Good Morning, Midnight

In Part 2 unveils the novel’s time period as late October 1937. As she travels with Nicolas to Serge’s studio, Sasha, inspired by the familiar setting, ruminates on her past experiences in the streets of Paris. She remembers encountering a man who criticized the younger generation when he proclaimed, “‘All you young women,’ he says, ‘dance too much. Mad for pleasure, all the young people […] Ah, what will happen to this after-war generation? I ask myself. What will happen? Mad for pleasure’” (89). He identified Sasha as a representative of this generation and harped on its obsession with “pleasure.” His rhetorical questions on the future of this generation mirror those of society at large and capture the uncertainty of the early 20th century. Categorizing Sasha into this “after-war generation” places her struggles to overcome her past trauma in the larger context of World War I’s impact on the Western world. Sasha’s loss of identity and struggle to reconcile her upbringing with her desire for experimentation and change represent the experiences of her generation at large. Caught in the uncertain space between the trauma of World War I and the beginning tides of World War II, Sasha’s generation flounders to balance emotional trauma with their commitment to hedonistic pleasure.

The commonality of Sasha’s experiences relies not only on the time period but also on Sasha’s struggles with mental illness. Through shifts to a second-person point of view, Rhys extends Sasha’s depression beyond an individual experience. Capturing Sasha’s point of view as influenced by her struggles to live with depression, Rhys employs second person when she writes, “In the middle of the night you wake up. You start to cry. What’s happening to me? Oh, my life, oh, my youth” (90). Here it is not only Sasha who questions what is happening to her but also the reader, who may also understand the unremitting forces of depression. Again, Sasha’s experiences connect on a larger scale to a study in depression itself.

Upon entering Serge’s studio, Sasha is drawn to the wall of West African masks. As “the close-set eye-holes stare into mine” (92), Sasha recognizes them as masks worn by those around her who question why she has not yet committed suicide and pressure her to follow society’s standards. She imagines the masks asking her, “Are you one of us? Will you think what you’re told to think and say what you ought to say?” (92). By ascribing the masks to the people within her life, Sasha comments on the false nature of society’s requests for conformity; just as Serge wears and removes the masks as he dances for Sasha, so too can society hide behind the ephemeral façade of normalcy. Sasha, through her attempts to buy new clothing and assume the role of a conformed woman, attempts to mask her torrent of strong emotions and inability to find inner peace.

As Sasha and Nicolas await Serge’s return, she envisions herself living in a room like Serge’s studio and being filled with “the dreams that you have, alone in an empty room, waiting for the door that will open, the thing that is bound to happen” (100). Here Sasha foreshadows the novel’s ending and captures a passive anticipation of that which is, fatefully, “bound to happen.” The word “dreams” implies an aspiration as opposed to the terror associated with nightmares; the use of the description “the thing” appeals to the ambiguous nature of this final act and dehumanizes it. It is not a union of two people that awaits Sasha but rather a larger force.

Sasha’s choice of picture to buy from Serge Rubin connects once again to men’s pervasive power over her life. Depicting an old man standing in a gutter and playing a banjo, the picture causes Sasha to “think about being hungry, being cold, being hurt, being ridiculed, as if it were in another life than this” (109). Unlike the landscape painting that Serge offers as an alternative, this picture forces Sasha to confront her pain rather than hide it under a façade of conformity.