7Voyage in the Dark was written in 1934 by Jean Rhys.

[1] It tells of the semi-tragic descent of

its young protagonist Anna Morgan, who is moved from her Caribbean home to England by
an uncaring stepmother, after the death of her father. Once she leaves school, and she is cut
off financially by the stepmother, Hester, Anna tries to support herself as a chorus girl, then
becomes involved with an older man named Walter who supports her financially. When he
leaves her, she begins a downward spiral. Like William Faulkner's The Wild Palms, the novel
features a botched illegal abortion. Rhys' original version of Voyage in the Dark ended with
Anna dying from this abortion (see Bonnie Kime Scott's The Gender of Modernism for the
original ending), but she revised it before publication to the more ambivalent and modernist
ending in which Anna survives to return to her now-shattered life "all over again." The novel
is rich in Caribbean folklore and tradition and post-colonial identity politics, including
black self-identification by its white protagonist.

Part One

1. Anna compares England to her Caribbean, where everything was colourful. By

contrast, England is greyish. She dislikes England throughout the novel, always feeling
like an outsider. She is always cold and describes all of the towns that she tours as
part of a chorus line as identical. The book begins with Anna living in Southsea with a
friend, Maudie. The two have trouble persuading a landlady to take them in, the
implication being that chorus girls are 'professionals' or prostitutes. The landlady
complains about the way that they walk around in their dressing gowns. Anna goes
for a walk with Maudie, and they meet two men whom they take back to their flat
for some tea, much to their landlady's disgust. When Anna goes to London, she
agrees to meet one of the men, Walter.

2. Walter takes her to dinner in a restaurant with a private dining room and a bedroom
attached, a place meant to be used for illicit rendezvous. His wealth is obvious. After
a meal, he makes a pass at Anna, and she goes into the bedroom, shuts the door and
lies down on the bed for a long time. She is nervous as she has never had sex before,
but is interested in becoming sexual with Walter, but does not know how to go about
it. Anna returns to the room where Walter is waiting for her. They exchange remarks
and he walks her outside to stop a taxi and pay her fare. The next day she receives
some money in a letter from him, in which he apologizes. She goes out to buy some
clothes with the money. Back home she becomes ill and sends him a letter asking
him to visit. Walter visits, buys her food and a warm coverlet for her bed, and pays a
doctor to see her.

3. Anna visits Walter again, and when he puts his hand on her knee, says that she must
go, and begins to cry. But he tells her to be brave and they end up going to bed
together. She loses her virginity.

4. Anna is now supported as a "kept woman"; she moves to better quarters and waits
all day for letters from Walter arranging meeting times. She has fallen in love with
 him. One day a letter arrives from Maudie, saying that she will visit soon, and they go
for a walk in Hyde Park.

5. Anna goes to visit Walter and meets Vincent, his cousin. She tells Walter she doesn't
like him and then begins to tell him about her early life in the Caribbean. They make
love, and she lies awake.

6. Anna goes to visit her stepmother, Hester, who tells her that there is no more money
for her from her father's Caribbean estate, which Hester has sold. Hester also
explains that she sent a letter to Anna's Uncle Bo saying Anna would be better off in
the Caribbean, but that he would need to pay half of her fare to get there. Uncle Bo's
reply accuses Hester of cheating Anna out of her inheritance, which Hester denies
vehemently. She argues she cannot afford to help Anna financially any longer, and
that it is her uncle's responsibility. Hester states that she does not approve of Anna's
uncle because he is open in his acceptance of both the black and white children in his
family, and gives all the children the family's last name. Her abhorrence of
miscegenation is depicted negatively in the text, as a sign of her intolerant bigotry,
for her major concern is the appearance of impropriety and not the impropriety
itself. Hester doesn't approve of black-white friendship at all; we learn that she got
very annoyed when Anna got too close to the black servant, Francine, and eventually
had her sent away. Anna's uncle, in turn, doesn't approve of Hester, accusing her of
mismanaging her husband's property and failing to support Anna.

7. Anna is desperately afraid that Walter will get bored and leave her. One day he takes
her to the country for what is at first a wonderful time. The trip is cut short, however,
when Vincent and his French lover, who have joined them, fall out and decide to
leave early. Walter tells Anna that the reason for the argument was because Walter is
taking Vincent when he goes to the US for a while … the first time that Anna has
heard of the trip.

8. Anna receives a letter from Vincent saying that Walter is sorry, but he is no longer in
love with her. They both still want to assist her as much as possible.

9. Anna asks Walter to meet her, despite the fact that Vincent has said it is better that
they don't see each other. She tries to get him to take her home, but he will not, so
they part. Anna decides to break from him altogether, and she leaves the lodging he
has paid for without leaving a forwarding address.

Part Two

1. Anna sells some clothing to raise money to pay her rent. In her new
accommodations, she meets a woman called Ethel who is only there, she tells Anna,
while her new place is being refurnished. They go to the pictures together, and Ethel,
who runs a manicure and massage business, offers Anna accommodation and a job.
 2. One day Anna goes out and meets Laurie by chance, along with two American
boyfriends of hers, Carl and Joe. They go out for drinks and get a little tipsy.

3. They go out again to a hotel. It is implied that Laurie is a prostitute, and Anna goes
into hysterics, and throws a scene.

4. Anna goes and visits Ethel, and is taken up as the manicurist, even though she has no
experience.

Part Three

1. Anna isn't very good at her job. Ethel is obviously running a bit of a racket. Her
adverts are suggestive, but not explicitly so, so that the men arrive expecting more
than a massage, and when they don't get it there is nothing that they can do. One
day Ethel's massage table breaks and the man on it jumps off into some hot water
and injures himself. Anna doesn't show much sympathy, and Ethel becomes angry.
She tells Anna that she is too moody, no good at the job, and never invites Ethel
along when she goes out. It appears that Ethel had expected that Anna might
prostitute herself and that Ethel expected to act as a madam, though she does not
say this explicitly. She orders Anna to leave, then quickly reverses her decision and
begs her to stay. Anna says that she must go for a walk, and Ethel tells her that if she
is not back within an hour she will gas herself. She goes halfway to Walter's place and
then returns to find a very relieved Ethel.

2. Anna is ill. When she meets up with Laurie, one of her boyfriends, Carl Redman, asks
her if she is on ether. She ends up going to sleep with him.

3. Ethel is inquisitive about Carl and doesn't seem to disapprove. Carl tells Anna that he
is leaving the country soon; both he and Joe have wives in the States. One day Anna
meets Maudie, who borrows some money. She needs to buy new clothes or else she
thinks the man she is going out with won't marry her.

4. Anna almost ends up going to bed with a man with a broken hand. While they are
dancing in her bedroom at Ethel's, Anna throws her shoe at a picture of a dog she
imagines is smirking at her, shattering the glass. Soon after she has a fit of morning
sickness, and when the man won't release her from his grip she hits him on his
injured hand, and throws up. He leaves.

5. Anna is now staying with Laurie, who has received a 'peach of a letter' from Ethel,
saying that Anna owes her money for destroying her room. She also mentions that
Anna was bringing many men back to the apartment, which she could not stand, and
also that she has become aware that Anna is pregnant. Anna and Laurie discuss the
possibilities of an abortion. Anna has waited too long to seek this abortion,
ambivalently wishing to keep the baby she cannot support, while also drinking
concoctions that are supposed to induce abortion.
 6. Laurie and Anna meet up with Vincent to arrange the money for the abortion. He
assures her that everything will be all right, but commands Anna to return the letters
between her and Walter, which she does.

7. Anna goes to Mrs. Robinson's and has the abortion.

Part Four

1. The abortion is botched, and Anna becomes extremely ill. Anna hears Laurie talking
to her new landlady, Mrs Polo about her condition. She is still unwell. She
hallucinates, her mind fills with scenes of the masquerade in the Caribbean of her
childhood, recent seductions, and the dark room that she is in. A doctor comes to
attend her and says, "She'll be alright […] Ready to start all over again in no time, I've
no doubt." The last paragraph returns to Anna's stream of consciousness narrative
voice pondering repeatedly the idea of "all over again."

About : Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys, CBE (/riːs/ REESS;[3] born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams; 24 August 1890 – 14
May 1979) was a novelist who was born and grew up in the Caribbean island of Dominica.
From the age of 16, she resided mainly in England, where she was sent for her education.
She is best known for her novel Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), written as a prequel to Charlotte
Brontë's Jane Eyre.[4] In 1978, she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British
Empire (CBE) for her writing.

Rhys's father, William Rees Williams, was a Welsh medical doctor and her mother, Minna
Williams, née Lockhart, a third-generation Dominican Creole of Scots ancestry.[citation
needed]
("Creole" was broadly used in those times to refer to any person born on the island,
whether they were of European or African descent, or both.) She had a brother. Her
mother's family had an estate, a former plantation, on the island.[citation needed]

Rhys was educated in Dominica until the age of 16, when she was sent to England to live
with an aunt, as her relations with her mother were difficult. She attended the Perse School
for Girls in Cambridge,[5] where she was mocked as an outsider and for her accent. She
attended two terms at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London by 1909. Her
instructors despaired of her ever learning to speak "proper English" and advised her father
to take her away. Unable to train as an actress and refusing to return to the Caribbean as her
parents wished, Rhys worked with varied success as a chorus girl, adopting the names
Vivienne, Emma, or Ella Gray. She toured Britain's small towns and returned
to rooming or boarding houses in rundown neighbourhoods of London.[5]