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Abstract
Genetic criticism often leads to serendipitous discoveries. ‘Mr. Howard's House. CREOLE’ is a case in point. This unpublished manuscript dated 4 December 1938, which is held in the Jean Rhys Archive at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a true palimpsest that testifies to ghostwriting in the literal sense of the word. For one thing, it retains spectral traces of a final draft of Good Morning, Midnight on the back of which it was written, containing nothing less than the only extant fragments from the manuscript of Jean Rhys's fourth novel. But it also holds the most primitive trace of Wide Sargasso Sea, namely Antoinette's dream at the end of Part I. Thus, it does expose the writer at a crossroads, trying to let go of Good Morning, Midnight while having the earliest intimations of the first Mrs. Rochester. And it also carries within itself the seeds of some of Rhys's later works. With the help of the avant-texte, we shall examine in what ways all these texts interact and overlap, and to what extent ‘Mr. Howard's House’ may act as a template for understanding Jean Rhys's creative process as a whole.
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Notes
1 Serge Doubrovsky coined the word ‘autofiction’ in 1977 on the now famous back-cover blurb of his book Fils, which he oxymoronically described as ‘fiction’ created out of ‘events and facts’ that are ‘strictly real’ (Doubrovsky Citation1977). In this work that was closely bound up with psychoanalysis, he resorted to the techniques and tools of fiction to investigate the truth about his own self. More recently, Doubrovsky defined ‘autofiction’ as a literary work whose ‘matter is entirely autobiographical’ but its ‘manner entirely fictional’ (Doubrovsky Citation2011: 24) [my translation]. In light of the latter definition, one may consider ‘Mr. Howard's House’ to be autofictional, except for the fact that Rhys refrained from using real names—as evidenced by a holograph note scribbled in the top margin, about a so-called Donald Skinner mentioned in the opening paragraph: ‘Dont on any account put this name. a real one’ (Rhys Citation1938: 1). Likewise, the eponymous Mr. Howard never appears as such: he is only referred to as Captain Grieg, so his ‘real’ identity is deliberately altered despite the story's original title.
2 Codicology (which is derived from the Latin word ‘codex’) is a discipline that focuses on the medium through which literary texts are produced. Whereas geneticists aim at reconstructing the creative process through a close study of writers’ drafts and revisions, codicologists examine the material aspect of manuscripts, regardless of their actual content, and explore the ways in which the paper medium and writing implements influence the act of composition.
3 Jean Bellemin-Noël coined the term ‘avant-texte’ in his 1972 book Le Texte et l’avant-texte: Les brouillons d’un poème de Milosz.
4 Both manuscripts are part of the Jean Rhys Archive in the McFarlin Library, Department of Special Collections & University Archives, University of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
5 This holograph manuscript kept in pencil on unnumbered pages is characterized by a disjointed style and a virtual absence of punctuation, and it is at times barely legible. Teresa O’Connor rightfully explains that ‘[a]side from the problems in dating the Black Exercise Book, there is the problem of its disjointedness and difficult decipherability’ (O’Connor Citation1986: 221). As described in The University of Tulsa Archival Catalog, the major coherent piece, occupying some 50 pages, is an autobiographical reminiscence of childhood, in which Rhys describes her parents, fear of her father, convent school, etc., before recounting at much greater length her experience of ‘mental seduction’ by a Mr. Howard.
6 I am indebted to Laurie Teal for her 1992 unpublished ‘Transcription of Mr. Howard Episode’ from the Black Exercise Book.
7 After a hurricane, Creole children flee the island on a merchant ship which is seized by pirates. Captain Jonsen becomes very fond of Emily and makes sexual overtures to her. Meanwhile, Margaret, the oldest one, becomes the chief mate's concubine and loses her sanity (Hughes Citation[1929] 1947).
8 Patricia Moran identifies a double process of recovered memory and dissociation—'the reemergence of memories of childhood sexual abuse after years of dissociative amnesia’—at work in Rhys's account of Mr. Howard in the Black Exercise Book (Moran Citation2007: 90). She also points out that ‘significantly, the pages describing the traumatic sexual experience are among the most incoherent, both in terms of grammar and in terms of handwriting’ (Moran Citation2007: 91). Blotting out events is obviously a defense mechanism whereby the writer actively inhibits memory retrieval. Moreover, as ‘an accomplished practitioner of modernist fiction, she draws attention to and incorporates these lapses of memory in her account’ (Moran Citation2007: 92). But in ‘Mr. Howard's House’, one may say that Rhys goes one step further and it is as if her memory lapse—or rather the conscious effort to curtail her memory—were being played out.
9 In my transcriptions, I have tried to stay as close as possible to Rhys's punctuation and idiosyncrasies. Moreover, I have used italics for holograph emendations and carets for additions.
10 ‘[…] il n'y a guère que dans la douleur qu'une femme soit capable de dépasser la médiocrité. Sa résistance y est infinie; on peut en user et abuser sans craindre qu'elle ne meure, moyennant que quelque puérile lâcheté physique ou quelque religieux espoir la détournent du suicide simplificateur. “Elle meurt de chagrin … Elle est morte de chagrin” … Hochez, en entendant ces clichés, une tête sceptique plus qu’apitoyée: une femme ne peut guère mourir de chagrin. C'est une bête si solide, si dure à tuer!’ (Willy Citation1910: 38–39)
11 I have used the Courier font to transcribe some passages from the last draft of Good Morning, Midnight in order to distinguish them from ‘Mr. Howard's House’ on the other side of the typescript.
12 ‘[…] une étape vers la découverte et l’exploration de tous les destins inaboutis que nous portons en nous, ainsi que de tous ces personnages de substitution dont nous occupons les corps en d’autres lieux’ (Bayard Citation2014: 119).
13 Simon Gikandi very insightfully coined the concept of ‘Caribbean modernism’ and spoke of a ‘“twilight” consciousness between the ancestral sources and the colonizing structures’ (Gikandi Citation1992: 254). However, Rhys is nowhere mentioned in his study of West Indian literature. This is all the more surprising as her poetics clearly belong to the twilight zone which is so characteristic of a Creole consciousness, torn apart between its longing for African roots and self-imposed Englishness.