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Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight and~Wi.de Sargasso Sea each create a liminal space wherein the traditional absurd in Camusian sense is both discernable and modified. While the male-female interactions in the novels correspond to the interactive nature of the moment of absurd recognition, the female characters of both novels manifest the same sense of lucidity and constant consciousness that constitutes the essence of absurd heroism. Thus, by casting female heroes as opposed to male ones, Rhys's aforementioned novels introduce the notion of gender and heterogeneity into the absurd. As such, Sisyphus's labor-ridden and mainly corporeal struggle, no longer the sole representative of the absurd, is counterpointed with that of female characters such as Sasha, Antoinette, Christophine, andAmelie whose absurd experiences are more Medusan than Sisyphean.
Key words: Jean Rhys / absurd hero / Medusan woman / absurdist fiction / absurd artist
Susan Poursanati ([email protected]) is assistant professor of English literature at Allameh Tabataba'i University in Iran. She received her PhD in English language and literature from the University of Tehran. Her work has appeared in journals including ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Estudios Irlandeses, and Folia Linguistica etLitteraria. Her research interests include Irish studies, postcolonial studies, Romantic poetry, and modern poetry.
Maryam Neyestani ([email protected]), corresponding author, received her MA degree in English language and literature from Allameh Tabataba'i University (Iran) in September 2021. Her MA thesis was entitled "She the Absurd Hero: A Study of Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight and Wide Sargasso Sea in Light of the Absurd." Her research areas of interest are feminist and gender criticism, philosophy and literature, as well as psychoanalytic and deconstructive criticism.
[I]n a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, [wo]man feels an alien, a stranger. [Her] exile is without remedy [. . .] This divorce between [wo]man and [her] life [. . .] is probably the feeling of absurdity. -Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
INTRODUCTION
he multi-faceted nature of Jean Rhys's writing accounts for the various critical interpretations of her fiction, namely psychological, feminist, and postcolonial ones. In her "Alienation in the Novels by Jean Rhys" (2020), for instance, Kristina Preisova is among the scholars whose analysis of Rhys's fiction focuses on alienation as a dominant theme. Like some...