Carole Angier's biography Jean Rhys: Life and Work mentions two incidents in one of Jean Rhys's novels that could be classed as small-scale nightmare scenarios.
I was reminded of this recently by something I read about tunnels in Isaac Asimov's memoirs; I decided to follow up Carole Angier's leads and look at the novel; the material I found has inspired a few comments.
Carole Angier refers to a horrible dream that Sasha, the main character in Jean Rhys's very depressing autobiographical novel Good Morning Midnight (1939), has on her return to Paris. This is the relevant extract from the novel:
“I am in the passage of a tube station in London. Many people are in front of me; many people are behind me. Everywhere there are placards printed in red letters: This Way to the Exhibition, This Way to the Exhibition. But I don't want the way to the exhibition -I want the way out. There are passages to the right and passages to the left, but no exit sign. Everywhere the fingers point and the placards read: This Way to the Exhibition...The steel finger points along a long stone passage. This Way - This Way - This Way to the Exhibition....”
This is uncannily similar to my own experiences in one or two huge tube stations in London. I still remember the crowds of people in the underground passages walking along like zombies, the long tunnel-like corridors, the flights of stairs, the inadequate and misleading signage and how it all became more and more stressful.
I followed the signs up some steps, along some corridors, round some corners and ended up where I started! I remember thinking to myself, “I don't want the Northern Line, I want the way out”!
Being unable to find the exit can easily turn into a nightmare. It can feel like being trapped in Hell with no way out. I think that Jean Rhys was remembering her own experience of the London tube system when she described Sasha's bad dream.
The second nightmare incident that Carole Angier mentions happens when Sasha's boss asks her to take a letter to a certain place in the building where she works. She doesn't understand where she has to go but accepts the errand anyway.
Sasha immediately does the wrong thing:
“I turn and walk blindly through a door. It is a lavatory. They look sarcastic as they watch me going out by the right door.“
Her attempts to reach her destination fail:
“I turn to the right, walk along another passage, down a flight of stairs. The workrooms....No, I can't ask here. All the girls will stare at me. I shall seem such a fool.
I try another passage. It ends in a lavatory. The number of lavatories in this place....I turn the corner, find myself back in the original passage...After this it becomes a nightmare. I walk up stairs, past doors, along passages - all different, all exactly alike. There is something very urgent that I must do. But I don't meet a soul and all the doors are shut.”
There could be something symbolic about all this. It could be a description of Jean Rhys's path through life, not knowing exactly what she was looking for, going round in circles and never getting to where she wanted to go. Speaking as Sasha, she realises this:
“I try, but they always see through me. The passages will never lead anywhere, the doors will always be shut. I know....”
Sasha meets a strange young man along the way. He gives her a nasty look, and when she asks him where she can find the man the letter is addressed to he says he doesn't know.
This reminds me of the article in which I mentioned unhelpful people and how 'an angel' put a colleague who was lost in a huge station onto the right path.
An ironic aspect of this incident is that anyone who has walked through what seems like miles of corridors in a big indoor shopping centre looking for the ladies' room might envy Sasha!
I learned from his memoirs that Isaac Asimov's ideal world was an underground one. He said in I, Asimov that he preferred enclosed spaces with no windows. He said it is no accident that his book The Caves of SteeI features underground cities, the ultimate in windowless enclosures. This may be his fantasy ideal world, but it sounds like a nightmare scenario to me! I much prefer fresh air and natural light, and I travel by bus where possible.
Asimov's cities have labyrinthine networks of tunnels, so he would probably have loved the London Underground and not had much sympathy for Sasha.
This early depiction of his world reminds me of the big Jubilee Line stations:
This depressing book needs to be balanced with something light and amusing:
