In The Blue Hour, Pizzichini documents Jean Rhys’ life and work as that of a woman who felt lonely, isolated, and misunderstood. This is achieved primarily through Pizzichini endeavouring to cite such evidence directly from Rhys herself, or from her contemporaries, wherever she possibly can. Pizzichini’s citing of Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography is one example of such a source.
From the outset it is understandable that Pizzichini would use such a source, considering that the content of the book came from Jean Rhys herself. However caution should be maintained when reading Smile Please, as it is made clear that this is not a work completed totally by Rhys herself, as shown by the inclusion of a foreword by her editor, Diana Athill, who also acknowledges the involvement of David Plante, from whom Rhys ‘also accepted advice from him on the arrangement of some of the material.’ (Rhys, 7)
As made clear by the title of the autobiography, it is an unfinished piece that begins with Rhys’ childhood in Dominica, documents her move to England, and concludes with Rhys returning to Paris after spending some time inn Vienna with her husband, Jean Lenglet. Rhys is writing about herself and her own experiences, so there is obviously a lack of secondary sources, other than a few photos of Rhys’ first two husbands, Jean Lenglet (with their daughter, Maryvonne) and Leslie Tilden Smith, Rhys herself, and some location shots from Dominica and Wales. However, caution should again be maintained, for there are gaps in the narrative, which are exacerbated when reading Smile Please alongside The Blue Hour. One major example of such a gap is the total non-existence of an account of Rhys’ time in Vienna in Smile Please. There is also a lack of references to specific years and dates in the prose, however Diana Athill helps to ease any confusion caused by this by enclosing a detailed timeline in her foreword. In addition, the narrative is peppered with phrases such as ‘I don’t remember’ and ‘I have forgotten’, which decreases the overall reliability of Rhys’ account. Athill also highlights in her foreword that:
[…] much of her [Rhys’] life had already been ‘used up’ in the novels. They were not autobiographical in every detail, as readers sometimes suppose, but autobiographical they were, and their therapeutic function was the purging of unhappiness. (Rhys, 6)
Athill’s idea that Rhys’ writing and subsequent ‘purging of unhappiness’ shows that it is possible that Rhys’ overall outlook of her life and her position in society may have been affected by the worlds and characters she created and engaged with in her novels and short stories, all of whom experience such themes like the issue of being misunderstood or being an outsider, struggling to express oneself, love, and isolation.
Despite this idea by Athill, the themes described above do seem to prevail in Smile Please. An explicit example of this is the chapter ‘The Doll’, where Rhys recounts the time when she smashed a fair-skinned doll that she had received as a gift from her Irish grandmother out of anger of not being allowed to own a dark-skinned doll taken by her younger sister. Rhys comments:
There was a great fuss about this. Why? Why had I done such a naughty, a really wicked thing?
I didn’t know. I was puzzled myself. Only I was sure that I must do it and for me it was right. (Rhys, 39-40)
Here, and throughout the autobiography, Rhys seems to attempt to justify actions that may be construed as strange, which shows that she has some sort of awareness that her behaviour is socially ‘different.’ This is made clear in ‘The Doll’ when she comments on her subsequent discussion with her father that ‘[…] he hadn’t told me why I’d done it and I thought he knew everything.’ (41)
As a result, we are exposed to Rhys’ desire to fit in and belong, which seems to be her biggest issue of contention, as shown by her smashing of the fair-skinned doll. However, at the same time, Rhys appears to be quite resigned to the idea that there will always be an element of division between her and others. This is shown by her lack of response to her aunt’s comment ‘that you [Rhys] are quite incapable of thinking about anyone else but yourself.’ (Rhys, 99)
Examples like this as a result may bear the question of whether Rhys is trying to build a sympathetic picture of herself, like Pizzichini seems to do later on in The Blue Hour. That said, it appears to be more that Rhys is simply trying to tell her story to an audience that she feels distanced from, and so, with this view of herself as an outsider, this portrayal may come across as sympathetic and perhaps even slightly unreliable on the point of self-indulgent to readers.