Chorus Girls

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The Singing and the Gold

/ Anna Evans / 1 Comment

Petronella can be described as the archetypal Jean Rhys heroine. She navigates a position of uncertainty, living in a bedsit in Bloomsbury and working in shifting or temporary occupations, the artist's model, the chorus girl. She spends her days in aimless wandering and her nights in after hours bars and nightclubs. She fluctuates between the highs and lows of this transient lifestyle, and the financial insecurity and the tenuous identity of her status as a solitary female in the city: 'What's going to become of you, Miss Petronella Gray, living in a bed sitting room in Torrington Square, with no money, no background and no nous?'

Chorus Girls vs. Landladies

/ Anna Evans / 2 Comments

Walking through the London streets, Fitzrovia and Bloomsbury, I am thinking about the significance of the marginal figures Rhys writes about, her chorus girls and landladies. There is something radical going on in her portrayals of characters who wouldn't usually form the focus of literary fiction. She re-writes the script through these marginal characters, and they make a trajectory through all her novels.