| Summary: | This essay intends to examine the treatment of the self in the novels of Jean Rhys, namely Quartet, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie and Good Morning, Midnight - and how identity in its protagonists play a pertinent role in exposing the shift from a Modernist to a Postmodernist exploration of the self. As the novels progress, these women undergo a gradual diminishing of self and individuality as they become susceptible to the overpowering external influences of their environment on their individuality. This demise of the individual alienated self, influenced by one’s interiority, to one where the self becomes fully shaped by external forces mirrors the shift from the Modernist to the Postmodernist perception of the self. It is also this demise of individuality which serves to expose the flaws at the heart of the Modernist and Postmodernist movements. Like the society which the women in the novels inhabit, the Modernist and Postmodernist movements similarly marginalise women or fail to even consider gender disparities. This essay will examine the novels of Jean Rhys in order to show how the treatment of identity and the self in the novels illustrates the shift from the Modernist to Postmodernist concept of self. Ultimately, this analysis of the shifting sense of self reflected in Rhys’s characters will expose the marginalisation of women in both the Modernist and Postmodernist movements.
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