Set in a superficially romantic, between-wars Paris, QUARTET is a poignant tale of a lonely woman. Set against a background of winter-wet streets, Pernod in smoky cafes and cheap hotel rooms with mauve- flowered wallpaper, Marya tries to make something substantial of her life in order to withstand the unreality of her surroundings. Alone, her Polish husband in prison, she is taken up by an English couple who slowly overwhelm her with their passions. Jean Rhys's first novel is both poignant anddisturbingly intimate in its vivid depiction of a woman on her own.
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If difficulty of subject is to be considered in judging the merit of a novel, Miss Rhys must be accredited with high achievement. Not only does she deal with the most complex personalities, exploring the most intimate recesses of their psychology, but she does so with the directness and certitude of the fine artist. The style, especially of the dialogue, belongs to the new tradition in prose, which shuns elaboration for sharpness and intensity of effect.
About the Author
Jean Rhys was born in Dominica in 1894. Coming to England aged 16, she drifted into various jobs before starting to write in Paris in the late 1920's. QUARTET was first published as 'Postures' in 1928. Her novels, often portraying women as underdogsout to exploit their sexualities, were ahead of their time and only modestly successful. From 1939 she lived reclusively, and was largely forgotten when she made a sensational comeback with 'Wide Sargasso Sea' in 1966. She died in 1979.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Quartet was Jean Rhys' first novel. It is the story of Marya, a British expatriate living in Paris in the early part of the 20th century. She is acutely self-conscious and yet utterly incapable of changing her life to achieve happiness. Her life revolves around two men: Stephan, her vague Polish husband and HJ, a married British ex-pat who is extremely social and active in the arts. Marya's life has been pared down to essentials: dining, drinking, reading and waiting for her husband to return. When she finds Stephan has been unexpectedly arrested her attachment to him is disturbed. Craving affection and financial security, she desperately attempts to discover why Stephan has been arrested and how she can stay in contact with him. However, she quickly takes up with HJ and his wife, Lois. Her emotions become dangerously tangled between the two. Meandering through defeat after defeat entirely unsatisfied and pining for the money to pay for her rent and a glass of brandy, she ultimately has to face the consequences of her love affair. Marya is vaguely dissatisfied and compulsively tragic. In her life which closely parallels Rhys' own, she finds no remission for the terribly existential fact of life.
In this novel Rhys subtly satirizes her affair with Ford Madox Ford and the life she led with him in Paris. This time of great artistic innovation is reduced to the bare facts of the debased livelihood of the expatriates: their drinking and intertwining sexual affairs. Rhys is unremittingly spare in her emotional honesty. Her prose are hollowed out just as the main character's personality is hollowed out. There is nothing tender about this fictitious recreating. It is brutal, just as Rhys' vision of life.
... Read more ›4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Anna Clare
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book manages to be so many things at once. It has a classy, sophisticated surface and style that seems to mask the desperation and helplessness of the main character, Marya. Set in bohemian Paris in the 1920's, it is filled with images of smoking chorus girls, endless glasses of brandy in seedy bars, eating in restaurants every night and people living in hotels. I loved that aspect of the text as it really evokes the time perfectly and subtly.
However, what is even more striking about this text is the depiction of this world as a dangerous and dark time to be a woman without money or family. You are isolated from the community if you do anything considered to be improper, yet how can you behave properly and make any money? Marya's husband is an enigma from the start, and seems to be untrustworthy and ruthless judging by an early story he tells about Napolean's sword. When he is imprisoned, Marya is left absolutely destitute and to the mercy of a couple who take her in and impose upon her what they believe is an acceptable way to act, revealing the cruelty that underpinned the 1920's French society.
It is also a feminist novel, showing the helplessness, and perceived helplessness, of women in Marya's situation, of whom there were thousands. Poor and without connections, they could be used by the wealthy for their own pleasure, or by men for other pleasures, without any way to protect themselves. Then, if they did act in a way deemed 'unseemly' they were extradited from society and snubbed by anyone who might be able to help them. So what can they do? Become prostitutes? Marya, who finds herself in a similar situation, feels desperately unhappy and depressed, yet can tell no-one of her troubles due to societal convention.... Read more ›
However, what is even more striking about this text is the depiction of this world as a dangerous and dark time to be a woman without money or family. You are isolated from the community if you do anything considered to be improper, yet how can you behave properly and make any money? Marya's husband is an enigma from the start, and seems to be untrustworthy and ruthless judging by an early story he tells about Napolean's sword. When he is imprisoned, Marya is left absolutely destitute and to the mercy of a couple who take her in and impose upon her what they believe is an acceptable way to act, revealing the cruelty that underpinned the 1920's French society.
It is also a feminist novel, showing the helplessness, and perceived helplessness, of women in Marya's situation, of whom there were thousands. Poor and without connections, they could be used by the wealthy for their own pleasure, or by men for other pleasures, without any way to protect themselves. Then, if they did act in a way deemed 'unseemly' they were extradited from society and snubbed by anyone who might be able to help them. So what can they do? Become prostitutes? Marya, who finds herself in a similar situation, feels desperately unhappy and depressed, yet can tell no-one of her troubles due to societal convention.... Read more ›
By John P. Jones III
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
My first Jean Rhys' book was Wide Sargasso Sea, set in the Caribbean and ending in England. I was duly impressed. Therefore, even though the ground has already been fairly well-plowed, that is, expatriates in Paris in the `20's, I decided to try another of her works, also, supposedly, largely autobiographical.
Marya Zelli, a young Englishwoman, of a "chorus line" background is doing her own version of "down and out" in Paris when she decides that a marriage to a Polish émigré might be both prudent and useful, though passionless. He is a "wheeler-dealer" sort; she refuses to ask the relevant questions, which are answered for her when he is carted off to jail. Again, without resources, she is an easy "mark" for an established English couple, he of licentious inclinations (quelle surprise?), but what is a bit surprising is the facilitating attitude of his wife. And Marya finds herself a pawn in their game.
The novel is tightly written, fast-paced, with the twists and turns of a mystery novel. As an example of Rhys' prose, consider this description of a room in the Hotel du Bosphore which looked down on Montparnasse station: "An atmosphere of departed and ephemeral loves hung about the bedroom like stale scent, for the hotel was one of unlimited hospitality...the wallpaper was vaguely erotic-huge and fantastically shaped mauve, green and yellow flowers sprawling on a black ground...It was impossible, when one looked at that bed, not to think of the succession of petites femmes who had extended themselves upon it, clad in carefully thought out pink or mauve chemises, full of tact and savoir faire and savoir vivre and all the rest of it.... Read more ›
Marya Zelli, a young Englishwoman, of a "chorus line" background is doing her own version of "down and out" in Paris when she decides that a marriage to a Polish émigré might be both prudent and useful, though passionless. He is a "wheeler-dealer" sort; she refuses to ask the relevant questions, which are answered for her when he is carted off to jail. Again, without resources, she is an easy "mark" for an established English couple, he of licentious inclinations (quelle surprise?), but what is a bit surprising is the facilitating attitude of his wife. And Marya finds herself a pawn in their game.
The novel is tightly written, fast-paced, with the twists and turns of a mystery novel. As an example of Rhys' prose, consider this description of a room in the Hotel du Bosphore which looked down on Montparnasse station: "An atmosphere of departed and ephemeral loves hung about the bedroom like stale scent, for the hotel was one of unlimited hospitality...the wallpaper was vaguely erotic-huge and fantastically shaped mauve, green and yellow flowers sprawling on a black ground...It was impossible, when one looked at that bed, not to think of the succession of petites femmes who had extended themselves upon it, clad in carefully thought out pink or mauve chemises, full of tact and savoir faire and savoir vivre and all the rest of it.... Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Life in Paris
I was shocked by this Penguin Classic. Not by the description of life in 1920s Paris but by the whopping £12.99 price tag. It's just a standard, slim paperback! Read more
Published 8 months ago by T. Bently
4.0 out of 5 stars
A most excellent novel...
A 20's modernist novel which could be set in our days. Couldn't put it down until I read all of it. A book which contains powerful characters and a (quite) surprising ending. Read more
Published on 6 Jun 2001 by vera_cruz@mail.pt
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