SENTIMENTAL AND COUNTER SENTIMENTAL DISCOURSES IN JEAN RHYS' VERSION OF THE POPULAR ROMANCE

Authors

  • Mª Dolores Martínez Reventós

Keywords:

Critical, love, marginal, popular, romance, sadomasochism, sentimental, subjectivity

Abstract

Jean Rhys ' fiction belongs both to the critica1 and experimental literature of thefeminist modernism of the avant-garde and to the conventional patrilineal literature of popular culture. My analysis of her hybrid texts is centred on the ideologically conflicting discourses that spnng from her heroines' split consciousness: "the prosopopeia of femininity ", that is, the sentimental and masochistic discourse of the classics of popular romance, and a counter-romantic discourse where the heroines articulate a critique of their own complicity in the sadomasochistic fantasy of male master and female submission that is at the core of popular culture's rhetoric of sentimentality.

Author Biography

Mª Dolores Martínez Reventós

Dpto. Filología Inglesa Universidad de Murcia

Issue

Section

Artículos