Read in the context of the Americas and the plantation system, Jean Rhys's fiction is a global vision of modernity. The vision appears through colonialist stereotypes of idle and lazy West Indians displayed in dynamic interaction with scenes of actual toil and servitude that appear everywhere in Rhys's fiction. Focuses on Voyage in the Dark (1934), the short story ‘Temps Perdi’ and Rhys's last novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966).
Examines the work of Jamaican writer Una Marson for her engagement with the ideas of modernity and her cultural expectations as she traveled from Jamaica to London, England in the 1930s. Topics include colonialism, race and gender, modernism, and the magazine "Cosmopolitan: A Monthly Magazine for Business Youth of Jamaica and the Official Organ of the Stenographer's Association."
