Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Rhys, Jean (Vol. 21) - Jean Rhys with Elizabeth Vreeland (interview date 1979)

Rhys, Jean (Vol. 21) - Jean Rhys with Elizabeth Vreeland (interview date 1979)

Jean Rhys with Elizabeth Vreeland (interview date 1979)

SOURCE: An interview in The Paris Review, No. 76, 1979, pp. 219-37.

[In the following interview, which was conducted shortly before her death, Rhys discusses her life and writing career].

[Rhys]: We moved here [to Devon] because I wanted a place of my own. We bought it—my late husband and I—sight unseen because anything was better than rooms. That's all we'd been in. A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That's all any room is. It was difficult here at first. The gales came through the crevices. The mice were everywhere. A frog in the bathroom. Then when I first came here, I was accused of being a witch. A neighbor told the whole village that I practised black magic. I got very cross, but gradually it all died down.

[Vreeland]: What a shock it must have been when you first arrived from the West Indies.

Of course, I hated the cold....

[The entire page is 4735 words long]

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