“Let Them Call It Jazz” presents a type of Rhy’s Woman* who has characteristics that make her an “outcast”, “misfit”, or “other.” Together, Selina’s gender, race, sexuality, and nationality places her as different from the mainstream group of people who inhabit England. She is confronted by situations that target her differences and make life for her in England more alienating and difficult. Her next door neighbor continually complains about Selina, disapproving of everything that makes Selina different to the neighbor. Selina uses singing as a means of self expression despite her hardships. The singing also acts as a type of rebellion to the people who try to criminalize her, chase her away and make her assimilate. When Selina is put in jail it seems as if she has lost all hope, she becomes numb. She also no longer sings. When Selina does not have her singing then she has essentially lost herself. Selina eventually regains her affection toward singing when she hears the Holloway song (though she does not sing herself) and then it is again taken away. Finally she realizes that the Holloway song can never be taken fully away because she knows its true significance. I would think this last thought comforts Selina because it assures her that hope is still alive. But considering the predicted course her tumultuous life will take her, the thought of hope can seem fruitless. Rhys provides this last inclination to show that good things come only momentarily.**

*Learned in class that Selina is not a Rhys woman

**Now considering the Selina is not a Rhys woman, this ending is a lot more uplifting than the endings for the Rhys characters. This could have implications for how Rhys (the author) sees black women dealing with their hardships.

*I deduced that the narrator is a teen because she’s too well written to be very young, but she also makes statements that pull out her childhood innocence and curiosity.

The narrator in “Mixing Cocktails” voices her frustration with being of the age where adult supervision is still required. She shares angst-like teen thoughts that exhibit a bitterness toward the society constructed by adults. The narrator sorely and satirically reflects on adult chides: “One was not to sit in the sun. One had been told not to be in the sun….One would one day regret freckles.” Her expression of distaste for these good intentioned parental cautions augments her status as a typical moody teen. Yet, her thoughts expands into reasonable intellectual territory, condemning adult society. She criticizes society (she uses the word “humanity”) for aggressively interfering with individuals by eliminating the difference between them through a “level up” process.

We can further understand her agony when she directly speaks to the this society. “I am speaking to you; do you not hear? You must break yourself of your habit of never listening.” Her accusatory and attacking language sends a clear message, a call for attention and recognition of those who are silenced because they are “other”. As a teen, the narrator exist in a liminal state, she is within the transition between childhood “otherness” and adulthood. She is in a position of vulnerability because both ages are fraught with appealing and unappealing expectations and responsibilities. (Children with imaginary freedom and physical constriction by adults vs the married, “feather hats” wearing adults with rules for everything) We see the narrator being drawn to an “other” role, one in contrast to the adult society, when she claims a delighted interest in the letters of strangers on the steamers that pass by her home. In an interesting twist the narrator calls the adults of society, the “Other People” (otherness always depending on if you’re on the “right” side). She mockingly declares,

“I long to be like Other People! The extraordinary, ungetatable, oddly cruel Other People, with their way of wantonly hurting and then accusing you of being thin skinned, sulky,vindictive or ridiculous. All because a hurt and puzzled little girl has retired into her shell”

The narrator obviously does not want to be like the “Other People” so then she remains a little girl. But I’m sure she does not want to be a little girl because she’ll still have to put up with adults. On a side note, I thought it was humorous that the narrator referred to her aunt (I think she’s her real aunt) as “The English aunt” to create a formality that, through language, continues to distance the narrator from adults.

I see similarities with the ending of “Mixing Cocktails” and our discussion about Mrs. Dalloway’s party offerings. The narrator assembles like Mrs Dalloway, but with cocktail drinks and not parties. They both provide an important function within society that makes them happy despite all the issues that are rampant within societal systems. The narrator and Dalloway have found their niche

One of the essential qualities of the Modernist text is a focus on psychological exploration.
In “The Return of the Soldier” this quality appears not only through the narrator’s thoughts and keen observational skills, that grant her the ability to extract the innermost thoughts of Kitty, Margaret, and Chris, but through Chris’ mental illness. Chris’ amnesia adds a complex layer to psychological exploration. Amnesia exists as both an external factor in the “interior of the mind” ideology because of the clinical classifying of one’s mental state and an internal factor which is the manifestation of the illness in the mind. “ With the external factor comes the medical prerogative of curing one of mental illness. The “Return of the Soldier” addresses the relationship between mental illness and “normalcy” and if mental illness can be but a form of “normalcy.” Jenny, the narrator and Margaret both lament Chris’ possible confrontation with reality if he see’s his dead son’s possessions. They have to reconcile the happiness he has acquired with the harsh truth about Chris’ age. This struggle of normalcy and mental illness also plays out in “The House of Mirth.” By the end of “The House of Mirth” we realize that depression and melancholia are the roots of Lily’s perpetual mental agony. Yet in these mental states I would argue, though uncomfortably, that Lily is at one of the most stable parts of her life. Lily and Chris’ mental illness’ give them an escape from their realities (in Lily’s case her desired reality) that bring them closer to the self that they rings most true to them.