Ferocious Things: Jean Rhys and the Politics of Womenâs Melancholia

Itâs fatal making a fuss … . -Jean Rhys, Quartet. Cathleen Maslenâs Ferocious Things: Jean Rhys and the Politics of Womenâs Melancholia closely engages with the most obvious theme of Rhysâs writing: the speaking and inscription of feminine anguish. Maslen resists easy generalisations with respect to Rhysâs portrayal of womenâs psychic pain, attending carefully to the nuances of sexual, cultural and ethnic displacement which inform the suffering of Rhysâs protagonists. Acknowledging the many fine recent critical engagements with Rhysâs unique corpus of novels, Maslen insists that Rhysâs particular articulation of womenâs pain presents a significant literary transgression, defying the intractable cultural interdiction against women âmaking a fuss.â At the same time, this book engages with the problematic privileging of melancholic and nostalgic discourse in the Western canon in general. Rhysâs work, Maslen argues, simultaneously celebrates and resists fundamentally Eurocentric and anti-feminist paradigms of melancholia and nostalgia. In short, the ferocious melancholia of Jean Rhysâs female voices poses constructive paradoxes and points of departure for feminist and post-colonial debates in the 21st century.