Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys

Anna Morgans obsession with wanting to be black, I believe stems from her being from the West Indies and immediately being “othered” once she lives in the mainland British. Anna tries to find if she has a little bit of black in her by claiming that her mother was black. Voyage in The Dark with having his aspect in the story very much remains me of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre character Bertha.  

            Voyage in the Dark clearly speaks  the alienation that one feels once they become a part of the mainland British Empire. The novel speaks this idea because Anne much like Bertha is placed in the mainland British Empire, used by the men there and then in the end, is placed as a sexual outcast. We see the begins of Anna’s alienation when women call her a “Hottentot” which refers to the name give to Africans. However, because Anna was referred to as a Hottentot because she is women it conjures up the idea of the “Hottentot Venus”, a African woman that was put on displayed during this time period and very much stereotyped as a sexual being and later denounce in British culture. Therefore, it is not hard to understand why Anna became a “whore”. In essence, Anna because of her alienation her adheres to her friends’ belief of what a relationship and becomes that in essence. In the end, Voyage in the Dark is not a simple romantic novel, like Jane Eyre has been originally interpreted as, it is a novel about imperialism much like Jane Eyre.