Economic exchanges in Voyage in the Dark

As the world renown artist Kanye West once said “ I ain’t saying she a gold digger, but she ain’t messing with no broke *man*”.  I could not help but to think of West’s lyrics when reading Jean Rhys’ Voyage in the Dark as Anna and her friend Laurie navigate the world of getting men to pay for everything in their entire lives. It seems as if the characters in the novel have some level of acceptance for the idea that young women like Anna and Laurie don’t have personal skills or abilities that can support their lives so they must turn to sleeping with wealthy (likely married) men who can take care of their finances. One early example comes in the beginning of the novel when Anna’s friend Maudie recommends “ I don’t want to interfere, kid, but you really ought. The more you swank the better. If you don’t swank a bit nothing’s any use. If he;s a rich man and he’s keeping you, you ought to make him get you a nice flat up West somewhere and furnish it for you. Then you’d have something.” (45).  Maudie expects that Anna will follow her life path that consists of dressing up well to attract the most affluent “suitors” (for lack of a better work) and then squeezing them for every penny she could. In economic and materialistic terms the novel pervades the idea that one as a human (especially the female characters) are literally able to be bought and possessed by men if only they have the proper amount of money.  As page 46 mentions “You can get a very nice girl for five pounds, a very nice girl indeed…People are much cheaper than things” (46).  In the novel there is some convoluted understanding of “love” and “relationship” in which the men pay the women for their company (mainly sex) and the women rely on the men until “he got sick of me and chucked me. I wish I were dead” (115). Here Anna shows one of the downsides to her lifestyle which typically involved limitless money being that the men would often use the girls until they got bored and moved on. Not only would the women be rejected in the terms of any feelings they had developed for the men, but they also would have to find a new source of income.