A Voyage In The
Dark
By Mimi and Phoebe
Prostitution
• Prostitutes-they are thought to be
because they are chorus girls
• When her first land lady said “No, I
don’t let to professionals” p8
• Would have been seen at 3am in the
morning “crawling up the stairs”
• Beautiful but poor, undercurrent of
disapproval from other characters
‘sneering’ implied they think she is a
prostitute
to be black...being black is warm and
gay, and being white is cold and sad”
(p27)
Racial Identity
• Her step mum accuses her of being
mixed race
• The step-mother, Hester, hates the
childhood friend, Francine very much
• Can’t reconcile identity, caribbean
heritage contrast to her English race
Clothes
• “About clothes, it’s awful. Everything
makes you want pretty clothes like hell.
“ p22
• Anna sees class as something that can
be brought; she thinks the way to
access a better life is is by dressing
nicely and making a man fall in love
with you
• She dresses in “black velvet”, metaphor
she is mourning for her past Caribbean
life
• Sleeping all day, headaches, fevers,
lethargy,
Depression
• “I was thinking it was funny I could
giggle like that because in my heart I
was always sad, with the same sort of
hurt that the cold gave me in my chest.”
p14
• Everyone says how miserable she is,
“soppy”
• “I sleep as if I were dead.” p97
Claustrophobia/Agora
• ‘It’s a very
nice
place.’
She
said
so
phobia
long as you don’t suffer
claustrophobia. p70
• Sentence structure being long and
descriptive and claustrophobic and
all over the place a bit like the
Gothic
• In England she feels it like a “high
dark wall” p127 so it’s like an
impasse
• She doesn’t leave the house often
Language
• Simple language , monosyllables for
most of the book, which Jean Rhys
herself describes like ‘a kitten mewing’.
This reflects Anna Morgan’s naivety as
a character and also her
emotionlessness and fogginess like a
blanket over her. Her thoughts and
feelings are unclear and not described
in word but we get the meaning in what
is left unsaid. Like a wordless sadness
we know something is wrong.
Childishness and vulnerability of Anna.
• Anti-thesis of Caribbean and England.
The cold grayness of England
contrasted with the colorful-purple in
particular of the sunny Caribbean
Male Gaze
• “A cat may look at a King, so why not I
at a prettier thing” p60
• Men treat her a child. Walter calls her a
child, act as authority figures and takes
advantage.
• Financial support, the males are used
for this
Trapped/lost in time
• “It was one of those days when you can
see the ghosts of all the other lovely
days. “p122
• “Sometimes it was as if i were back
there and it was as if England were a
dream. At other times England was the
real thing and out there was the dream,
but I could never fit them together.”p7-8
• Uprooted, stuck in between the 2 part of
neither, doesn’t belong
Aging
• “Yet they are always so scared of
getting old,” p78
• “That’s when you can hear time sliding
past you, like water running” Time going
too fast
• She doesn’t enjoy life at all, she is told
she should but doesn’t
• Do you feel sympathy for our narrator,
Questions
Anna Morgan, and if so why and if not
why not?
• Who do you think is the villain of the
novel, if there is one at all?
• Do you consider this a book about race
considering there are few if any nonwhite characters and none who get a
real voice
• How do we as modern readers react to
how abortion is dealt with?