Unreliable Narration and Emotional Deterioration in Jean Rhys’s Selected Short Stories

Abstract

Jean Rhys’s use of fragmented perspectives in her short stories highlights the alienation of the narrator to their physical surroundings. In this paper I analyse the connection between unreliable narrators and fragmented perspectives in Rhys’s selected short stories, “Hunger", "A Night", and "The Sound of the River". The stories were selected on the basis that the emotional states of the main characters affect the way the story is told. The first two stories are shorter and feature one character, written mostly in first person perspective. The third story, "The Sound of the River", features three characters and is mostly in third person point of view. The fluctuating points of view works to distance the speaker from the plot and therefore brings the reader’s attention to the mental state of the character. Rhys employs this technique in her short stories to represent the deteriorating mental states of her unreliable female narrators. This has led to the conflict between categorizing Rhys’s work in the postmodernist movement or the modernist. Strictly categorizing Rhys’s does not work in her favor – as she has employed techniques belonging to multiple movements. For the sake of this study, my research focuses on modernism and postmodernism in Rhys’s short stories.



Author Information
Alyazia Alblooshi, United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates

Paper Information
Conference: KCAH2024
Stream: Literature/Literary Studies

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Posted by James Alexander Gordon