The Haunting Presence of Jean Rhys in Caryl Phillips's Fiction

This paper will address the points of convergence between the work of Jean Rhys and that of Caryl Phillips, two writers, who in spite of gender, racial and generational differences, share a status as diasporic artists from the Caribbean. I will first examine how Rhys’s literary ghost might be said to haunt Phillips’s fiction in terms of characterization, themes and style, with a special focus on his early novels, The Final Passage (1985), Higher Ground (1989) and Cambridge (1991). After looking at The Lost Child (2015), where Phillips combines the Rhysean and the Brontëan universes, I will conclude with a brief analysis of Phillips’s latest fiction, A View of the Empire at Sunset (2018). This biographical novel confirms Phillips’s fascination with the author from Dominica, but also testifies to his unique way of delving, with empathy and subtlety, into a life marked by exile and the inexorable impossibility of ever finding a home.