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It’s interesting to note the evolution of the Spanish (romance) word para. It has fairly limited usage as “for … a purpose”, with a person as an object, or as a helper with some verbs, but non-native speakers often become confused by the subtle differences in usage between it and the more general por. The particle para probably evolved from the Latin word pro also meaning “for.” You can still see the Latin preserved as the prefix of some English words, such as “proscribe,” “promiscuous,” and of course “pro-bono.”

Today in Spain, however, para is not spoken with two syllables. Since there are no other Spanish words to be confused with pa’, the single-syllable prefix is preferred in everyday usage. So, writing “I have a gift for you” becomes Tengo un regalo pa’ ti instead of Tengo un regalo para ti. Pushed by the increasing pressure of fast, modern life, syllables drop off non-ambiguous words where they’re no longer needed. This is one way Spanish, or any language with an alphabet, optimizes itself to the pressure of information flow.

My sister had a good thought:

allright, anyways i’d like to say first of all that the atomic bomb was bad. really bad. no doubt about that. but it was a product of war. War has no rules. yes, i know that the bomb killed a ton of civilians. [ a couple hundred words redacted ] … Anyways, I think that war is the real fault here, and the bomb was only an extension of war.

Yes! It’s war that is evil!

In Voyage in the Dark, our central character Anna Morgan is a fixture of innocence sidelined for casual sex, a virgin working the chorus-girl scene, and a white girl enclosed by the black culture of her islands. Her sexuality is a confusing mix of conflicting internal and external affairs. Her true desires, what she imagines to want, and what her family, her men, and her island want of her draw Anna into a whirlwind of sexual expectations—not all of which can be satisfied. Unfortunately, it is hard to know where to start untangling the web of her sexuality—everything about it is intermixed. However, Voyage in the Dark gives us a good clue: the lady she is in England traces back to the girl she was growing up in the West Indies.

Hester tells us that Anna grew up “more like a nigger every day. Enough to drive anybody mad” (62). It was impossible to keep her segregated from the servants, and bring her up a “proper white lady.” Something in Anna’s soul identified more with the Morgan family’s servants’ laid-back manner than with racist Hester’s uptight English etiquette. Even when she left for England, she still carried her speech “exactly like a nigger:” she does not speak—she jabbers (65). Of course, the choice of the word “jabbers” is only Hester’s negative valuation of Anna’s black identification. Since Anna “hated being white … and getting like Hester,” to be black was not a spot on the British family honour, but rather a relaxing form of life where you didn’t have to get “old and sad and everything” (72). For Anna, self-identifying black is the Fourth Thing: a heaven free of the troubles and tensions that surround proper white folk.

But, as much as she feels consciously black, it affects her unconsciously as well. In a passage where she has sex with Walter, we see her affected in both ways:

Maillotte Boyd, aged 18. Maillotte Boyd, aged 18. … But I like it like this. I don’t want it any other way but this. (56).

Maillotte Boyd is the name of a young, female slave in the old rolls at Constance. She was a house-slave that Hester and Father Morgan gossiped about, quoting the second commandment:

I the LORD thy God [am] a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth [generation] of them that hate me. [2]

Since fornication and rape are sins against God, it is likely that the biblical allusion from the book of Exodus (and elsewhere) implies Maillotte Boyd’s master raped her, and produced a bastard. This ties in racially with Anna’s second sexual experience, because even though she is technically white, she identifies strongly as a black servant girl. Therefore, when she has sex again with a rich, powerful white man, it is almost as if she is that black slave, being raped. Anna consciously recognizes the parallels between the master who fathered Maillotte Boyd’s bastard and Walter, and between Maillotte Boyd and herself—so Anna murmurs “Maillotte Boyd” twice.

However, the next line is more powerful, because it comes from an unconscious desire to have sex that way, as Maillotte Boyd did. Besides racist dominant rape, Anna also faces transmitting the family curse, invoked in the name of God generations earlier. If we accept Hester’s allegation that Anna’s mother was coloured, we can likely assume that Uncle Bo in turn raped her in order to produce Anna—that is the only way it could have happened (65). Since Hester also lets us know—in certain terms—that Uncle Bo has a flock of illegitimate children, it seems increasingly likely, or perhaps just possible, that Anna Morgan’s mother was indeed another “kind” of Maillotte Boyd, which would mean that the Morgan women-progenitors of Anna are trapped in an endless cycle of white rape and bastard progeny—until the third or fourth generation. If Hester’s lineage is correct, at least three loosely connected generations of victims are represented so far, so Anna Morgan’s choice to sleep with Walter is not just consensual sex between two adults: it is the choice to pass on the family curse to a fourth generation. Experiencing sexual pleasure is fraught with the potential curse of a bastard.

Why would Anna push through these dark inhibitions and consummate her relationship with Walter, a man she hardly knows from a country she hates in a class far above her own of a race so terribly white? There are a few circumstantial indications—she was quite drunk (54), she was taught to lie still as a child (55)—but from her directive to Walter, “will you put the light out, I don’t like it in my eyes,” we know she was not significantly impaired and chose to sleep with him that night (56). It seems she is in love with Walter… her first true love. After she goes home, she paints a bipartite picture:

When you lay awake at night and remembered things. That was when it was sad, when you stood by the bed and undressed, thinking, “When he kisses me, shivers run up my back. I am … utterly happy. Is that me?” (57)

When you are alone, remembering what it is like to be with your man, it is sad. When you have to contrast the “utter happiness” of being in love with what is really you, the exiled, half-bred you who ought not be happy, but is madly in love, it is sad. In this passage, Anna constructs two images: one alone, one with Walter, and compares them. Alone, she yearns for him, remembers times with him, and ponders why she can be happy, she that has suffered so much. Together she is simply utterly happy. Taken with the previous passage, “I don’t want it any other way but this,” we can only conclude that love overcomes her fears, her legacy, and premonitions of rape. Anna Morgan gives her virginity to Walter because she likes it, circumstances be damned.

Circling out to a wider frame of reference, there are appreciably more influences on Anna’s sexuality than just her amorous desires and childhood in the West Indies. Now that she has been transplanted into London, she will grow according to the local sun and soil, the customs and forces of the English society that she has been tossed into. How much of her sexuality will remain hers, and how much will be tainted by English society?

In London, “swank’s the word,” notes Maudie (10). For a poor woman, there is enormous social pressure to get along, to dig your claws into some rich man, “to swank as much as [you] can” (45). When Maudie meets up with Anna again, money is all she talks about:

“He’s got a lot of money, hasn’t he? D’you know, I always knew you’d get off with somebody with money. […] The thing with men is to get everything you can out of them and not care a damn. You ask any girl […] who really knows, and she’ll tell you the same thing. […] The more you swank the better.” (44, 45)

But, Anna is sick of hearing it—she does not think much about Walter’s money. In her own words, all she wants is “to be with Walter,” but for a poor, lower class girl, the lure of fine dress and money is a powerful thing (50). In England, “everything makes you want pretty clothes like hell,” she thinks. “It’s awful” (25). Even though she claims she is not interested in Walter’s money, she lets him pay for her taxi (24), for a new set of expensive clothes (27), an elaborate dinner (19), and her stockings (11). Though she would deny it, money’s effect on her is not subtle:

I was accustomed to [receiving money from Walter] already. It was as if I had always had it. (27)

Flush with money, Anna Morgan becomes powerful. Her voice no longer sounds weakly thin, her attire takes on the appearance of high court, and her self-confidence improves—except at such mishaps as her slip up with Vincent. In everyday conversation, she lets it out that she was a chorus girl working a show at Southsea, which is an immediate relationship killer. I wonder—can she be so naïve to imagine that Walter and his moneyed acquaintances do not care about her upbringing, her social status, or her past? It is tragic, almost, that Anna (in theory) has the possibility of controlling the London situation and making good of her opportunity with Walter, if only she went for the swank. Maudie tells her how to do it: ask for a flat, for more money, perhaps even blackmail him later on. But, since pure Anna Morgan is “in love,” when she receives another gift from Walter she just flushes a little, feels somewhat better, and refuses to leverage more swank!
In this way, external influences control her sexuality with Walter; because she does not care much for money, she embarrasses him in public—a major reason why she would be later dumped. Since the money brings her some comfort, she continues to go out with a man she disliked from the start (35). It is a strange paradox that London money and class consciously interest her in no way, yet unconsciously subsidize her in totality. Except for when Walter—paying—takes her out to this place or that, she spends most of her time lying in bed! According to the attitude of Walter and co., her body is a commodity bought by paltry trinkets: sex for sale, cheap. Yet, according to innocent Anna, she gives herself up for love, for the thrill of being with a man.

I want to talk more about Anna’s commoditization as a sex object in the book, and how it seems “accidental” on her part. Using a generic voice and calling it “commoditization” does the situation a disservice: I believe that Anna is commoditized. Because of her society and the circumstances that swirl around her, Anna’s sexuality is taken from her and transformed into a commodity, commoditized.

Over time, we see her purity and sexual identity worn down. I am using “purity” here to refer to the state of her mind, rather than just her virginity, which we know to be intact at the start of the novel, although it too wears down. The first time that Walter wants to sleep with her, just after meeting her, she pushes him away as hard as she can, and kept saying “Damn you, let me go, damn you” (23). He glares at her, and she backs down, and wishes she had not struggled so hard. A quick reading gives a feeling of how nice she is, but underneath her desire to try again with Walter is a more important need to avoid marginalization. The text mentions that after his sexual rejection, Walter completely ignores Anna’s person:

Looking at me with eyes narrow and close together, as if he hated me, as if I wasn’t there; and then he turned away and looked at himself in the glass. (23)

She cannot stand the knowledge that she is wholly replaceable, that if Walter wanted he could just pluck up another chorus girl like her, or that without the prospect of sexual favors his interest abates . Perhaps the perfect defining moment of pre-fall Anna is the confrontation with the landlady, who calls her a tart. Anna “didn’t answer. [Her] heart was beating like hell” (30). So, at the start of Voyage in the Dark, Anna maintains her own sexual identity: she wants to be pure, unique, and loved. The assumptions about her sexual identity that the other Londoners force upon her (Maudie and money, Walter and whores, her landlady and tarts) hurt her.

The transition of Anna’s sexuality from her own possession to public commodity begins with the emotional context loss of her virginity to Walter, where she wants to give him anything he wants, and is turned down after the sex-act is over (38). From there, her relationship with him spirals completely out of control, he moves onto another field, and she lies fallow. Her reaction is to try to start over, anywhere, “so long as it’s somewhere that nobody knows,” but she cannot make a clean start, with all her money gone, her innocence and virginity taken, and her heart broken (100). All of the damage to her formerly pure sexuality is carried along with her.

She makes her new start with Ethel Mathews, who inspires this depiction:

Feelers grow when feelers are needed and claws when claws are needed and cunning when cunning is needed. (107)

Notice how Anna has fallen a full notch. The money-grubbing behavior that she found distasteful before is Ethel’s staple. She just needs a sharp sense for an opportunity with a man (feelers), feminine tricks to seduce him (claws), and a method of extortion to extract the maximum amount of money (cunning). Pre-Walter Anna would have rejected Ethel’s methods, but now she takes this new lifestyle for granted, telling Ethel that she “can get as much as [she] likes any time [she] likes;” living like this destroys a part of her old sexual identity, selling away “love” and her halcyon memories of Walter in exchange for an increased level of sexual commoditization where she finally acknowledges the disparity between what she wants and reality (112). At the cost of her dreams, Anna Morgan is forced to enter the sexual marketplace of London .

Anna’s sexual freedom takes a sadistic downturn that parallels her old life as a chorus girl after she is forced to take a job in the massage parlor. She used to be given dozens of pounds for clothes; now Carl gives her five quid. She used to be a chorus girl; now she works in a massage parlor with only a pretense of legitimacy . She used to go out with a man who would notice corked wine; now her company is a tart who yells at waiters not to spill her liqueurs (119). She used to mash cigarettes into Walter’s hands for embarrassing her in public; now she hits sketchy men who will not let go of her (161). As these facts roll by in Anna’s last days, we see that her sexuality is has fallen across the line that separated an innocent girl in London from all the other “chorus girls.” I feel that there are two more key passages I should touch on that lament Anna’s current position. The first is her semi-delirious recollection of riding as a child to Constance, which weaves together the themes of Anna’s black mentality, the loss of her innocence, and the commoditization and devaluation of her sexuality. Since the passage is so long, I will quote it piecewise, the interesting parts:

And then I tried to remember the road that leads to Constance Estate. … And the sweat rolling down Joseph’s face when he helped me to mount and the tear in my habit-skirt. And mounting, and then the bridge and the sound of the horse’s hoofs on the wooden planks, and then the savannah. (151)

She brings back the memory of the slave scrolls, and Maillotte Boyd’s curse—the road that leads to its fulfillment? Sexual submission, rape, and then a bastard pregnancy. In vivid detail, she remembers the first sexual encounter with Walter, where she equates losing her virginity to tearing her skirt, and the sexual act itself as sweaty mounting and riding a horse. After giving up her sexuality, she continues riding the horse off into the savannah, re-appropriating her sexuality:

And then … just beyond New Town the big mango tree. … (Francine says that if you wash your face in fresh coconut water every day you are always young and unwrinkled, however long you live.) You ride in a sort of dream. (151)

The New Town of her daydream is the move from her Walterian flat to Ethel’s house of manicure, massage, and whatever you desire. There, a woman is trapped forever, trying to preserve her youth so that she can keep attracting male customers for sex, or whatever they want. Washing one’s face with coconut water is an interesting way of temporarily fructifying Anna so that we can imagine her as a ripe mango for a man to sink his teeth into and suck lustily, just like Francine used to do it (67). Once you step onto the road to Constance, there are only two ways to go:

There were bits of the road that I was afraid of. The turning where you came very suddenly out of the sun into the shadow; and the shadow was always the same shape. And the place where the woman with yaws spoke to me. … I kept on looking backwards to see if she was following me, but when the horse came to the next ford and I saw clear water I thought I had forgotten about her. And now — there she is. (152)

I would interpret this as Anna’s feeling after she has fallen from grace, where she lives to get by, where her sex is not only expected, but overtly bought and sold. The fear of sexual disease and pregnancy always follows and warns her, but “the shadow was always the same shape.” Even though she is frightened by the effects of her complete sexual commoditization, Anna always returns to the same place, to be chased by the woman with yaws again.

All of Anna’s sexual slavery and frustration can be summed up by the dream-death she experience right before the Doctor came to stop her from bleeding to death from the illegal abortion:

You look at everything and you don’t see it only sometimes you see it like now I see – a cold moon looking down on a place where nobody is a place full of stones where nobody is. (187)

Her experience in London has left her feeling completely alone. After all, really nothing has changed, expect that her social status has fallen through the myriad sexual encounters, her body is used and broken, and her spirit no longer believes in the love that she once yearned so much for. But, here Anna Morgan takes Maillotte Boyd’s curse upon herself when she refuses to issue a bastard child and continue the cycle. Instead of giving birth to a child who has to “start all over again” at the absolute bottom of London, it is Anna Morgan who falls, but with the chance for a day where “anything might happen” (188). She has lost everything, but as sunlight creeps under the door, we see the tragic possibility of hope for a woman who has lost control over her life and sexuality. After an abortion, she is a marked woman. Her virginity, so important to Walter and the upper class sexual predators that lured her as a chorus girl, is gone. Her appearance and ruggedness, so necessary for lower class pimps, are destroyed by the bloody abortion that leaves her weak and defenseless. Her black, island curse is closed by her choice to abort the child and bear its burden on her life. Really, all good that can be said of Anna Morgan by the end of the book is that at least, she has her life—and her freedom. Now that no one will want her, that she has fallen through London’s sexual maze, can she live according to those strong desires we saw at the beginning of the book, where she threw off every impure sexual attempt she could detect. This is bittersweet at best, for Anna Morgan may no longer have any of her own desire at all.

If I had to say something about the impression of the ownership of sexuality that Jean Rhys paints in Voyage in the Dark, it would be like an impressionistic painting with a fuzzy black hold drawn between heaven and hell. On one side is all of a person’s desires, hopes, and love—their will to sacrifice for someone. The line sucks in all the bright parts of that happy person, draws out their blood and spirit, and they fall to the right, falling over that line into sorrow. And once they hit the canvas, they completely disappear. What takes a character like Anna Morgan’s sexuality from her, commoditizes it, and finally completely trivializes it? In Anna’s case, there is a complex family history and self-association with “blackness” that creates almost fatalistic sexual outcomes. There is the need and lust of money, to either swank at first, or just “get along” later. There are predatory men, noble or common, who believe that women in Anna’s role are sexual objects, if they pay the right price, and buy the right meals. And, there are the very real problems associated with promiscuous sex: children, disease, and illness. Since Anna Morgan begins like a coin on the rim of this funnel of external influences, it is completely assured her control over her sexuality will eventually spiral into the center.

Works Cited:

1. Rhys, Jean. Voyage in the Dark. London, WW Norton & Co., 1982.
2. The Bible: King James Version. Exodus 20:5. Creative Commons license.
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