My review of Quartet, by Jean Rhys

Quartet

by Jean Rhys

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Published in 1928/9 and set in Paris's bohemian café society, this was Jean Rhys's breakthrough novel. It was her first published piece (other than her 1927 The Left Bank short story collection completed under the tutelage of her then lover, Ford Madox Ford). In America Quartet was titled Postures.

This is thought to have been an autobiographically derived revenge piece based on Rhys's stormy affair and bitter break up with Ford Madox Ford. That real life affair occurred in France under Ford's roof, with the knowledge of his common law wife, Australian artist Stella Bowen, twenty years his junior, who turned a blind eye to his affairs.

Rhys and her first of four husbands, Jean Lenglet, a French-Dutch journalist, songwriter (and spy) had wandered through Europe, living mainly in London, Paris and Vienna. Lenglet had been arrested and jailed on murky 'currency exchange' charges, leaving Rhys alone, destitute and stranded. At Lenglet's protective urging from behind his prison bars, Rhys allowed herself to be 'taken in' by Ford and Bowen, whom she knew socially as a couple. An affair developed with Ford, which his wife winked at, seeming to condone. When that affair ended and Ford cast her off, Rhys was alone and deserted in a foreign place. When her husband Lenglet discovered the course of events, he felt betrayed and left her once he was released from jail. Rhys was embittered, ever thereafter considering Lenglet the great love of her life, a soul mate with whom she had a daughter, Maryvonne. Rhys and Lenglet remained close friends for life, but always from afar, never reuniting romantically. This episode, one of her great regrets, was paradoxically perhaps her greatest creative catalyst. 

Rhys's inference in Quartet is that the Ford-based character was a monstrous predator exploiting the vulnerable young Rhys-based female protagonist, and that she was not his first such victim. That he serially chews up these young women, ruins their lives then spits them out. And that his wife, passively complicit, remains partly in denial for self-preservation. 

Having read every word Jean Rhys ever had published, I see she's still not quite formed in this work. Yet there she is, a legend in the making. Her incisive take on this heroine's plight gives an alarming first glimpse of the Rhys we'll come to adore in later books.

Her disturbingly close-up look into this, her first protagonist's lot, is something rare and unique, leaving us wanting more and forgiving of Rhys's not-quite-there-yet form. The parallels to the novel's real-life basis are bold:

Stephan, a fly-by-night European art dealer, is charged with selling stolen artwork and sentenced to a year's jail. Mado, his wife, finds herself stranded, alone and destitute. At Stephan's urging, she moves in with wealthy Englishman H.J. Heidler and his painter wife, Lois. H.J. has a history of inviting young women to move into his and Lois's 'spare room' and initiating affairs with these female houseguests under Lois's nose. Lois permits it, wanting to keep H.J. happy. Mado visits Stephan weekly in jail, which H.J. and Lois complain about and discourage her from continuing. As Mado succumbs to H.J.'s intimate advances, it is unclear how willing or reluctant she really is. When Stephan is released from jail, he leaves France without Mado. She is left alone, stranded and destitute and we wonder what will become of her. 

The title Quartet refers to these four main characters. Each of their real-life counterparts wrote and published their own version of this affair, all fictionalised except Stella Bowen's in her 1940 memoir Drawn from Life. In Rhys's, this first published of the four accounts, we see one of the most underestimated twentieth century greats first granted a voice that resonates with incomparable clarity and realism.

The 1981 Merchant Ivory film of this, starring Isabelle Adjani, Maggie Smith and Alan Bates won Isabelle Adjani the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actress award and Maggie Smith the Evening Standard Awards Best Actress award. Like other screen adaptation attempts at Rhys's writing, it failed to impress her fans.

No other writer would ever come close to this one, with her unmatched, unique and marvellous voice. Jean Rhys will forever remain in a league of her own. There was no one like her before and has never been since.

After you've read this first one, be sure to move on to her later works and witness the magnificent development.