Née d'un père gallois et d'une mère dominicaine, Jean Rhys évoquera souvent dans son oeuvre le déracinement des femmes et de façon obsessionnelle sa propre existence, à peine romancée. C'est de l'intérieur qu'elle dépeint le profond sentiment de solitude et d'exil que ressentent des héroïnes, toutes malheureuses, toutes errant dans des villes hostiles et exploitées par les hommes. Et ceci avec une technique d'écriture éprouvée tant elle est tout autant capable de décrire des sentiments ambigus ou des états proches de la folie sans la moindre complaisance, elle avait, a pu dire Madox Ford, un instinct de la forme que possèdent peu d'écrivains anglais ...

PART ONE

Quite like old times,' the room says.

'Yes? No?'

There are two beds, a big one for madame and a smaller one on the opposite side for monsieur. The wash-basin is shut off by a curtain. It is a large room, the smell of cheap hotels faint, almost imperceptible. The street outside is narrow, cobble-stoned, going sharply uphill and ending in a flight of steps. What they call an impasse.

I have been here five days. I have decided on a place to eat in at midday, a place to eat in at night, a place to have my drink in after dinner. I have arranged my little life.

The place to have my drink in after dinner....Wait, I must be careful about that. These things are very important.

Last night, for instance. Last night was a catastrophe....The woman at the next table started talking to me - a dark, thin woman of about forty, very well made up. She had the score of a song with her and she had been humming it under her breath, tapping the accompaniment with her fingers.

'I like that song.'

'Ah, yes, but it's a sad song. Gloomy Sunday.' She giggled. 'A little sad.'

She was waiting for her friend, she told me.

The friend arrived - an American. He stood me another brandy and soda and while I was drinking it I started to cry.

I said: 'It was something I remembered.'

The dark woman sat up very straight and threw her chest out.

'I understand,' she said, 'I understand. All the same.... Sometimes I'm just as unhappy as you are. But that's not to say that I let everybody see it.'

Unable to stop crying, I went down into the lavabo. A familiar lavabo, and luckily empty. The old dame was out ide near the telephone, talking to a girl.

I stayed there, staring at myself in the glass. What do I want to cry about?.... On the contrary, it's when l am quite sane like this, when I have had a couple of extra drinks and am quite sane, that I realize how lucky I am.

Saved, rescued, fished-up, half drowned, out of the deep, dark river, dry clothes, hair shampooed and set. Nobody would know I had ever been in it. Except, of course, that there always remains something. Yes, there always remains something....Never mind, here I am, sane and dry, with my place to hide in. What more do I want?....I'm a bit of an automaton, but sane, surely - dry, cold and sane. Now I have forgotten about dark streets, dark rivers, the pain, the struggle and the drowning....Mind you, I'm not talking about the struggle when you are strong and a good swimmer and there are willing and eager friends on the bank waiting to pull you out at the first sign of distress. I mean the real thing. You jump in with no willing and eager friends around, and when you sink you sink to the accompaniment of loud laughter.

Lavabos....What about that monograph on lavabos - toilets - ladies?....A London lavabo in black and white marble, fifteen women in a queue, each clutching her penny, not one bold spirit daring to dash out of her turn past the stern faced attendant. That's what I call discipline....The lavabo in Florence and the very pretty, fantastically dressed girl who rushed in, hugged and kissed the old dame tenderly and fed her with cakes out of a paper bag. The dancer-daughter?....That cosy little Paris lavabo, where the attendant peddled drugs - something to heal a wounded heart.

When I got upstairs the American and his friend had gone. 'It was something I remembered,' I told the waiter, and he looked at me blankly, not even bothering to laugh at me. His face was unsurprised, blank.

That was last night.

I lie awake, thinking about it, and about the money Sidonie lent me and the way she said: 'I can't bear to see you like this.' Half shutting her eyes and smiling the smile which means: 'She's getting to look old. She drinks.'

'We've known each other too long, Sasha,' she said, 'to stand on ceremony with each other.'

I had just come in from my little health stroll round Mecklenburgh Square and along the Gray's Inn Road. I had looked at this, I had looked at that, I had looked at the people passing in the street and at a shop window full of artificial limbs. I came in to somebody who said: 'I can't bear to see you looking like this.'

'Like what?' I said.

'I think you need a change. Why don't you go back to Paris for a bit?....You could get yourself some new clothes - you certainly need them....I'll lend you the money,' she said. 'I'll be over there next week and I could find a room for you if you like. 'Etcetera, etcetera.

I had not seen this woman for months and then she swooped down on me.... Well, here I am. When you've been made very cold and very sane you've also been made very passive. (Why worry, why worry?) I can't sleep. Rolling from side to side.... Was it in 1923 or 1924 that we lived round the corner, in the Rue Victor-Cousin, and Enno bought me that Cossack cap and the imitation astrakhan coat? It was then that I started calling myself Sasha. I thought it might change my luck if I changed my name. Did it bring me any luck, I wonder, calling myself Sasha?

Was it in 1926 or 1927?

I put the light on. The bottle of Evian on the bedtable, the tube of luminal, the two books, the clock ticking on the ledge, the red curtains....

I can see Sidonie carefully looking round for an hotel just like this one. She imagines that it's my atmosphere. God, it's an insult when you come to think about it! More dark rooms, more red curtains....

But one mustn't put everything on the same plane. That's her great phrase. And one mustn't put everybody on the same plane, either. Of course not. And this is my plane....Quatrieme a gauche, and mind you don't trip over the hole in the carpet. That's me.

There are some black specks on the wall. I stare at them, certain they are moving. Well, I ought to be able to ignore a few bugs by this time. 'II ne faut pas mettre tout sur le meme plan....'

I get up and look closely. Only splashes of dirt. It's not the time of year for bugs, anyway.

I take some more luminal, put the light out and sleep at once.

I am in the passage of a tube station in London. Many people are in front of me; many people are behind me. Everywhere there are placards printed in red letters: This Way to the Exhibition, This Way to the Exhibition. But I don't want the way to the exhibition -I want the way out. There are passages to the right and passages to the left, but no exit sign. Everywhere the fingers point and the placards read: This Way to the Exhibition.....I touch the shoulder of the man walking in front of me. I say: 'I want the way out.' But he points to the placards and his hand is made of steel. I walk along with my head bent, very ashamed, thinking: 'Just like me - always wanting to be different from other people.' The steel finger points along a long stone passage. This Way - This Way - This Way to the Exhibition....

Now a little man, bearded, with a snub nose, dressed in a long white nightshirt, is talking earnestly to me. 'I am your father,' he says. 'Remember that I am your father.' But blood is streaming from a wound in his forehead. 'Murder,' he shouts, 'murder, murder.' Helplessly I watch the blood streaming. At last my voice tears itself loose from my chest. I too shout: 'Murder, murder, help, help,' and the sound fills the room. I wake up and a man in the street outside is singing the waltz from Les Salim-banques. 'C'est I'amour qui flotte dans l'air a la ronde,' he sings....

"Bonjour minuit" est situé dans l'entre-deux-guerres, et son personnage principal, Sasha, la cinquantaine, retourne à Paris où elle a vécu jeune.Ce récit sombre, fragmenté et elliptique, glisse du présent au passé tout en explorant les limites paradoxales d'une femme qui a  cherché à se libérer des conventions. Alors que Sasha tente de retrouver ses marques parmi les lieux célèbres dela ville, le lecteur est inondé des souvenirs doux-amers de sa jeunesse. On apprendra comment elle a échappé aux contraintes de la classe populaire londonienne en épousant Enno, jeune homme aux penchants artistiques, et en le suivant sur le continent. Le peu d'empressement que met celui-ci à la protéger de contraintes économiques et sociales dégradantes fait comprendre à cette dernière le peu de valeur que lui accorde la société. Au fil du roman, nous pénétrons plus profondément dans le passé de Sasha, pour découvrir les événements traumatisants -la mort de son enfant en bas âge et l'abandon de son mari- qui ont poussé même la société non-conventionnelle à la rejeter. Le déclin rapide et poignant de Sasha, son alcoolisme et sa dérive d'un emploi à I'autre semblent tous valoriser avant tout la jeunesse et la beauté féminine, ce qui constitue une continuité entre le passé et le présent. À la fin du roman, elle acceptera à contrecœur I'inévitable et dure réalité de la pauvreté et de l'âge qui l'ont rendue encore plus vulnérable ...

Part One

They say when trouble come close ranks, and so the white people did. But we were not in their ranks. The Jamaican ladies had never approved of my mother, ‘because she pretty like pretty self’ Christophine said.

She was my father’s second wife, far too young for him they thought, and, worse still, a Martinique girl. When I asked her why so few people came to see us, she told me that the road from Spanish Town to Coulibri Estate where we lived was very bad and that road repairing was now a thing of the past. (My father, visitors, horses, feeling safe in bed – all belonged to the past.)

Another day I heard her talking to Mr Luttrell, our neighbour and her only friend. ‘Of course they have their own misfortunes. Still waiting for this compensation the English promised when the Emancipation Act was passed. Some will wait for a long time.’

How could she know that Mr Luttrell would be the first who grew tired of waiting? One calm evening he shot his dog, swam out to sea and was gone for always. No agent came from England to look after his property – Nelson’s Rest it was called – and strangers from Spanish Town rode up to gossip and discuss the tragedy.

‘Live at Nelson’s Rest? Not for love or money. An unlucky place.’

Mr Luttrell’s ho was left empty, shutters banging in the wind. Soon the black people said it was haunted, they wouldn’t go near it. And no one came near us.

I got used to a solitary life, but my mother still planned and hoped – perhaps she had to hope every time she passed a looking glass.

She still rode about every morning not caring that the black people stood about in groups to jeer at her, especially after her riding clothes grew shabby (they notice clothes, they know about money).

Then, one day, very early I saw her horse lying down under the frangipani tree. I went up to him but he was not sick, he was dead and his eyes were black with flies. I ran away and did not speak of it for I thought if I told no one it might not be true. But later that day, Godfrey found him, he had been poisoned. ‘Now we are marooned,’ my mother said, ‘now what will become of us?’

Godfrey said, ‘I can’t watch the horse night and day. I too old now. When the old time go, let it go. No use to grab at it. The Lord make no distinction between black and white, black and white the same for Him. Rest yourself in peace for the righteous are not forsaken.’ But she couldn’t. She was young. How could she not try for all the things that had gone so suddenly, so without warning. ‘You’re blind when you want to be blind,’ she said ferociously, ‘and you’re deaf when you want to be deaf. The old hypocrite,’ she kept saying. ‘He knew what they were going to do.’ ‘The devil prince of this world,’ Godfrey said, ‘but this world don’t last so long for mortal man.’...

Le roman, commencé en 1957, ne fut publié qu'en 1966, vingt-sept ans après ses quatre premiers romans, au bout d'un long et pénible travail de remaniement. À son origine, se trouve le désir de l'auteur de donner à son lecteur une autre image d`un personnage du roman de Charlotte Brontë, "Jane Eyre" (1847). Il s'agit de la première femme de M. Rochester que son époux garde enfermée dans une chambre secrète, et qui finit par apparaître au grand jour lorsque celui-ci, sur le point d'épouser June, est forcé d'avouer qu'il est déjà marié, mais à une démente ramenée des îles, qui n'est plus qu'un animal. À la fin du roman, elle meurt après avoir mis le feu à Thomfield Hall, ce qui permet le mariage de Jane et de Rochester. Reprenant des éléments du récit de Rochester, Jean Rhys voulait recréer l'atmosphère de sa propre jeunesse à la Dominique, et présenter la créole comme une victime fascinée et persécutée par son mari, symbolisant la condition féminine. Hésitant au départ entre un récit à la première personne par la gardienne de la folle, par Rochester, ou par la victime elle-même, Jean Rhys finit par réécrire le roman en forme de triptyque. 

Dans une première partie, l'héroïne, Antoinette Cosway raconte son enfance à Roseau, dans l'île de la Dominique, l'incendie de la maison par les Noirs, la mort de son jeune frère et la folie consécutive de sa mère. Elevée alors dans un couvent, Antoinette sera finalement mariée à un Anglais venu chercher fortune aux Antilles.

Dans une deuxième partie, ce dernier - jamais nommé, mais en qui le lecteur reconnait facilement le Rochester de Jane Eyre - raconte les premiers temps de son mariage et la rapide dégradation de ses rapports avec Antoinette. Mal à l`aise dans ce pays exotique qu'íl ne comprend pas, victime lui aussi de ce mariage voulu pour des raisons financières par son

père, il oscille entre l'amour et la haine pour une femme, chez qui il voit les signes d'une folie héréditaire. 

La troisième et dernière partie donne la parole de nouveau à Antoinette, alors enfermée en Angleterre. et qui ne distingue plus la réalité du rêve, ou du cauchemar. Le roman se termine par l`incendie de la demeure, déjà vécu en rêve par l'héroïne, et familier aux lecteurs de "Jane Eyre".

"La Prisonnière des Sargasses" est un bel un exemple d'intertextualité, où des éléments du roman de Charlotte Brontë se fondent dans un nouveau récit ; Jean Rhys s'est intimement approprié le premier texte pour le transformer et y faire entendre sa voix personnelle, poignante et inimitable. La description de la végétation luxuriante de l'île, et l'évocation de

l'enfance d'Antoinette dans une maison créole à moitié à l'abandon, son amour pour sa gouvernante noire Christophine, et ses tentatives désespérées pour se faire une amie de la petite indigène Tia qui la méprise rappellent les souvenirs personnels de l'auteur décrits dans son "Voyage dans les ténèbres".  Mais ils sont ici parfaitement transposés et s`intègrent dans l'œuvre de fiction : on le considère comme le meilleur roman de Jean Rhys.(- Trad. Denoël, 1971). 

"La Prisonnière des Sargasses" constitue donc la réponse littéraire de Jean Rhys au roman de Charlotte Brontë, "Jane Eyre", et l'auteur prend pour point de départ la description animale et sexualisée que fait Charlotte Brontë de Bertha Mason, la première femme d'Edward Rochester, dangereusement folle. En récrivant ce classique, Jean Rhys donne la parole à Antoinette (Bertha est le nom que lui a imposé son mari), et explore les peurs et désirs qui ont dominé les relations des Caraïbes et de l'Europe. 

Le roman est divisé, nous l'avons vu, en trois parties, 

- dans la première, Antoinette fait le récit de son enfance malheureuse;

- dans la deuxième, Rochester décrit son premier mariage; 

- dans la troisième, on découvre les rêves et pensées d'Antoinette une fois qu'elle est emprisonnée en Angleterre. 

Cette structure permet à Jean Rhys d'établir des liens explicites entre Jane Eyre et l'histoire coloniale. L'auteur place ainsi "La Prisonnière des Sargasses" dans le contexte de la fin de l'esclavage dans les Caraïbes et Antoinette - dont la mère était martiniquaise - à équidistance des communautés européennes et noires. Sa vulnérabilité sociale est utilisée par Jean Rhys afin d'explorer les relations coloniales de désir et d'identité, auxquelles Charlotte Brontë ne pouvait que faire allusion. Le mariage arrangé d'Antoinette et Rochester est parcouru d'énergie sexuelle et pourtant instable à cause de l'incompréhension et de la méfiance dont font preuve les deux époux. Dans ce récit parallèle, Antoinette est  la victime d'un moment historique complexe ...