II

ENGLAND: A COLD COUNTRY

Ella^*

“Then, quite suddenly, it seemed, it began to grow cold.”

—Jean Rhys, “First Steps,” Smile Please

*A year after arriving in England in 1907, Gwen began to use her first given name: Ella. This was how Rhys would choose to be addressed in her private life during the next fifty years. Shortly after the publication of Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966, however, Rhys instructed her own daughter and grandchild to start calling her Jean, “because that is who I am” (Dr. Ellen Moerman to author, 23 January 2019).