Jean Rhys's Phantom Manuscript: 'December 4th., 1938. Mr. Howard's House. CREOLE.'

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 This unpublished manuscript dated 4 December 1938, which is held in the Jean Rhys Archive at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a true palimpsest that testifies to ghostwrit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Women (Oxford, England) England), 2020-04, Vol.31 (2), p.187-199
Main Author: Rovera, Catherine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
'Mr. Howard's House. CREOLE'
avant-texte
creative process
Fragments
Good Morning
Humanities and Social Sciences
Literature
Midnight
palimpsest
Palimpsests
Rhys, Jean (1890-1979)
Seeds
Wide Sargasso Sea
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Summary: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 This unpublished manuscript dated 4 December 1938, which is held in the Jean Rhys Archive at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a true palimpsest that testifies to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.
ISSN:0957-4042
1470-1367
DOI:10.1080/09574042.2020.1767836