Longman Magazine and other things

Jean Rhys' character Anna Morgan when having a meal with her step-mother, Hester, observes a stack of magazines. Rhys writes, “There was a chest in the corner where the drinks were kept and a sideboard ranged with glasses. And the bookshelf with Walter Scott and a lot of old Longmans’ Magazines, so old that the pages were yellow” (70).It is significant that Rhys mentions these magazines. Longmans Magazine is a magazine that ran monthly beginning in 1882 by C.J. Longman and ended in 1905. The magazine was under the publication of Longman, Green and Co. of London. (wikipedia). The Magazine heavily published men such as Thomas Hardy, James Payn and featured Andrew Lang. The one notable female contributed that they published was Margaret Oliphant, a Scottish writer characterized as a domestic realism. Overall the Magazine featured a lot of writers influenced by Romanticism and other literary movements that pre-dates modernism. I believe that it is significant that Rhys is making note of Longmans Magazine because it is a magazine that heavily are relent on members of pase literary movements compared to Rhys' time and that are heavily controlled by men. The two things in Morgans’ life that seems to be oppressing her. Additionally Rhys make note of Walter Scott, and late 18th-century Scottish writer. In Rhys referring to these writers that are outside the mainland Britian she is hinting to the alienation of Morgans. Finally, when Rhys adds the detail that they are yellow, Rhys demonstrates the traditional nature of patriarchy, movements like realism and romanticism along with alienation of a non-mainland British citizen still experiences.