40 pages • 1 hour read
Good Morning, Midnight
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Themes
The Paranoia of Alienation
Throughout the novel Sasha fears exposure by those around her; she desires to stay invisible under the guise of conformity, but unable to escape her past choices, she fears she bears the indelible mark of difference. Such a fear harbors a deep paranoia that manifests not only in her Luminal-fueled dreams but also in her inner dialogue as she attempts to find a way to regulate and control her emotions through a regimented schedule. She obsesses over the most minute details, including her posture, her hair, and her hat, and falls into a torrent of inner dialogue completely contradictory to the composure she hopes to radiate. Utterly alienated from true human connection, Sasha battles an internal struggle to maintain a semblance of conformity, which results in uncontrollable outbursts of emotion that often leave her overwhelmed with tears.
Sasha’s deep paranoia projects on the nameless, faceless people around her, from whom she constantly fears judgment and criticism. Every visit to a café or bar devolves into a panicked analysis of the looks she perceives to be cast her way. Even the houses she passes on the street leer at her as the world increasingly becomes a hell of judgment escapable only through alcohol and her numbing obsession with clothing, which she hopes will disguise her true alienation.
The Pull of Fate
Paranoid and afraid, Sasha resigns herself to fate and, in her severely diminished sense of agency, continues to move in a monotonous cycle where her choices are not her own. Her choices rely on an innate sense of need rather than desire. Even the return of the doodled menu she left behind at a local café becomes an act of fate that Sasha does not dare question. Although various figures attempt to persuade Sasha to fight for her reentry into normal society, she struggles to take the necessary steps to reconnect with humanity. Her attempts to buy clothing are thwarted by her inability to see beyond their performative nature. Her attempts to regain human connection result in short-lived experiences whose impact she mistrusts.
Broken under the merciless forces of disillusionment, Sasha struggles to maintain a sense of self. She is indifferent to her fate and surrenders any modicum of choice to an ambiguous doom. Though she actively embraces the looming figure of her ghostly neighbor in the last scene, Sasha’s final words reflect her lack of agency. She resists the neighbor’s attempts to catch her attention throughout the novel and openly bemoans the torment she experiences. However, she rejects René’s offers to confront the figure, preferring instead to continue to suffer even until the last moments of the novel. Her last words of “yes, yes, yes” embody her full surrender to the forces, possibly death, that come to enrapture her.
The Plight of the Modern Woman
Silenced and abandoned, Sasha focuses on the aesthetic as a distraction from her internal struggles. She absorbs information from magazines that feature women searching for ways to tame their unmet internal desires through an obsession with external appearance. This dissonance between a growing desire for independence and the oppressive forces of patriarchal society results in a misguided preoccupation. Sasha obsesses over the women who surround her while evading the men who encroach in search of using her. She constantly fears the disapproval of society and, in her attempts to adhere to society’s requirement for women to maintain chaste innocence, she overthinks each encounter with a man until, no longer able to fight off the unrelenting advances, she unlocks her bedroom door and welcomes the inevitable approach.
Sasha’s physical body also suffers under the unrealistic expectations placed on the female form. Shortly after the birth of her son, Sasha struggles to fulfill her perceived duty as mother; she is unable to breastfeed her son, a reality that may have led to his silent death five weeks later. As she flounders as a new mother, a nurse wraps her body in tight bandages to erase the effects of pregnancy and childbirth. The nurse promises to leave her body “without one line, without one wrinkle, without one crease” (61) to distract Sasha from the realities of her child’s failing health. Despite the nurse’s best efforts to rid Sasha’s body of any sign of pregnancy in pursuit of an unrealistic standard of perfection, Sasha remains permanently marked by the death of her child.
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By Jean Rhys
