”After the first week I made up my mind to kill myself- the usual whiff of chloroform. Next week, or next month, or next year I’ll kill myself...�
Some”After the first week I made up my mind to kill myself- the usual whiff of chloroform. Next week, or next month, or next year I’ll kill myself...�
Some people have the ill fate of cycling in the storms of lover archetype all their lives, their existence defined by an unyielding and devastating trajectory where joy hinges precariously on the capricious whims of the Other.
Sasha, the protagonist of Good Morning, Midnight, incarnates the pathos of all forsaken lovers in the bleak narrative of the intimate experience of loss. And what is a better city to get lost in the disorientation of solitary abandonment than Paris? City of both love and desperation, perfect for a lover’s mindless hedonism and exuberant fatalism, as well as its ensuing void. The beauty, the glamour, and the romantic atmosphere mixed with decrepit, budget hotels where Sasha wants to drink herself to death. With frequent thoughts of suicide, she meanders Paris streets half-alive like an automaton, and even the mere arrangement of the passing of time becomes troublesome. In her dissociation and disconnection from everything - including herself - Sasha illuminates the deep suffering and the cold barrenness of internal desolation. The center of the novel is her fragmented subjective experience of the circumstances accompanied by pain so overbearing it is accompanied by deep disorientation - of who you are, where are you going, what are you supposed to do, and even the meaning of your life. Slowly falling to pieces, the aftermath of abandonment is an impoverished existence where there is nothing at all. A void of blankness and nihilism.
It is through this lens that we witness Sasha's world in 1930s Paris come to life, a vivid tableau of romantic suffering leading to an existential crisis.
”I am empty of everything. I am empty of everything but the thin, frail trunks of the trees and the thin, frail ghosts in my room.�
A woman’s true love has a mark of endurance, selfless giving, and unwavering commitment. Rhys, donning the alter ego Sasha, stands as a testament to the profound love wielded by highly intellectual women. For reasons both elusive and indefinite, these women are drawn to lovers who possess the capacity to crush their very souls. But much like Frida Kahlo, they possess the remarkable ability to transfigure their pain into great art—a testament to the beautiful transfiguration of passion and pain into creation.
The madness in love extends beyond mere affection; it envelopes the obsession of being seen through the lens of one's lover. Without the penetrating gaze of a beloved, Sasha experiences a disconcerting sense of self-loss. It transcends the loss of a singular lover; it's a forfeiture of an entire version of reality and the self. Sasha's paranoia weaves a web around her, a fear of being perceived by others in any conceivable manner—a testament to the interplay of vulnerability and core identity in the realm of love. It is not that it is only the lover’s heart at stake - their whole essence and identity is.
“I’m such a fool. Please don’t take any notice of me. Just don’t take any notice and I’ll be all right�.
Sasha’s value goes through deflation in the horrific labyrinth of solitude and despair. The devastating definition of a woman’s value is dictated through distorting mirrors of the male gaze, where society often conditions the inherent value of women through a narrow prism of romantic and erotic desirability.
Which opens up a poignant question about women’s identity. What becomes of a woman when she is deemed undesirable? A woman who only serves for exploitation and mistreatment grapples with a painful erosion of self-respect. The resultant brew of resentment and profound self-hatred extends not only towards her but also towards humanity. The unbearable weight of being perceived as worthless by a society that devalues her transforms Sasha into a cold-brewed misanthrope—hating any gaze, averse to humanity's reflection that renders her as nothing more than a vessel for disregard.
“And when I say afraid- that’s just a word I use. What I really mean is I hate them. I hate their voices, I hate their eyes, I hate the way they laugh�..I hate the whole bloody business. It’s cruel, it’s idiotic, it’s unspeakably horrible. I never had the guts to kill myself or I’d have got out of it a long time ago. So much the worse for me. Let’s leave it at that.�
In disillusionment, she loses faith in humanity, in herself, and in life. The dreams of youth and the aspirations for the future, once vibrant, now echo as distant, unattainable whispers in Sasha's attempt to relive them—a futile pursuit, as they can never be resurrected.
“I have no pride � no pride, no name, no face, no country. I don’t belong anywhere. Too sad, too sad…�
The heart of the novel is the experience of loss and painful dwelling in it. One review skillfully highlights the contrast in how men and women navigate grief, drawing parallels with Miller's Tropic of Cancer. Miller, after leaving his wife, seeks refuge in Paris through prostitutes and self-importance, while Sasha, left by her husband, immerses herself in the suffocating embrace of despair. Men often turn to new experiences, storms of lust, or even suicide to escape emotional pain, whereas women emerge as heroes in enduring and withstanding such suffering. It's no coincidence that women stood tall at the cross—a symbolic representation of humanity's ultimate suffering.
Can one person go through the darkness of pain and come out? The novel is at least ambivalent. Reminiscing about the past can keep you stuck, or give you the freedom to move from it. The ultimate hurt and starting point of freedom is accepting the absence of reciprocity of love.
“When I saw him looking up like that I knew that I loved him, and that it was for always. It was as if my heart turned over, and I knew that it was for always. It's a strange feeling - when you know quite certainly in yourself that something is for always.�
Sasha has to make amends with the fact it is over, and that the heart was given in the wrong place, to the wrong person. The hurt is so permeating and constant that there is no way to run away from it. Pain that transcended the limits of being able to return to the starting position. Cut so deep it can’t never heal. Observation of forever reaching its finitude while the whole fabric of reality falls apart.
“People talk about the happy life, but that’s the happy life when you don’t care any longer if you live or die.�
It is easy to continue the self-destructive pattern even when the affair is over just like Sasha with depressive alcoholism in the empty room, or in bed with incidental lovers. With little consolation, or none at all. Sasha is all despondent lovers who are not hiding from their grief, but embracing it and seeing the world from it, no matter how hard it is.
Good Morning, Midnight is an epitaph of all the people who loved and lost and almost lost themselves in their pain. Deeps of suffering that can never be verbalized, only captured in words with disjointed fragments of the subjective realm, glimpses, and pale reflections of the unfathomable sadness.
In Rhys's words, ”life is too sad; it's quite impossible.�...more
Loading...
