"Every Day You are a New Person": Narration and Cosmopolitan Universalism in Jean Rhys's after Leaving Mr. Mackenzie

Though Jean Rhys's works have received significant critical attention over the past twenty years, critics remain largely uninterested in her second novel, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (1930). Seemingly lacking the complexity and depth of her later writings, it is perhaps unsurprising that Rhys's second novel captures so little interest. Like many of her early works, the novel is centered on an aging single woman who spirals into depression and poverty, yet it is not overtly experimental, like Good Morning, Midnight (1939), nor does it explicitly confront questions of race and immigration, as does Voyage in the Dark (1934). As such, critics have frequently dismissed the novel for its seeming simplicity, choosing instead to focus on Rhys's other works.¹ As Veronica Gregg notes, "[After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie] is often taken to be a conventional novel and read as one."² Mackenzie, however, is hardly a conventional novel. Though its themes and characters are familiar to Rhys's fiction, the novel is in fact notably different, particularly in regard to its narrative voice, which incorporates second-person narration and shifting personal pronouns to enact a collapse of interiority among its major characters.

Indeed, the complexity of the novel's narrative voice makes Mackenzie unique and, as I argue, is precisely why it needs critical reconsideration. Throughout the novel, the narration subtly shifts between the second person and third, and, as a result, characters tend to share thoughts, emotions, and speech patterns to a notable extent. In this way, Mackenzie marks a departure from Rhys's oeuvre in that its narrative voice disorients the psychological and emotional distance among its characters. Whereas Rhys's later novels present a first-person account of the individual trauma of life in cosmopolitan Europe, Mackenzie's unique narrative style reveals a distinct emphasis on collectivity and universalism. In this essay, I reconsider the intricacy of the narrative voice in the novel and, in so doing, suggest that a deeper analysis of narration in the novel can foster a previously unforeseen interpretation of the role of universalism in Rhys's work.

In this regard, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie's emphasis on collectivity reveals Rhys's changing perceptions of cosmopolitanism.³ For Rhys, cosmopolitanism is an ideology that purports equality but fails to take into account that participation in the global community is often dependent on one's socioeconomic status. To that end, critics often argue that Rhys confronts cosmopolitan life through the lens of exclusion: Rhys's novels focus on the struggles of the individual to fit into an increasingly alienating cosmopolitan Europe.⁴ Mackenzie, in many ways, turns perceptions of how Rhys's work relates to cosmopolitanism on their heads by focusing on themes of universalism rather than alienation or exclusion. Accordingly, I examine the narrative voice in After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie by considering the extent to which the novel's narration functions as a critique of cosmopolitan universalism. In shifting the focus from exclusion to one of inclusion, Mackenzie analyzes the implications of what it means to be included—or participate in—an emerging global community.

The novel suggests that, as ideologies of cosmopolitanism become increasingly universalist in nature, they become decidedly more dangerous in that they frequently suppress individuality and difference. The narrator's inability to distinguish and demarcate the individual speech and thought patterns of the novel's characters suggests the effects of cosmopolitan universalization—a problem that became, as I intend to demonstrate, increasingly important to Rhys. No critics have yet adequately addressed or acknowledged the depth of the narrative structure in Mackenzie, and few have considered how it depicts a significant critique of cosmopolitan subjectivity.⁵ In considering the novel through the lens of contemporary cosmopolitan criticism, I examine Rhys's critique of universalism in After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie. The novel signals the establishment of a new method for responding to the traumatic reality of life in cosmopolitan Europe and marks a point from which I proceed to explore Rhys's shifting views of cosmopolitanism. I thus demonstrate that Rhys's analysis...