Jean Rhys, Jane Eyre and psychological black magic

Psychological black magic, the illegitimate use of subtle forces, is an unseen influence of particular interest. This blog is full of examples of and references to it. I have learned what to look out for over the years, and I have recently seen some material in Carole Angier's biography Jean Rhys: Life and Work that suggests to me that psychological black magic was at work in Jean Rhys's life.

This article covers a small coincidence involving names that reminds me of something similar in the life of Charlotte Brontë, with whose work Jean Rhys was very familiar.

First, some basic information.

Jean Rhys and Jane Eyre

Jean Rhys read Jane Eyre as a girl in Dominica. It made such an impression that decades later she wrote a prequel in the form of Wide Sargasso Sea, her most admired and commercially successful novel. 

I suspect that her imagination was particularly stirred when she read that Mr Rochester's wife also came from the British West Indies – Mr Rochester brought Bertha Mason home to England from Jamaica.

I also suspect that Jean Rhys wished that an English gentleman, someone similar to the romantic Mr. Rochester, would do the same for her! He would rescue her; he would take her away from her unsatisfactory life.

She was sent away from Dominica to school in England in 1907, the year of her 17th birthday. She hoped to find a feeling of belonging there. She may also have hoped to meet the English gentleman of her dreams there. As Mr Rochester says to Jane Eyre:

“...the mountain will never be brought to Mahomet, so all you can do is to aid Mahomet to go to the mountain...”

Psychic powers in May Sinclair's Flaw in the Crystal: Part IV

I find some elements of the plot of May Sinclair's novella The Flaw in the Crystal contrived and confusing. 

The final resolution of Agatha Verrall's dilemma in particular seems unconvincing and unsatisfactory. She finds a solution to her difficulties that leaves some questions unanswered and some issues unaddressed.

Agatha Verrall's dilemma

We left Agatha Verrall in a situation where she is damned if she uses her gift to heal people remotely and damned if she doesn't.

Taking away people's suffering means becoming possessed by her subjects' former mental states: the psychic connection is a two-way street. The links that she creates between herself and her subjects may be also be cross-contaminated such that one subject can get at another.  

Cutting ties with people who have been healed means that their mental anguish returns. This entails watching them suffer and coming under both internal and external pressure to resume the healing. 

It would be an ideal solution to this predicament if Agatha could only use her Power without anyone involved experiencing any unpleasant side-effects.

This is much easier said than done, but Agatha eventually finds the way. Things get worse before they get better though.

Agatha Verrall cuts the tie with Harding Powell

Agatha Verral decides that saving Rodney Lanyon is more important than anything else. This entails sacrificing Harding Powell's health by cutting the tie that binds him to her. 

Harding puts up a big fight, hanging on desperately and tearing down the psychic walls she builds as fast as she can build them, but eventually with help from the Power she loosens his hold, casts him out and escapes from his malign influence.

Harding reverts to his former state. Poor Milly is distraught again and begs for the help that she knows Agatha can give. 

Agatha Verrall sees the light 

Agatha has always had the conviction that the Power she taps is benevolent. So, if it is so high, holy, sacred and pure, how can something like this awful mess happen? Why has her gift brought so much suffering to people?

Psychic powers in May Sinclair's Flaw in the Crystal: Part III

Just as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Parasite does, May Sinclair's novella The Flaw in the Crystal shows how dangerous playing around with occult forces can be for everyone involved. It is not just evil witches such as Helen Penclosa who end up in big trouble: after Agatha Verrall heals two of her friends using a pschic gift that she doesn't fully understand, things start to get unbalanced and out of control. She soon finds herself in a horrible mess of her own making.

May Sinclair gives a very detailed account of what happens next; she also has a lot to say about the Power that operates through Agatha. It is quite a challenge to identify the key points!

The regression of Rodney Lanyon

Agatha Verrall does not see her friend Rodney Lanyon for some weeks. She hears from him that his wife Bella is still well, so she assumes that he is too because he was only ever ill because of Bella. 

Agatha has been using her gift to keep him away; she has removed his strong inclination for her company. This is another unwise decision: she now feels a longing for his company! Something similar to the conservation of energy is involved here: the feelings that she took away from Rodney are now hers.

These feelings become so persistent amd so unbearable that she cuts the thread that connects her to Rodney. She hears from him again: Bella is still well, but he has has gone back to where he was before Agatha started to heal him:

“She might have known it. She had in fact known. Having once held him, and having healed him, she had no right—as long as the Power consented to work through her—she had no right to let him go.“

But what right did she have to hang on to him? 

Jean Rhys: feeling different and not belonging

Carole Angier's biography of the novelist Jean Rhys contains some very insightful remarks about her and her life. Some of these remarks are very similar to what I would have come up with myself if I had looked at the same source material. 

The miraculous deliverances and spiralling down elements of Jean Rhys's life have been introduced. This article covers some more key features: she felt different from most people and she felt that she didn't belong anywhere. 

Feeling different 

There is nothing unusual about Jean Rhys's feeling of being fundamentally different from the people around her; after reading biographies of other writers, I would think it very unusual if she didn't feel like that! It's what they all say; it goes with the territory. 

What does seem strange to me is how various people of interest quite independently describe their feelings and experiences in much the same words. 

Something that Carole Angier says about Jean Rhys could equally apply to many others, including Stella Benson and Antonia White:

“One of the strongest feelings Jean had always...was that she didn't fit in the world, that life was a game she had never learned how to play...She did not understand the rules.”

This is exactly how some people feel: everyone knows the rules of the game but them; everyone else knows how to behave, what to say, where to go and what to do, but they are baffled and clueless.

Such people may see the world as a club to which they will never belong no matter how much they want to and how hard they try. The article about Jean Rhys and Antonia White contains uncannily similar quotations about how something always goes wrong when they try to be like other people.

Psychic powers in May Sinclair's Flaw in the Crystal: Part II

Agatha Verrall, the main character in May Sinclair's novella The Flaw in the Crystal, discovers that she has a psychic gift: she can improve the mental states of both herself and other people by tapping into an internal power source. 

As often happens, this activity starts well but ends badly. As we have seen from what happens to Austin Gilroy in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Parasite, even actions taken with good intentions sometimes backfire on the originator. 

Rodney's Lanyon's recovery

The first recipient of Agatha's healing attempts is her friend Rodney Lanyon. He is in a terrible state because of the effect his disturbed wife Bella has on him. Not only does he improve out of all recognition after Agatha's secret interventions, Bella incidentally becomes much better too.

Agatha is delighted to hear from Rodney about this unexpected development:

“It was another instance of the astounding and mysterious way it worked. She must have got at Bella somehow in getting at him. She saw now no end to the possibilities of the thing. There wasn't anything so wonderful in making him what, after all, he was; but if...Bella...had been, even for a week, a perfect angel, it had made her what she was not and never had been.“

The future may seem bright, but what looks like the start of something big at the time often turns out to have been as good as it gets. This was the high point in Agatha Verrall's career as a healer.

The arrival of some more friends

Agatha Verrall has come to live in a remote place, one that Rodney can easily get to, so that she can concentrate on using her gift to heal him to the exclusion of everything else. 

Agatha has told two of her friends, the Powells, that she moved to the area for her health. What a tangled web we weave...

Psychic powers in May Sinclair's Flaw in the Crystal: Part I

I recently came across a horror story by the neglected novelist May Sinclair that immediately reminded me of one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's horror stories, a story that has been featured in a whole series of articles on here.  

The Flaw in the Crystal, which was first published in 1912, will probably not inspire quite so many articles as The Parasite did, but it has some material that is worth quoting. As is often the case, it is mainly the metaphysical elements and some connections I noticed that inspire commentary.

Both novellas feature a woman who uses supernatural methods to influence people, however May Sinclair's Agatha Verrall is very different from Conan Doyle's evil witch Helen Penclosa in that she tries to use her powers ethically and for the good of others.

Agatha Verrall's gift

Agatha Verrall has a psychic gift: she can affect people remotely by concentrating her mind on them. She discovered this gift accidentally and uses it deliberately.

Agatha uses her gift to heal people telepathically. Her friend Rodney Lanyon is her first subject. He has a troublesome, demanding wife, a 'mass of furious and malignant nerves' who often drives him to breaking point. As a sanity-saving exercise he regularly escapes to Agatha's house, which he sees as his refuge, his place of peace. 

Although Agatha loves Rodney, she refrains from using her gift to make him come to visit her but uses it – without his knowledge - to make him well when he comes of his own free will.

Jean Rhys: miraculous deliverances and spiralling down

As mentioned in the previous article about the novelist Jean Rhys, Carole Angier's biography is very comprehensive indeed. She has done huge amounts of research; she describes Jean Rhys's personality, life and works in great detail and provides much background information. She makes good points and provides neat summaries; she has many insights that seem spot on. So what more can there be to say about Jean Rhys, this woman who seems to have been by far her own worst enemy? 

Some of Carole Angier's material that is particularly interesting and relevant is worth highlighting and expanding on, as are some more connections and elements that are familiar from books by or about other writers. 

This article introduces a recurring element in Jean Rhys's life that I think is very significant indeed: whenever she was in deep trouble, something or someone would come to her rescue. Money, somewhere to stay and support and assistance would appear as if by magic and save the day. 

I suspect that there was more to this than just chance, benevolent, compassionate people – and victims and enablers - and sometimes unashamed begging and emotional blackmail on Jean Rhys's part: I think that unseen influences were involved. There are other elements and incidents in Jean Rhys's life that support this idea.

Jean Rhys and the miraculous deliverances

Carole Angier says that whenever Jean Rhys was in dire straits and at the end of her resources, something or someone would always turn up and bail her out:

“Whenever she was at rock bottom, someone would always help.”

“...Jean's life was full of benefactors – her unusual need drew unusual help, as though by magic.”

“Again the last-minute rescue, the magical, fateful possibility of change!”

This is independent confirmation of a phenomenon that I have mentioned in several other articles, Some of these deliverances do indeed seem almost miraculous; perhaps something metaphysical really was at work in these unexpected strokes of Providence. 

While I believe that some people do have the ability to manifest things that they need, there are good – and safe – ways and bad – and dangerous - ways of doing this. I have mentioned various aspects of this elsewhere.