Trapped: the colonisation of everyday life in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight - Viviane de Freitas 1

Aug 29, 2026

The study investigates how Jean Rhys’s fiction, especially Good Morning, Midnight, exposes and critiques social conditions that deplete and alienate everyday life. It focuses on the heroine’s precarious existence in metropolitan Paris and London, reading Rhys alongside French theorists of “everyday life” such as Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord, and Maurice Blanchot. Their analyses of consumer capitalism’s pervasive logic and “colonisation of everyday life” provide interpretive tools for Rhys’s modernist novels.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time29 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Nothing happens

Trapped in a generalised exchange

Trapped: the colonisation of everyday life in Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight Sem saída: a colonização da vida cotidiana em Bom dia, Meia-noite de Jean Rhys Viviane de Freitas 1 ABSTRACT: This work seeks to investigate the ways in which Rhys’s fiction, and the novel Good Morning, Midnight in particular, exposes and critiques the specific social conditions that engender the depletion and alienation of everyday life. The work examines Good Morning Midnight’s heroine’s precarious existence in the metropolitan centres of Paris and London, by engaging with the works of the French theorists who study the dimension of experience named as “everyday life”, such as Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord and Maurice Blanchot. These social theorists’ analysis of the pervasive logic of consumer capitalism as well as the notion of “colonisation of everyday life” offer valuable insight into Rhys’s modernist novels. Keywords: Consumer society; Everyday life; Modernity RESUMO: Este trabalho busca investigar as maneiras pelas quais a ficção de Rhys, e o romance Bom Dia, Meia-Noite em particular, expõe e critica as condições sociais específicas que geram oempobrecimento e a alienação da vida cotidiana. O trabalho examina a existência precária da heroína de Bom dia, Meia-noite nos centros metropolitanos de Paris e Londres, em diálogo com as obras dos teóricos franceses que estudam a dimensão da experiênciadenominada "vida cotidiana", tais como Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord e Maurice Blanchot. A análise que esses teóricos fazem da lógica penetrante do capitalismo de consumo, bem como a noçãode "colonização da vida cotidiana" oferecem valiosas perspectivas de leitura dos romances modernistas de Rhys. Palavras-chave: Modernidade; Sociedade de consumo; Vida cotidiana 1 Doutoranda do Programa de Pós-graduação em Literatura e Cultura da Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) . Email: [defreitasuk@gmail.com](defreitasuk@gmail.com) Este trabalho está licenciado sob uma Licença Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 . Introduction In Everyday life, Michael Sheringham (2006) investigates a variety of ways of thinking and questioning “the everyday” or “quotidien”, through an interdisciplinary approach of the works of thinkers and artists. Sheringham shows that by exploring “the complex tissue of lived experience”, these works react against “the way everyday life was being subordinated to narrow functionalism”(SHERINGHAM, 2006, p. 14) . Besides, the theorist investigates how the logic of advanced capitalism, which relies on the principles of acceleration and accumulation, results in the inevitable and steady deterioration of everyday life. In multiple ways, Rhys’s modernist novels expose how everyday life is impoverished by a politics of exploitation and repression. Rhys’s alienated, destitute and helpless heroines, living on the margins ofthe metropolitan centres, are perfect examples of passive everyday subjects,“deprived of the possibility of making their own history, personally”(SHERINGHAM, 2006, p. 172) . Sasha, in particular, Rhys’s most complex and critical heroine, renders an acute critique of “the specific perversities of morality, which characterise high consumption societies”(SAVORY, 1998, p. 111) . In the first section of this work,“Nothing happens,” I shall look into the nothingness of the protagonist’s life by establishing a connection with the ideas of the theorists Maurice Blanchot and Henri Lefebvre, who critique the notion of the “chiaroscuro of everyday life”, the concept of everyday life as “deadly dullness alleviated by miraculous moments”(SHERINGHAM, 2006, p. 20) . The fact that Sasha is always waiting for something to happen and change her meaningless and monotonous life reflects this idea. In the second section, “Trapped in a generalised exchange”, I shall establish some connections between Rhys’s exploration of the pervasiveness of commodification and the heroine’s fatalist vision of life. I shall engage with what Lefe

FAQs

What is the central aim of the work on Good Morning, Midnight?

To examine how Rhys’s novel reveals and critiques the social conditions that cause everyday life to be impoverished and alienated.

Which social theorists does the analysis rely on?

The work engages with Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord, and Maurice Blanchot to study “everyday life” and its colonisation.

How is the heroine’s experience in the novel characterized?

It is characterized by precarity and alienation within the metropolitan centres of Paris and London, connected to commodification and exploitation.

Aug 29, 2026

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