"I Look Straight into His Eyes … For the Last Time": Intimacy and Indifference in Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight

Abstract

Abstract: There are many unsettling encounters within Jean Rhys's novels, but perhaps the most difficult for readers is Sasha Jansen's final intimate act in Good Morning, Midnight . The novel depicts Sasha's lost subjectivity through moments of sexual intimacy, ultimately demonstrating how she cultivates a sense of indifference to prescriptive femininity by rebelling against the stratified anxiousness that has haunted her position as a precarious woman in society. The final scene between Sasha and her neighbour, the "commis voyager," is often read as a dark mimicking of James Joyce's Molly Bloom in Ulysses , with Sasha's intimate affirmation of "yes—yes—yes …" as a mode of self-annihilation. Missing from these readings is a consideration of Sasha's encounter with herself, as she stares "straight into [the commis's] eyes" to see a vision of herself reflected there, one that recuperates her split subjectivity and solidifies her indifference to normative rhythms of life.