‘Outside the Machine’: Stasis and Conflict in the work of Jean Rhys

Abstract

Responding to longstanding critical discomfort around feminist readings of Jean Rhys’s fiction, this essay analyses her depiction of female conflict and feminine abjection. In engaging with her writing towards and against other women, it argues that the narrative of conflict is essential to Rhys’s portrayal of gender and agency. This essay analyses the patterns of structured inertia and the entangling yet alienating interaction between patients in a women's hospital, as depicted in Rhys's short story, ‘Outside the Machine’. Ultimately, this essay argues for Rhys’s transgressive feminism by embracing the very difficulty of reading her seemingly misogynist passages.

Keywords:

• women
• conflict
• feminism
• hospital
• machine
• Rhys
• abject

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Critics that have perpetuated the idea of such complicity include Shari Benstock (1986) and Laura Tracey (1988). This troubling trend in response is addressed in detail by Helen Carr in Jean Rhys (1996).

2 Here I am referring to Mary Douglas’ definition of dirt as a ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas 1966: 36).