The Harder They Come (1972)

1. The Harder They Come (1972) • Reportedly the first Jamaican feature film made by Jamaicans • The theme of country boys seeking fortune in the big city—Ivan (Jim Cliff) moving to Kinston—post-independence exodus from the country side to the ghetto and urban poverty • Reggae singer turns outlaw • Hollywood influence on Jamaican conception of selfhood and heroism—the popularity of American westerns in Jamaica in the 1970s • Drugs dealing—from wisdom weed to crime

2. Jean Rhys--Biographical Sketch • 8/24/1890 Birth of Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams at Roseau, Dominica. • 1907-8 Attends the Perse School, Cambridge. • 1909-10 Tours as a chorus girl. Abandoned by her lover. • 1919 Marries Jean Lenglet and moves to Paris. 29 Dec., birth of a son who dies three weeks later.

3. Jean Rhys--Biographical Sketch • 1923-24 Meets Ford Madox Ford. Husband in jail, affair with Ford. (ménage a trois--Ford, Stella Bowen, Jean)) • 1933 Divorce. • 1934 Marries Leslie Tilden-Smith. • 1945 TS dead. Begins work on Wide Sargasso Sea. • 1947 Marriage to Max Hamer. • 1957-66 Works on Wide Sargasso Sea after public interest following a radio broadcast of her work tracks her down. • 1966 WSS published. Wins the W. H. Smith Award for Writers and the Heinemann Award of the Royal Society of Literature. • 1978 Receives the Commander of the Order.

4. Writing beyond the Ending:Jane Eyre and WSS • “By turning a classic nineteenth-century novel inside out and giving its voiceless character an explanatory story, Rhys has constructed a critical examination of romantic thralldom and marital power--internalized and external institutions that support gender inequality.” (45-6) “By a maneuver of encirclement (entering the story before) and leverage (prying the story open), Rhys ruptures Jane Eyre. She returns us to a framework far from the triumphant individualism

5. Writing beyond the Ending of the character of Jane Eyre by concentrating on the colonial situations….Wide Sargasso Sea states that the closures and precisions of any tale are purchased at the expense of the muted, even unspoken narrative, which writing beyond the the ending will release. ‘Remember,’ Doris Lessing reminds us, ‘that for all the books we have in print, there are as many that have never reached print, have never been written down.’” (46) --Rachel Blau DuPlessis

6. Genealogy Cosway—Annette AlexanderDaniel Pierre Sandi ----Antoinette—husband----Amèlie (Bertha) (Rochester) Christophine Tia

7. Questions for Part I of WSS • What kind of mother-daughter relationship is described in Part I? Mother’s rejection (11, 13, 15, 28-29, 36—death) • What kind of racial relationship is described here? multiple alienations of the creole—from the white people (9)/Mason does not understand the racial relationship (19, 21); from the blacks—former slave-owners “white cockroaches” (13)/”white nigger” (14) • How will you describe the relationship between Antoinette and Tia? friendship (13-14), divided by racial differences (27)

8. Questions 2 • In WSS Rhys deliberately alludes to the biblical myth of the garden. How does she describe this garden? What is the significance of the garden imagery in Part I? • What is the significance of the fire scene and the burning of the parrot (25)? • How does the convent affect Antoinette’s life? • How will you interpret the two dreams (15, 35-36)?