and muted the importance of her self-identification as Russian.
The fact that British and Caribbean protagonists dominate Rhys’s work prompts the question of why Rhys focuses so heavily on Russianness in Good Morning, Midnight. Since Rhys visited Paris in 1937, she had to be aware of the large community of Russian émigrés, including artists, writers, and intellectuals, residing there. After the Russian Revolution, émigrés fled to various European capitals or the United States. In 1918 alone, approximately 400,000 people left Russia. The trend continued during the early years of the Soviet Union and Stalin’s rise to power. Paris had a sizeable Russian immigrant population in 1937, when the events of Good Morning, Midnight take place. Scott McCracken cites the Russian characters as one example among many of Rhys’s “outsiders,” and they receive little critical attention outside the label (38-39). More than outsiders, they function as a microcosm of Russians abroad—a perfect backdrop for a novel concerned with displacement and national ambiguity. Each character represents a marginalized or persecuted group.
Conflicting notions of Russianness allow Rhys to examine distinctions, contradictions, and overlaps in the cultural alienation experienced by her protagonist. Every character in Good Morning, Midnight embodies some form of cultural absenteeism, which, as stated earlier, can be loosely defined as an individual’s act of identifying with another culture or nationality, while feeling displaced from their own. Cultural absenteeism is predominantly associated with colonization in Caribbean countries. Delia Konzett uses this term to describe Rhys’s relationship with the Caribbean, but it can also be applied to her characters’ cross-cultural identities (64). Konzett places Rhys within a tradition of “British colonizers in the Caribbean with their cultural orientation directed towards England, displaying a corresponding lack of interest in the emergence of a local Caribbean culture” (64). Beyond Rhys’s Caribbean works, the term is useful in defining Sasha’s relationship with Russia. Sasha’s sense of cultural absenteeism is a privilege because she chooses to associate with Russia and fabricate her sense of self. In Sasha’s case, cultural absenteeism is a refusal to fully engage with any place. She is never wholly British or Caribbean, and she keeps a distance from the realities of Russia. Her only engagement with Russian history or current events arises in her interactions with displaced Russians, particularly Delmar and Serge. Their minority status within Russia alienates them further in the transition to Soviet rule. Rhys constructs Russian characters who are as far removed from their homeland as Sasha, if we assume she has ties to the Caribbean.[6] For Delmar and Serge, cultural absenteeism is a burden because it is forced due to their geographic and political displacement. Instead of maintaining a connection to their homeland, they adapt and blend into the cultural milieu of Paris and avoid discussing their pasts. In addition to being a perfect venue for cultural absenteeism, Russophile stereotypes provide Sasha with the white, European otherness she seeks. Rhys uses Sasha’s fascination with the Russians, her fabricated sense of cultural absenteeism, and her estrangement from political realities as opportunities to delineate prewar tensions in Europe. Since the climax of the novel takes place in the Paris Exhibition, where Sasha and Rene view Albert Speer's neoclassical tower and Vera Mukhina’s Worker and Collective Farm Woman statue, the need to explore Russian perspectives is almost inherent.
Sasha’s self-identification with Russia begins with her husband during her formative first time living in Paris. From the beginning, Sasha isolates the moment when she began identifying with Russians and as one in the changing of her name. She says, “Was it in 1923 or 1924 that … Enno bought me that Cossack cap and the imitation astrakhan coat? It was then that I started calling myself Sasha. I thought it might change my luck if I changed my name” (Rhys 6). This short paragraph combines everything Sasha clings to in later years, including nostalgia for her lost youth and social position, as well as the need to fabricate a sense of identity through her clothing and behavior. At the heart of the experience, we find Russia. Even though Enno’s gifts of clothing lead Sasha to align herself with Russia, the act of identity creation is hers alone. Sasha’s new identity is perpetuated in her new name. Sasha not only chooses a Russian name, but a unisex name with connotations of motion and fluidity. Sasha is a diminutive for Alexander or Alexandra. It is slightly more common among males. Sasha has complicated notions of gender and gendered relations, making it easy to see the benefits of this new name over her own. Similarly, the choice of a Russian diminutive gives her name childlike connotations and a sense that she is not a fully formed individual. Sasha’s given name, Sophia, is equally imbued with Russian connotations. The name Sophia has been in the Russian parlance since 1472, with the marriage of Sophia Paleologos to Ivan III. However, Rhys is more likely referencing and parodying Soloviev’s concept of the Divine Sophia. Regardless of Sasha’s knowledge of Russian names and history, she fabricates a new sense of self because she feels that her own past and identity are insufficient or not fully aligned with how she wants the world to view her. Sasha uses cultural absenteeism as a source of empowerment.
Self-Formation Through Fashion
Sasha’s act of identity creation is both internal, as we see in her embodiment of stereotypes and her name, and external, in appearance. Fashion and appearance are always at the forefront of Sasha’s decisions, which is a common characteristic of Rhys’s protagonists.[7] Rhys uses Sasha’s interest in fashion as the catalyst for her Russian identity, and the two are linked throughout the rest of the novel. Fashion is highly nationalized. The Cossack cap and astrakhan coat have obvious connections to Russia, but Rhys links articles of clothing to countries or cultures on other occasions as well, especially through Sasha’s perception. Early on, she wears a hat that “shouts ‘Anglaise’” and contributes to the incongruity of her appearance (Rhys 9). In a later scene, Sasha purchases a new hat that occupies her thoughts too much. Although she does not cite the “Anglaise” appearance of the hat as the reason for its replacement, any fixation of this nature becomes cause for a change in Sasha’s mind. If Sasha is English, she wishes others to perceive her in a more nationally ambiguous light. The avoidance of British nationality correlates with her desire for a productive cultural absenteeism, but her position on class-related clothing is more complicated. She needs the appearance of wealth to appease her sense of identity, but she also cultivates—perhaps unintentionally, since she wants to be regarded as wealthy—a sense of financial ambiguity that parallels her cultivated absence of nationality. The characters around Sasha make assumptions regarding her financial status to the same extent as her nationality. Sasha’s brand of decadence regarding furs appears in Boichuk’s list of Russian stereotypes during this period (147). Ironically, Sasha’s fur coat consistently causes others to overestimate her financial status and charge her accordingly for rooms and services. The coat drives the plot. Her external (and perhaps nationalized) display of wealth causes the French gigolo Rene to target her, and it initiates her relationship with the Russian characters.
Sasha’s coat becomes the catalyst for a conversation with two of the Russian characters that reveals Sasha’s desire to switch between the appearance of wealth and poverty at will. Based on the luxurious coat (a stereotypical vestige of imperial Russia) and Sasha’s words and attitude, Delmar believes she is rich, but not happy, and his unnamed friend takes the opposite perspective (Rhys 41). Sasha clearly gravitates toward the Russians because of their nationality: “The shorter one says they are Russians. When I hear that I at once accept their offer to go and have a drink. Les Russes—that’ll wind up the evening nicely” (Rhys 40). Perhaps she believes the Russian émigrés will share her sense of muddled identity and relate to her struggle of clinging to the past while being unwilling to fully commit to a proletarian future. Sasha fixates on material possessions, including the luxurious coat, as a means of self-improvement. This is a critique of capitalism, and her conversation with the Russians helps extend it. Delmar and his friend approach Sasha ostensibly because she appears forlorn, but it is possible that Delmar, who is willing to believe she is rich, targets her because he thinks she may be willing to purchase one of Serge’s paintings. Sasha wants to be perceived as wealthy until consequences stem from her perceived affluence, including the upcharge on a hotel room or, in this case, a seemingly happenstance meeting that will end with the purchase of a painting she can hardly afford. The possibility of a scheme (however innocent) between two or even three of the Russian characters is their only alignment with Boichuk’s negative Russian tropes, unlike Sasha’s stereotypical labels of “decadent,” “other,” “immoderate,” and “alcoholic” (147). I discuss this aspect of the plot at length elsewhere, but fashion—both Russian and otherwise—is crucial to Sasha’s identity. She can never fully reject nor accept luxury and capitalism.[8]
Sasha’s obsession with her own appearance and public perception is not only a sign of her association with tsarist decadence, but a preoccupation with the Soviet experiment. Mirror-gazing is one of Sasha’s habits, and she gravitates toward the mirrors in her own room and public restrooms. Graham Fraser writes about mirror-gazing through feminist and spatial theories as a form of self-haunting, a negative corollary to the cultural absenteeism Sasha embraces (481). Sasha sees her internality and perceptions of her appearance, but never her actual reflection. The only physical description of Sasha is the color of her dyed hair, a “blonde cendré” (ash blonde) described as “the most difficult of colors … it must be bleached, that is to say, its own colour must be taken out of it—and then it must be dyed … another colour must be imposed on it” (Rhys 46). Sasha calls this process “educated hair,” and it resembles the process of assimilating to a foreign culture or society (Rhys 46). It is a decadent, time-consuming, and identity-sapping process. Sasha’s assimilation may have been cultural, personal, or a combination of both.[9] The ash blonde analogizes the process of stripping individuality to create like-minded people. It brings to mind the Soviet Union’s collective mindset and the personality cult of Stalin.[10] The ash blonde color also gives connotations of ashes and death, linking to the Fraser’s notion of self-haunting. Fraser’s argument for mirror-gazing centers upon Sasha’s sense of self: “While her gaze is inflected by these concerns [female identity and commodity culture], the mirrors in this novel are more fundamentally acting as portals to a ghostly experience of place, time, memory, and self” (493). The blonde cendré is not only an exception to Sasha’s otherwise ambiguous appearance, but the epitome of her self-haunting. It is an act of both decadence and uniformity.
In addition to time, place, and self, the reflections that appear in Sasha’s symbolic mirrors are the people with whom she chooses to identify. The Russians and Rene become reflections of her in their relationships to their respective homelands. She sees herself the same way she sees Russia and looks to Russian characters for validation and continuation of the version of Russia she creates for and within herself. Sasha’s Russia is inherently contradictory, because she identifies with elements of both imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. With her desire to appear wealthy and decadent, she projects the image of the former for other people to see. However, her fabricated sense of self is more aligned with the Soviet Union. She views herself as a country in flux with a grand ideological exterior masking a dark reality. She is effectively a walking propaganda poster, attracting people like Serge, Delmar, and Rene.
Cultural Absenteeism and Rhys’s Russian Characters
Sasha and the Russians are conjoined in their “otherness,” but each character faces very different stakes. They all experience cultural absenteeism and assimilate to life in Paris so much that they avoid talking about their own pasts and cultures. Their experiences highlight the problematic nature of Sasha’s own cultural absenteeism and fabricated sense of self. Delmar occupies more space in Good Morning, Midnight than any other Eastern European character. He appears in three scenes: a chance encounter with the forlorn Sasha as she passes by on the street, a happenstance meeting the following day, and a trip to Serge’s apartment to purchase a painting. Delmar is serious, composed, philosophical, and kind in all his interactions with Sasha. His most defining characteristic is optimism. Delmar’s character aligns with none of Boichuk’s negative Russian tropes beyond “other”; he more closely meets the positive characteristics of intelligence and nobility (124). Despite the clear picture of his character, Delmar’s past remains a mystery. Sasha narrates his history in a brief paragraph, explaining his current living arrangement with a sick female relative and that “he comes from Ukraine, he tells me, and it’s very hot there, and very cold in the winter. But again, he slides away from the subject of Russia and everything Russian, though in other ways he is communicative about himself” (Rhys 58). Delmar never discusses his country’s past or current events. Sasha notices his avoidance, but she never questions it. Sasha’s passive nature contributes to her avoidance, but she is also too content in her own assumptions of Russia and Russianness to delve into the reality of Delmar’s past. Her commitment to her own brand of cultural absenteeism stifles her curiosity about her new friend.
Delmar experiences a very different kind of cultural absenteeism, one forced on him rather than chosen. Delmar claims a French identity, describing himself as “a naturalized Frenchman” who “has done his military service in France” (Rhys 58). Sasha thinks he “can’t be much over 30” (Rhys 60). The timeline suggests he was a young adult, if not a teenager, when he emigrated. His cultural absenteeism could be the product of a tragic past or inability to process and verbalize what he may have heard about the atrocities his homeland faced in the 1930s. His name further removes him from his birthplace in Sasha’s perspective. The surname Delmar is Spanish in origin, meaning “of the sea,” and has no ties to Eastern Europe. Perhaps he renamed himself as Sasha did. Sasha describes Delmar as melancholy, but his optimistic philosophy stands in stark contrast to the possibilities of what his past may have entailed. Sasha sees herself and her own past tragedies in Delmar, an extreme and insensitive example of self-identification. Even if Stalin’s purges and famine never directly affected Delmar, the Ukraine of the late 1920s and early 1930s provides contemporary context for his assertions, mood, and silences.
Collective farms, or kolkhozy, became a forced standard in Ukrainian farming regions and other parts of the Soviet Union from 1930 onward. After the initial push for collectivization in the late 1920s, Stalin ordered the elimination of the kulaks, a class of Ukrainian peasant farmers, through deportations and executions in the millions. In 1933, the most severe of Stalin’s man-made famines killed approximately 4.2 million people and disproportionately affected Ukraine. Known as the Holodomor, this event is widely regarded as an act of genocide. Collective farm workers rioted, slaughtered livestock, killed local officials in charge of collectivization, and stole from state supplies, all while being depicted as happy and well-fed in propaganda films. Sasha’s knowledge of the atrocities in Ukraine, and Rhys’s for that matter, would have been somewhat limited. The same is true for a general British readership. A late 1930s audience would certainly have heard of Stalin’s famines and purges, but they would not know the exact figures or perhaps the full extent.
Despite his unwillingness to talk about Ukraine, Delmar shares his worldview with Sasha. She allows Delmar to speak for her on their shared philosophical beliefs regarding class and financial status: “I prefer to be as I am. As things are now, I wouldn’t wish to be rich or strong or powerful. I wouldn’t wish to be one of the guilty ones. I know I am not guilty, so I have the right to be just as happy as I can make myself” (Rhys 59). The “guilty ones” refer to the wealthy, but—given the publication date of the novel—Delmar’s critique could easily apply to strong and powerful Soviet party officials. He speaks with greater clarity than any other character, and Sasha internalizes his words and meaning. Delmar’s philosophy is subtly socialist and simultaneously critical of the far Left. Communist Party membership in Ukraine was very low at the time Delmar would have emigrated. Later, Delmar tells Sasha, “I’ve had enough of these people on the Left. They have bad manners,” and goes on to say Serge’s association with the extreme Left is “all nonsense. He doesn’t really care” (Rhys 59). Sasha outwardly approves of Delmar’s statements about the “guilty ones” and the Left, but her own opinions remain unclear. Sasha does not seek power, and her desire for wealth never extends past appearances and quality lodging. She seems to adopt his opinions to avoid forming her own. Like many of Rhys’s heroines, she is suspicious of politics and ideology. She is only interested in his words as they relate to her own self-interest and desire to cultivate a Russian aesthetic, which must of course include political perspectives.
Delmar is not the only Eastern European character to face cultural absenteeism; Serge is the most culturally othered character in the novel and his isolating experiences lead to a problematic response. Serge is also the most elusive and complex of the Russian characters in Good Morning, Midnight. Delmar hints at the history of his relationship with Serge and suggests that he may have helped Serge out of terrible living conditions by encouraging him to sell paintings. Serge never discusses his past beyond his relationship with Delmar, but he seems well-established and connected in Paris. During a scene in Serge’s apartment, Sasha views the paintings he has to offer. He also shows off his collection of homemade African “artifacts.” Serge participates in racism, but he is also one of the most othered and isolated characters in the novel. As the only Jewish character, he occupies a precarious position in this pre-war setting. Sasha describes him in anti-Semitic terms (a “mocking” and “hateful” look) and guesses that he is around 40 (Rhys 85). If her estimate of his age is correct, he likely immigrated to Paris around the time of the Russian Revolution or slightly after. If Serge is based on the painter Simon Segal, a possibility I discuss below, he was born in 1895 and emigrated to Paris in 1925. Serge’s history, read through historical accounts of the period, is as troubled as Delmar’s. He would have faced significant discrimination as large numbers of Russia’s Jewish population fled in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Notably, Good Morning, Midnight was published in 1939, the same year the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact was signed.[11] Stalin was hugely anti-Semitic, targeting Jewish doctors and religious leaders, so Serge’s cultural absenteeism and adaptation to France is likely a matter of force rather than choice.
Serge thus demonstrates to Sasha the problematic nature of her self-fabrication and manipulation of stereotype. Sasha considers Russia a “safe” culture to emulate because it is a white form of otherness. Russians can still engage in othering, as Serge demonstrates with his culturally appropriative African masks and dance. Serge inadvertently proves that Sasha is not choosing to identify with the oppressed, but a differentiated other by donning Russian-inspired garb and ash-blonde hair. Sasha situates herself as apart from British or French whiteness in the same way that Russia is viewed as European but with different connotations in Western thought. In the late 1930s, Russia was clearly “othered” in Western literary fascination with Soviet life. As Delmar implies, Western Europe cultivated a presumption that Russians are different from other people (Rhys 58). However, no outside oppression occurred. Similarly, Sasha chooses otherness and allows herself to be othered; she is not racially or culturally oppressed. Serge also exerts privilege in problematic way by commodifying another culture with his “homemade” African masks. The situation is further complicated by the fact that he commodifies his own culture with the paintings he sells, possibly due to financial necessity. During Rhys’s trip to Paris in 1937, she “visited Simon Segal, a Jewish artist friend who was apparently the model for Serge in Good Morning, Midnight” (O’Shea). During her trip, Rhys purchased a painting identical to the one Sasha buys from Serge: “an old Jew with a red nose, playing the banjo” (Rhys 94).[12] Serge’s participation in commodification further alienates him from his homeland and culture, but it also sets him apart from common tropes. He is too engaged in capitalism to embody the “barbarously splendid” stereotypes Boichuk identifies (124). Sasha gravitates toward stereotypes with her painting choice in the same way she takes on Russian stereotypes in her own life. Her behavior is distinct from that of Serge and Delmar, even when their collaboration to convince Sasha to buy a painting might appear to put them in range of the stereotypical characters Boichuk lists. There is a level of passivity in their act and their scheme is ultimately harmless; further, Sasha actively participates as she enjoys seeing Serge’s paintings and genuinely wants one. The characters trust each other as well. Serge gives Sasha the painting and trusts her to bring the money to Delmar later. If the painting plotline is the product of a Russian stereotype, it does more to subvert the trope of the criminal Russian than support it.
Sasha and the Landscape of Nationalities
Rhys’s non-Russian characters serve as the symbolic backdrop for the Russian characters. Historicizing Rhys’s Russian characters allows the role of other nationalities to stand out more sharply in Good Morning, Midnight, published just as Nazi power intensified. While many nationalities are represented in the novel, there is a notable absence of Germans. In the scene where Sasha meets Delmar and his friend, they guess nationalities and she immediately asks if they are German. Later, she comments on Delmar’s appearance: “He is vaguely like the man who always took the spy-parts in German films some years ago” (Rhys 41). She seems to prefer Delmar over his unnamed friend due to this characteristic.[13] The only other references to Germany come in the form of language, where Sasha lacks fluency, and references to German products, such as cameras. If any pre-war tensions exist in the novel, Sasha is deeply ambivalent. She treats Germany with a measure of distance, and the lack of German characters supports her perspective. Sasha’s husband further complicates the absent presence of Germans in the novel. The reader logically assumes Enno is British, and that he met Sasha in England. However, the name Enno originates from Germany, and the surname Jansen is German/Dutch/Norwegian. The only reference to Enno’s nationality appears when Sasha fills out forms for a hotel proprietor early in the novel: “I’ve filled it up all right, haven’t I? Name So-and-so, nationality So-and-so…Nationality—that’s what puzzled him. I ought to have put nationality by marriage” (Rhys 9). Sasha clearly refers to herself as an Englishwoman on several occasions, so the surname Jansen can be cited as the reason for this misunderstanding. If we assume that Enno is German or has German ancestry and read Sasha as British and a self-identified Russian, the grounds seem to be set for World War II.
Apart from Russians, Germans, and the looming British, the French make up the dominant nationality in Good Morning, Midnight. Sasha’s Paris is a neutral space she manipulates for her own purposes and living memory, and she does the same with French characters like Rene. Sasha’s construction of Paris is well-represented in scholarship on the novel, and critics attempt to piece together the unusually neutral and often bleak depiction of the city that could be confused with any other if not for the mention of landmarks. Laura Fernandez offers a compelling reading of public and private spaces in Paris, arguing that these spaces are openly gendered and hostile to nonconformists for the purpose of exposing power dynamics (215). Emma Zimmerman takes a different approach to Paris in a reading of the Freudian uncanny in the novel’s architecture, claiming that Paris is a neutral space because it encourages deracination (75). My approach to Paris and French characters parallels the deracination reading. I argue that Sasha treats Paris in much the same way as Russia, without the aspect of self-identification. She removes the connotations of the place itself and replaces them with her own ideas and identity in the case of Russia and her memories in the case of Paris. The space of Paris may be gendered, classist, and a national melting pot, but Sasha makes it purely her own, existing outside these norms. Rene’s perspective on the city is identical. He is aware of the space and its connotations, but he manipulates the place and his position within it to suit his own purposes. Additionally, if Rene is French-Canadian as he claims to be, he is one step removed from the people of France in the same way a Caribbean Sasha would be separated from the British.
The focal point of the novel's fourth section, as well as the scene that occupies the most space, is Sasha’s evening out with Rene to attend the Exhibition. If we consider all the men Sasha meets as reflections of some part of herself, Rene brings her brokenness and fabricated nationality to light. This is a common scholarly reading, which Voicu articulates well: “The real action of Good Morning, Midnight occurs in Sasha’s cross-cultural microcosmos, where the most important identitarian actors are her different selves and the other actorial catalysts of her internal drama” (73). Even though Sasha is closer to the Russians, Rene is the ultimate foil for Sasha because they are less aligned than opposed. The men are like different parts of Sasha’s mind coexisting smoothly until Rene forces the moving pieces of her living past and current reality to stop. When Sasha mentions her Russian acquaintances, Rene responds with prejudice: “‘Russians,’ he says in a spiteful voice, ‘Russians in Paris! Everybody knows what they are—Jews and poor whites. The most boring people in the world. Terrible people” (Rhys 154). Sasha thinks, “for some reason I am very vexed at this. I start wondering why I am there at all” (Rhys 154). Rene may as well have referred directly to Serge and Delmar. Sasha is deeply insulted and her perceptions toward her new friends and Paris have been undermined. In addition to insulting Sasha’s friends, Rene is criticizing her fabricated sense of self. He refuses to accept façade of exotic decadence, and his prejudices are stronger than her ambivalence. She wants to be “othered,” but not by Rene’s definition of Russianness. She immediately insists on returning to the Exhibition, and Rene reluctantly joins her.
This Way to the Exhibition
The Exhibition described in the novel is the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, which Rhys attended during her time in Paris (Britzolakis 464). The Exhibition is the most overtly political location in the novel and a common fixture in scholarship on Good Morning, Midnight. My reading of this space primarily differs in its focus Sasha’s non-response to Vera Mukhina’s Worker and Collective Farm Woman statue. Every scene that minimizes or subverts political thought gives way to this giant display of internationalism and looming conflict. The most famous exhibits included a symbolic face-off between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union—Albert Speer's tower with the National-Socialist eagle atop a swastika positioned across from Mukhina's Worker and Collective Farm Woman. One may picture Sasha, who has veered away from ideological consistency throughout the novel, contemplating the symbols of communism and fascism in their massive pavilions. Rather than an ideological expression or association with either side, the Exhibition is symbolic of her relationships with members of the Russian immigrant community. The Exhibition is widely regarded as a “commodity spectacle,” and as such, it “highlights the widening chasm between everyday life, especially for those eking out a marginal existence as immigrants or refugees, and the staging of progress as commodity spectacle” (Britzolakis 466). The Exhibition represented modernization, or in retrospect, the modernity defined by two of the deadliest regimes and ideologies of the twentieth century.
Even though Mukhina’s statue never appears in Good Morning, Midnight, the symbolic worker and collective farm woman can represent each of the Russian characters in the novel. Mukhina’s statue features a male worker holding a hammer and a female figure, a kolkhoznitsa, with a sickle. The statue “represents the youth, dynamism, and confidence of the new state” and its union of agriculture and industry (Mackey 158). The Worker and Collective Farm Woman is Soviet politics made aesthetic. Mukhina’s statue became a popular fixture in Paris. Residents signed a petition to keep it in the city, but the statue was ultimately returned to Moscow, where it remains an iconic and nostalgic symbol of the USSR (Mackey 158). Despite Sasha’s fascination with Russians and interest in the motives, if not the historical results, of the Soviet model, she never mentions the Soviet pavilion. Even though Sasha seems uninterested in Mukhina’s Worker and Collective Farm Woman, historical context demands a connection to Delmar. Readers do not know why he decided to emigrate to Paris, and collectivization is only one possibility. Even though he avoided or escaped the famine and purges, his country and culture did not. The kolkhoznitsa could represent any Russian or Ukrainian collective farm worker, the atrocities they faced in the 1930s, and their role in Soviet industrialization so crucial that it warranted representation in a statue at the Paris Exhibition. The other Russian characters could have been the symbolic worker if they had remained in the country. Associating with the figures in the statue would have been largely positive for those inside the Soviet Union, but they further alienate Rhys’s émigrés and hint at the reasons for leaving Russia. Similarly, the German pavilion warrants a connection to Enno, Sasha’s former husband, or Serge, who would face an uncertain future in the upcoming war.[14] Serge is doubly isolated as a Russian and as a Jewish man.
At the Exhibition Sasha ignores the two iconic statues in favor of a politically and ideologically ambivalent statue. Much like her association with both tsarist and Soviet Russia, Sasha is unwilling to pick a side. She refuses to accept any ideology that seeks to dominate and instead chooses a different symbol at the Exhibition and claims it as her own. As she visits the Exhibition with Rene, she focuses on the Star of Peace, which may refer to the Monument de la Paix, the only monument not dedicated to a specific country (Herbert 105). The Monument de la Paix was shaped like a six-pointed star, and it was located outside the Exhibition itself. Rene can only insult the Star of Peace, calling it “mesquin” [petty] and “vulgar” (Rhys 155). Johanna O’Shea attributes Rene’s distaste for this monument to “delight in the style of conflict” of the two dominant pavilions, but it is possible that he is merely skeptical of peace as a possibility (O’Shea). By contrast, in her fixation on the Star of Peace, Sasha longs to escape and step outside the flawed internationalism and commodification she sees in Europe. She may see Russia as something to cling to in her personal identity, but not in the context of the Exhibition, since she focuses on the Star of Peace instead of Mukhina’s statue. Early in the novel, she has a dream about Exhibition signs printed with red letters: “This way to the Exhibition, This way to the Exhibition. But I don’t want the way to the Exhibition—I want the way out” (Rhys 7). In Sasha’s dream, the words appear in red letters, and a man with a hand of steel points toward them instead of giving her the directions she wants. The hand of steel demands a connection to Stalin, whose name means “man of steel.” Sasha never seeks the landmark symbol of communism at the Exhibition, its juxtaposition against Speer’s tower and eagle, or even the purpose of the displays.[15] She does not describe the view from the promenade at all, refusing to engage with “a politics of hatred made aesthetic” (O’Shea). She only wants an escape. Beyond Sasha’s desire for escape, the Exhibition is also a space that allows her living past, including her previous time in Paris, her debatably German husband, and her own possible Russian or British identities, to coexist with her present situation in Paris. While viewing the Exhibition, Sasha and Rene remain at the Trocadero entrance, leaning against the balustrade. The location provides a panoramic view as a backdrop for their conversation: “the Trocadero esplanade projected a totality of industrial production and consumption, assuming the spectator’s identification with the nation as transcendent subject” (Britzolakis 466). For Sasha, concepts of nation and nationality are anything but transcendent. Sasha misses the Exhibition’s intended vision of internationalism and sees instead the reality of national division. The gap between the intentions and reality of the Paris Exhibition also exists within the novel, and Sasha herself.
Sasha cannot don a Cossack Cap and astrakhan coat and join Russian culture, so she becomes an inauthentic version reflective of gendered and national uncertainties of the time. Good Morning, Midnight can and should be read as a larger commentary on the Russian presence in Western fiction, as well as a signal to Rhys’s more expansive international perspective. Western writers who choose to include Russian characters or elements in their texts often feel invited or obligated to make sense of the country’s history and culture through stereotypes or otherwise lean into their own lack of understanding. Perhaps we can commend Rhys’s portrayal of Russians through the lens of self-identification, however flawed Sasha’s efforts may be. Rhys models the way Western writers construct versions of Russia for the author’s own purposes by literalizing it in her protagonist. Rhys’s deployment of Russian stereotypes departs from tropes of the time to reflect both her characters’ alienation from the European mainstream and the problematics of national self-fabrication.
Sasha’s Russia is her grand exterior—a fur coat, a meticulously selected hat, dyed ash blonde hair, a carefully curated group of Russian friends. Sasha’s self-imposed blend of Russian and Soviet characteristics is a unique transition point between two phases of British depictions of Russia. For Rhys scholarship, this perspective expands beyond the British-Caribbean dialectic that dominates most critical approaches, complicating these portrayals and opening new avenues for analysis. Rhys engages with a much larger body of European cultures and histories, and her heroines’ experiences reach far beyond her own. Moreover, Good Morning, Midnight belongs to the wider field of British reception of Russia and the Soviet Union: this novel is a transitional piece. It exists between the poles of Russophilia and post-war Russophobia, during a time when international relations looked more positive, but the popular view of Russia remained one of social fascination and foreignness. Sasha’s embodiment of Russophilia may date her in terms of British cultural interest, but her ambivalence looks toward a future of post-war Western Russophobia that Rhys could neither predict nor with which she could fully engage.
Notes
[1] Astrakhan coats, named after the city of Astrakhan, are made from the expensive wool of Karakul lambs. The fact that Sasha’s coat is imitation astrakhan fits well with her decision to self-identify as Russian.
[2] Some articles of interest include Elizabetha Levin’s “In Their Time: The Riddle Behind the Epistolary Friendship between Ernest Hemingway and Ivan Kashkin,” which details Hemingway’s correspondence with a Russian translator of his works and the inclusion of his namesake character in For Whom the Bell Tolls, and the chapter “Virginia Woolf: The Sound of Russian Love” in Ira Nadel’s Love and Russian Literature: From Benjamin to Woolf, which offers a broad portrait of Woolf’s Russian influences.
[3] D.H. Lawrence coined the term “Russianitis” to describe this trend.
[4] Some of the major authors of British spy fiction, who often dominate scholarly conversations on the genre, are Eric Ambler, John Le’Carre, Len Deighton, and Ian Fleming. It is safe to say that spy novels could not have flourished in the latter half of the twentieth century without Russian stereotypes like the ones listed.
[5] Sources that treat this novel as a Caribbean work include Erica Johnson’s “Creole Errance in Good Morning, Midnight,” Christina-Georgiana Voicu’s Exploring Cultural Identities in Jean Rhys’s Fiction, and Delia Konzett’s “Ethnic Modernism in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight.” This is not an exhaustive list, and it should also be noted that other sources consider Good Morning, Midnight one of Rhys’s non-Caribbean works, including Micah Del Rosario’s article on critical whiteness studies, titled “Locating Race in Jean Rhys’s Non-Caribbean Fiction.”
[6] For the purposes of my reading, I consider Sasha British with minimal Caribbean ties, but I engage with both readings here due to the large body of scholarship that places Good Morning, Midnight among Rhys’s Caribbean works.
[7] Maroula Joannou analyzes the role of fashion in Rhys’s fiction as a “marker of changes in women’s symbolic lives, bringing women new performative possibilities for sensual self-expression” (464). Joannou specifically links Sasha’s interest in fashion with her interest in art, but I believe it is more strictly limited to performativity, since she views clothes as a means of communication rather than self-expression (469). Other notable pieces on fashion in Rhys’s works include Emily James and Tove Conway’s “Radiant Bodies and Feminist Laboratories” and Sophie Oliver’s “Fashion in Jean Rhys/Jean Rhys in Fashion.”
[8] Much of Rhys’s class-related commentary resists polarization. The critical consensus, epitomized in Judith Gardiner’s reading, suggests this novel is a “sustained critique of the polarizations about sex, class, and moral value that oppress women and the poor” (233). In addition to the binaries Gardiner lists, and as I demonstrate in later sections here, Rhys balances the dichotomy between old Russia and the Soviet Union as well.
[9] The ash-blonde scene and others like it support a reading of Sasha as a British-Caribbean character. While the novel offers no definite ties to the Caribbean, Sasha’s ambiguous nationality allows Good Morning, Midnight to be featured alongside overtly binational works like Voyage in the Dark in reference texts such as Transnational Jean Rhys and Exploring Cultural Identities in Jean Rhys’s Fiction.
[10] The personality cult of Stalin was the result of successful propaganda campaigns and public visuals that made him seem an almost-omnipresent entity. Some historians argue the cult of personality expanded beyond Stalin’s control, citing conversations he had with family members and Party officials where he expressed distaste for the public’s worship and found it contrary to communist ideals. The opposing argument, with which I am more inclined to agree, is that communist ideals and appearances necessitated such statements of protest.
[11] Also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact or the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, this treaty promised neutrality on both sides and contained a “secret agreement which specified an eastern limit of Germany's expansion into Poland and carved up the Baltic States into German and Soviet spheres of influence” (Roberts 14). Of course, Germany violated the pact upon invading the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Geoffrey Roberts provides context and analysis for both iterations of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in “From Non-Aggression Treaty to War: Documenting Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939-1941.”
[12] Maren Linett offers a beautiful analysis of Serge and Sasha’s interactions and Rhys’s own friendship with Simon Segal, including a letter from Segal, in “New Worlds, New Everything: Fragmentation and Trauma in Jean Rhys.”
[13] The unnamed Russian friend who accompanies Delmar during his first encounter with Sasha has no backstory apart from the fact that he is a doctor. He repels Sasha and she fails to attend a planned dinner with him the next day because he does not fit her mental image of a Russian as well as Delmar does. When Delmar disapproves of her decision to stand him up, Sasha says, “that’s not my idea of a Russian” (Rhys 58). She indicates far more than her idea of who is and is not punctual. She has a clear vision in her mind for what the Russian characters should think and how they should behave, though she never fully articulates her opinion. Delmar responds by saying, “Oh, Russians, Russians—why do you think they are so different from other people” (Rhys 58). He seems to believe in assimilation with the rest of Europe and contradicts the popular notion (upon which Sasha has built her version of Russia) that Russians are somehow separate from other Europeans. Each individual exhibits cultural absenteeism in some manner, and the one Russian who does not is quickly removed from Sasha’s narrative.
[14] Johanna O’Shea writes about anti-Semitism in the text, particularly regarding the Exhibition and Delmar and Serge’s relationship, in “An Exhibition of Blind Spots in Good Morning, Midnight and Political Strategies that Operate in the Dark.” My reading of Mukhina’s statue and its connection to Delmar parallels O’Shea’s depiction of Speer’s tower and Serge.
[15] O’Shea argues that Sasha’s refusal to acknowledge or even describe the Exhibition and its politics is the result of “Rhys’s experiences of violence, her perception of racial hatred, and the novel’s concern with the representation of Jews and other persecuted groups” and the fact that the novel rejects “dominant visualities” (O’Shea).
Works Cited
Athanassakis, Yanoula. “The Anxiety of Racialized Sexuality in Jean Rhys.” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, 2016, pp. 1-19, www.scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/anthurium/vol13/iss2/7. Accessed 8 December 2023.
Britzolakis, Christina. “This Way to the Exhibition: Genealogies of Urban Spectacle in Jean Rhys’s Interwar Fiction.” Textual Practice, vol. 21, no. 3, 2007, pp. 457-482, 10.1080/09502360701529085. Accessed 1 December 2023.
Conrad, Joseph. Under Western Eyes. 1911. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1991.
Cross, Anthony, editor. A People Passing Rude: British Responses to Russian Culture, Open Book Publishers, 2012.
Fernandez, Laura de la Parra. “Subversive Wanderings in the City of Love: Constructing the Female Body in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight.” ES Review. Spanish Journal of English Studies, vol. 39, 2018, pp. 215-232, doi.org/10.24197/ersjes.39.2018.215-232. Accessed 10 December 2023.
Fraser, Graham. “The Ghost in the Mirror: Self-Haunting in Good Morning, Midnight.” Modern Language Review, vol. 113, no. 3, 2018, pp. 481-505, edsgcl.576302955. Accessed 8 December 2023.
Gardiner, Judith. “Good Morning, Midnight; Good Night Modernism.” Boundary 2, vol. 11, no. 2, 1982, pp. 233-251, www-jstor-org.libdata.
Herbert, James. “The View of the Trocadero: The Real Subject of the Exposition Internationale, Paris, 1937.” Assemblage, no. 6, 1995, pp. 94-112, www.jstor.org/stable/3171420. Accessed 11 December 2023.
Joannou, Maroula. “‘All Right, I’ll Do Anything for Good Clothes’: Jean Rhys and Fashion.” Women: A Cultural Review, vol. 23, no. 4, 2012, 463-289, dx.doi.org/10.1080/09574042.2012.739849. Accessed 5 December 2023.
Johnson, Erica. “Creole Errance in Good Morning, Midnight.” Journal of Caribbean Literatures, vol. 3, no. 3, 2003, pp. 37-46, www.jstor.org/stable/40986142. Accessed 5 December 2023.
Klimova, Svetlana. “‘A Gaul who has chosen impeccable Russia as his medium’: Ivan Bunin and the British Myth of Russia in the Early 20th Century.” Cross, 215-230.
Konzett, Delia. “Ethnic Modernism in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight.” Journal of Caribbean Literatures, vol. 3, no. 3, 2003, pp. 63-76, www.jstor.com/stable/40986144. Accessed 5 December 2023.
Kozicharow, Nicola. “‘Racy of the Soil:’ Filipp Maliavan’s London Exhibition of 1935.” Cross, 241-251.
Levin, Elizabetha. “In Their Time: The Riddle Behind the Epistolary Friendship between Ernest Hemingway and Ivan Kashkin.” The Hemingway Review, vol. 32, no. 2, 2013, pp. 95-108, 10.1353/hem.2013.0007. Accessed 25 November 2025.
Linett, Maren. “New Worlds, New Everything: Fragmentation and Trauma in Jean Rhys.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 51, no. 4, 2005, pp. 437-466, www.jstor.org/stable/20058781. Accessed 21 April 2024.
Mackey, Anna. “Collective Farm Girl or Dancer? Isadora Duncan and the Sculpture of Vera Mukhina.” Dance Chronicle, vol. 41, no. 2, 2018, pp. 158-187, doi.org/10.1080/01472526.2018.1469890.
McCracken, Scott. “Strange Defeat: Good Morning, Midnight and Marc Bloch’s L’Étrange défaite.” Transnational Jean Rhys. Edited by Juliana Lopoukhine, Frédéric Regard, and Kerry-Jane Wallart. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
Nadel, Ira. Love and Russian Literature: From Benjamin to Woolf, Bloomsbury, 2024.
O’Shea, Johanna. “An Exhibition of Blind Spots in Good Morning, Midnight and Political Strategies that Operate in the Dark.” Goldsmith’s University of London, 2014, www.gold.ac.uk/glits-e/back-issues/an-exhibition-of-blind-spots-in-good-morning-midn/. Accessed 20 April 2024.
Rhys, Jean. Good Morning, Midnight. 1939. Norton, 2020.
---. Voyage in the Dark. 1934. Norton, 1994.
Roberts, Geoffrey. “From Non-Aggression Treaty to War: Documenting Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939-1941.” History Review, vol. 41, 2001, pp. 14-19, www.libdata.lib.ua.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=khh&AN=5754719&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed 21 April 2024.
Voicu, Christina-Georgiana. Exploring Cultural Identities in Jean Rhys’s Fiction. De Gruyter, 2014.
Zimmerman, Emma. “Always the Same Stairs, Always the Same Room: The Uncanny Architecture of Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 38, no. 4, 2015, pp. 74-92, 10.2979/jmodelite.38.4.74. Accessed 10 December 2023.
Works Cited
Athanassakis, Yanoula. “The Anxiety of Racialized Sexuality in Jean Rhys.” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, 2016, pp. 1-19, www.scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/anthurium/vol13/iss2/7. Accessed 8 December 2023.
Britzolakis, Christina. “This Way to the Exhibition: Genealogies of Urban Spectacle in Jean Rhys’s Interwar Fiction.” Textual Practice, vol. 21, no. 3, 2007, pp. 457-482, 10.1080/09502360701529085. Accessed 1 December 2023.
Conrad, Joseph. Under Western Eyes. 1911. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1991.
Cross, Anthony, editor. A People Passing Rude: British Responses to Russian Culture, Open Book Publishers, 2012.
Fernandez, Laura de la Parra. “Subversive Wanderings in the City of Love: Constructing the Female Body in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight.” ES Review. Spanish Journal of English Studies, vol. 39, 2018, pp. 215-232, doi.org/10.24197/ersjes.39.2018.215-232. Accessed 10 December 2023.
Fraser, Graham. “The Ghost in the Mirror: Self-Haunting in Good Morning, Midnight.” Modern Language Review, vol. 113, no. 3, 2018, pp. 481-505, edsgcl.576302955. Accessed 8 December 2023.
Gardiner, Judith. “Good Morning, Midnight; Good Night Modernism.” Boundary 2, vol. 11, no. 2, 1982, pp. 233-251, www-jstor-org.libdata.
Herbert, James. “The View of the Trocadero: The Real Subject of the Exposition Internationale, Paris, 1937.” Assemblage, no. 6, 1995, pp. 94-112, www.jstor.org/stable/3171420. Accessed 11 December 2023.
Joannou, Maroula. “‘All Right, I’ll Do Anything for Good Clothes’: Jean Rhys and Fashion.” Women: A Cultural Review, vol. 23, no. 4, 2012, 463-289, dx.doi.org/10.1080/09574042.2012.739849. Accessed 5 December 2023.
Johnson, Erica. “Creole Errance in Good Morning, Midnight.” Journal of Caribbean Literatures, vol. 3, no. 3, 2003, pp. 37-46, www.jstor.org/stable/40986142. Accessed 5 December 2023.
Klimova, Svetlana. “‘A Gaul who has chosen impeccable Russia as his medium’: Ivan Bunin and the British Myth of Russia in the Early 20th Century.” Cross, 215-230.
Konzett, Delia. “Ethnic Modernism in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight.” Journal of Caribbean Literatures, vol. 3, no. 3, 2003, pp. 63-76, www.jstor.com/stable/40986144. Accessed 5 December 2023.
Kozicharow, Nicola. “‘Racy of the Soil:’ Filipp Maliavan’s London Exhibition of 1935.” Cross, 241-251.
Levin, Elizabetha. “In Their Time: The Riddle Behind the Epistolary Friendship between Ernest Hemingway and Ivan Kashkin.” The Hemingway Review, vol. 32, no. 2, 2013, pp. 95-108, 10.1353/hem.2013.0007. Accessed 25 November 2025.
Linett, Maren. “New Worlds, New Everything: Fragmentation and Trauma in Jean Rhys.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 51, no. 4, 2005, pp. 437-466, www.jstor.org/stable/20058781. Accessed 21 April 2024.
Mackey, Anna. “Collective Farm Girl or Dancer? Isadora Duncan and the Sculpture of Vera Mukhina.” Dance Chronicle, vol. 41, no. 2, 2018, pp. 158-187, doi.org/10.1080/01472526.2018.1469890.
McCracken, Scott. “Strange Defeat: Good Morning, Midnight and Marc Bloch’s L’Étrange défaite.” Transnational Jean Rhys. Edited by Juliana Lopoukhine, Frédéric Regard, and Kerry-Jane Wallart. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.
Nadel, Ira. Love and Russian Literature: From Benjamin to Woolf, Bloomsbury, 2024.
O’Shea, Johanna. “An Exhibition of Blind Spots in Good Morning, Midnight and Political Strategies that Operate in the Dark.” Goldsmith’s University of London, 2014, www.gold.ac.uk/glits-e/back-issues/an-exhibition-of-blind-spots-in-good-morning-midn/. Accessed 20 April 2024.
Rhys, Jean. Good Morning, Midnight. 1939. Norton, 2020.
---. Voyage in the Dark. 1934. Norton, 1994.
Roberts, Geoffrey. “From Non-Aggression Treaty to War: Documenting Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939-1941.” History Review, vol. 41, 2001, pp. 14-19, www.libdata.lib.ua.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=khh&AN=5754719&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed 21 April 2024.
Voicu, Christina-Georgiana. Exploring Cultural Identities in Jean Rhys’s Fiction. De Gruyter, 2014.
Zimmerman, Emma. “Always the Same Stairs, Always the Same Room: The Uncanny Architecture of Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 38, no. 4, 2015, pp. 74-92, 10.2979/jmodelite.38.4.74. Accessed 10 December 2023.
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