Quartet by Jean Rhys

First published in 1928, this novel (originally titled Postures but renamed with this worse sounding one at some point not mentioned in this volume) is sometimes described as “ahead of its time”.

I don’t quite know what that means generally, but on this occasion it both kinda makes sense, but also reeks of patronising bullshit (one of the stinkiest kinds of bullshit).

This very early 1980s Penguin edition has a bitchily-written bio of Rhys on the first page that – like many accounts of the life of the woman who wrote and published Wide Sargasso Sea after a little creative break – mentions “it was widely believed she was dead” for many years.

Rhys, of course, wasn’t dead (literally) and certainly wasn’t dead literarily… If the readerly public had forgotten her, that was very much their loss… Good Morning, Midnight is excellent, as too is this, and one imagines her other earlier works are too…

Was Rhys submitting work during the near-30 year gap between books or was she writing and waiting until she had collated it into something hefty? Did the success of Wide Sargasso Sea, published in her mid-70s, spur her to open up her notebooks to the numerous pieces she published between then and her death, or had she been trying to publish in that time?

Ok I just looked up her biography and I can answer all those questions. And so can you, if it’s something that you care to do… Wikipedia, one of the best things in life, is free.

I shan’t be telling you ANYTHING about Jean Rhys here.

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Quartet (the name the novel was given on its American publication in 1929, a year following the British release and apparently the title than Jean Rhys wanted) is a deeply misleading title, as though it could be argued that there are FOUR central characters in this novel, there are ultimately really only three, with the fourth (the fourth, the fourth, the fourth) only really appearing in the text as a bookend at either end…

Marya is a beautiful English woman who is naïve and young but no longer shockingly young, who’s living in Paris with her mysterious Polish husband (who she met while working as a “chorus girl” in the UK) with no idea what he does for a living. She thinks he’s maybe some kind of antiques dealer or broker, but isn’t certain, though it very quickly becomes clear that he is actually a housebreaker, a burglar, a thief, and he is caught in a raid and sent off to jail.

While he’s there, Marya gets “taken in” by a slightly older, much posher, English woman named Lois and her (always referred to as German but possibly German-English?) husband, who’s always referred to by their surname, Heidler. Marya moves into their spare room, and – yep, you guessed it – the husband wants to fuck (or “be fucking”, as in “in a sexual relationship with”) her and that Lois theoretically permits this, which Marya finds out when she approaches her new friend in confidence in a sorta “err… I think your man is hitting on me?”…

As often happens in these types of novels – most of which are from about three or four decades later than Quartet, to be fair – they end up fucking (ewww) and jealousy explodes in all directions… Jealousy from Lois, from Heidler when Marya continues visiting her husband in prison and from Marya towards Lois when Heidler begins getting bored of her once it becomes clear she doesn’t really want to just be his mistress installed in a hotel…

Heidler, giving his girlfriend one last chance to get over her (still living!) husband (after he’s released from jail and immediately runs off, alone, to Amsterdam) sends her to the Mediterranean coast to go and collect herself, with the tacit agreement that he’s happy to support her living in Paris afterwards as long as she a) doesn’t ever see her husband again, b) turns up to and behaves well at Parisian social events that Lois is also at without ever making a scene and c) doesn’t have any boyfriends other than him but is essentially up for any kind of canoodling whenever he is…

Not great terms, but free Paris accommodation is free Paris accommodation.

Well, in a dramatic (and tbh kinda rushed-feeling) final couple of chapters, Marya gets a message saying her husband is back in Paris, heads back to meet him, implores him to take her wherever he is going even though she doesn’t really want to do that, shags some other guy, tells her husband about her relationship with Heidler, then her husband pushes her into a table – possibly fatally??? (this detail perhaps the only thing very 1920s element of the plot) – and he walks out into Paris and picks up the sexy kinda girlfriend of some guy he knew from prison.

The ending is too quick, the possible death of Marya too ambiguous in the text and too narratively boring if meant to be an actual slaying… I could have quite happily bounced between Marya’s meandering and varying encounters with Heidler for longer, much longer… Her bond with Lois shifting as Lois felt compelled to acquiesce to her husband’s request to “open up” the marriage, then realising how much it pissed her off… Heidler blowing hot and cold not as Marya’s interest in him wavered, but as his sense that she would do exactly what he wanted changed and didn’t reconcile…

It’s never quite a quartet, because there’s only one scene where the husband meets the other couple… Marya’s marriage is ultimately irrelevant, Lois and Heidler don’t respect her husband or see him (and Marya’s marriage) as anything but a strange hangover from her misspent youth… It’s not a story of four, it’s a story of three, plus one of the three’s husband, mostly offstage…

Yes, I wish it had been longer, yes, I wish it had gone on and on and on…

I think ultimately that means I liked it a lot, right? I think that means it was… good???

Ok, it’s late, goodnight