She chooses numbness in order to mute the unbearable pain. The text even seems to suggest that upon leaving her beloved West Indies, Anna decided to completely shut down. Unlike the witty heroines of a Jane Austen novel, Anna’s inner misery prevents her from rising above her challenges. She misses her native home with a fierce and very potent ache that ultimately fuels her depression and self-destructive apathy. She is still in the late stages of teenagehood and finds work as a chorus girl. Anna is a recent transplant to England from the West Indies.

Although not entirely true to the author’s life, it’s been widely acknowledge that the novel heavily borrows from the author’s culturally varied background. In her third novel, Voyage in the Dark, Jean Rhys conjures the character of Anna Morgan. When did history solely focus on safe, simple, reliable people? When did history only immortalize those who possessed a clean and pious record of saintly behavior? When we read a novel, we are often reading about the fictional personal history of strangers.

Although my reading tastes have changed over the years, I can’t recall a period of time when I put a self-imposed ban on any novel or work of literature that didn’t have a likeable protagonist.

Without the pleasant, inoffensive voice of the novel’s guide, the closed-off reader may dismiss a novel that thrives because of its rough, unapproachable, even feral character. Do all main characters have to be likeable? For some readers, a likeable character and/or narrator is the only gateway into a novel.

Voyage in the dark