Let Them Call it Jazz (1962)

Q. Is the ending of LTCIJ happy or sad?

Let’s start with title. We’ll start with the “jazz” part. Music---sounds and silence---

important motifs throughout story. But “jazz” brings something particular to mind:

“The colonialist critic, unwilling to accept the validity of sensibilities other than his

own, has made particular point of dismissing the African novel. He has written

lengthy articles to prove its non-existence largely on the grounds that the novel is a

peculiarly Western genre, a fact which would interest us if our ambition was to write

“Western” novels. But, in any case, did not the black people of America, deprived of

their own musical instruments, take the trumpet and trombone and blow them as they

had never been blown before, as indeed they were not designed to be blown? And the

result, was it not jazz? Is any one going to say that this was a loss to the world or that

those first negro slaves who began to play around with the discarded instruments of

their masters should have played waltzes and foxtrots?” - Achebe, from ‘Colonialist

Criticism’ in ‘Hopes and Impediments’, p. 88.

-> Connection between music and literature. Note music connects Selina to her

homeland and family (esp. Grandma). E.g. p.320, or her singing to make herself feel

better. Yet singing is what land her on prison; they want to silence her.

Fanon w/r/t new hybrid forms of art: “The colonialist experts do not recognize these

new forms and rush to the rescue of indigenous traditions. It is the colonialists who

become the defenders of indigenous style. [E.g.] the reaction of white jazz fans when

after the Second World War new styles such as bebop established themselves. For
them jazz could only be the broken, desperate yearning of an old “Negro,” five

whiskeys under his belt, bemoaning his own misfortune and the racism of he whites.

As soon as he understands himself and apprehends the world differently, as soon as he

elicits a glimmer of hope and forces the racist world to retreat, it is obvious he will

blow his horn to his heart’s content and his husky voice will ring out loud and clear.”

(The Wretched of the Earth 176-7).

Example: her fear of official documents/procedures. After run in with cops when her

savings were stolen (LTCIJ 315), neighbours call cops on Selina for her singing

(316). Selina comments that how police behave “all depend who they dealing with. Of

my own free will I don’t want to mix up with police. No.” (317). Selina is taken to

court and fined 5 pounds for drunken behaviour (ibid). Policemen on the street “don’t

look at me, but they see me all right.” (318). A cop tells Selina, when she is getting

ready to leave: “Are you coming quietly or aren’t you?” (321). In the magistrate the

police “talk in low voices” (ibid.) “The magistrate is a little gentleman with a quiet

voice, but I’m very suspicious of these quiet voices now.” (322). “I wan to tell him

the woman next door provoke me since long time and call me bad names but she have

a soft sugar voice and nobody hear” (322). Selina tries to adapt: “I want to say this in

decent quiet voice. But I hear myself talking loud and I see my hands wave in the air.”

(322). After she’s out, when she wants to ask who paid her bail, the magistrate yells

“Silence”(326).

Compare with Moses’ warning to Galahad not to talk in the tube because he’ll have

to raise his voice (p. 36). Note Moses’ advice: “Don’t ask plenty questions and you

will find out a lot” (p. 37). So the Caribbean subject careful not to be loud.

But also gender differences: as Moses tells Lewis (who is constantly beating up his

wife): “Listen, women in this country not like Jamaica, you know. They have rights
over here, and they always shouting for something.” (p. 69); women still perceived as

“shouting”.

Impact in real life: “Rhys’s voice caused her such grief throughout her life she

eventually never spoke above a whisper.” (Czarnecki 25)

This raises q. of race vs gender. Coral Ann Howells claims “that gender politics are

more intricately registered in this story than racial politics, which work on a much

simpler pattern of binary opposition” (quoted in Lonsdale 3). But Lonsdale argues

that whilst “gender politics and female resistance are fundamental” to the story,

“racial issues are the driving force” (Lonsdale 3). The justification for this is the

preeminence of geography: “It is these connections with another location that provide

the impetus for the protagonist[] to recognize and subsequently collude with [her]

marginalize position[].” (Lonsdale 3). Selina’s singing connects her with black

grandma. The neighbours complain that “At least the other tarts that crook installed

here were white girls” (319). In general, both indispensable for Selina’s experience.

E.g. summer isn’t the glorious fete-riddled bachannaling for Selina as it is for the

LL. First sentence in LTCIJ is Selina getting kicked out on a July Sunday. “Not much

rain in the summer, but not much sunshine either. More of a glare.” (LTCIJ 312)

[compare with the sun “like a force-ripe orange” (LL 42 and 102)]. For the men in

LL, summer = legs and skirts. Not so for Selina.

In fact, while black men are sexualized by white women (fantasies of the exotic

other, p. 108; also fetishized as good luck charms in New Years, p.132), black women

are de-sexualized. This is echoed in Selina’s case, when Sims “kisses me like you kiss

a baby” (314). Black women aren’t ‘consumed’ in the sex market in either LL or

LTCIJ: “You’re not a howling success at it certainly”, says the neighbour to Selina

w/r/t her ‘trampness’ (319).

 [In I am a Martinican Woman, a semi-autobiographical novel by Lucette Ceranus

(under pseudonym Mayotte Capécia): “I should have liked to be married, but to a

white man. But a woman of color is never altogether respectable in a white man’s

eyes. Even when he loves her.” (qted in Fanon, BSWM 29). Fanon hates the book:

“cut-rate merchandise, a sermon in praise of corruption” (29). But Fanon sees black

women wanting to sleep with white men as a way to gain access to whiteness, yet

doesn’t analyse why white men sleep with black women (mentions maids)

Apple tree -- Eden: “there are five --- six apple trees. But the fruit drop and lie in the

grass, so sour nobody want it. At the back, near the wall, is a bigger tree --- this

garden certainly take up a lot of room, perhaps that’s why they want to pull the place

down.” (LTCIJ 312). At the end “they are cutting down the big tree at the back and I

don’t stay to watch” (327). So sour apple like Selina in England: the temptation is

rejected and left to rot, eventually uprooted and dead.

Also Selina as liar (like serpent). In the magistrate, “They whisper, they whisper”

and don’t believe her (ibid) [not silence/quiet]. When in Holloway, a police woman is

looking at Selina. “She look like she thinking, ‘Now the lies start.’ So I prefer not to

speak.” (325) --- the colonial subject is already spoken for, already constructed.

Previous landlady probably steals Selina’s savings and then claims she had no money

and that “These people terrible liars” (315) [note the creolized rendition]. Ironic,

given their false testimony. Selina’s black grandmother says her white father was a

“first class liar, though no class otherwise” (316) [note “class” in terms of social

distinction].

Need for West Indian immigrants to be heard but the refusal of the British to listen

(e.g. episode of reporter asking Moses and then cutting him off in p.29): since they’re

liars, no need to listen. Selina says “nobody see and bear witness for me” (310)
[compare with not bearing witness episode of Cap’s wedding].

Both “The Lonely Londoners” and “Let Them Call It Jazz” show British racism as

“old English diplomacy” (LL 40). “Nobody in London does really accept you. They

tolerate you, yes, but you can’t go in their house and eat or sit down and talk.” (LL

130). Selina is suddenly kicked out because one month’s rent is suddenly required in

advance (310). “I can see the woman next door looking at me over the hedge. At first

I say good evening, but she turn away her head, so afterwards I don’t speak.” (LTCIJ

313). The husband “stare as if I’m wild animal let loose.” (ibid.). Then neighbour lady

“says in a very sweet quiet voice, ‘Must you stay? Can’t you go?’” (316). Even after

everything, the neighbours claim “There was no provocation” (321) in court,

corroborated by another neighbour (as opposed to lack of witness for Cap).

Neighbour testifies that Selina “make dreadful noise at night and use abominable

language, and dance in obscene fashion” (321). Compare with Heart of Darkness,

when Kurtz’ nerves “went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight

dances ending with unspeakable rites” (HoD 71).

Selina imprisoned by stereotypes/assumptions about her. But also literally.

Holloway prison for adult women and young offenders in Holloway, London. It was

the largest women's prison in western Europe until its closure in 2016. Until 1991, the

Prison was staffed by female Officers.

Suffragettes imprisoned at Holloway, where they were treated as common criminals,

not political prisoners. In protest, some went on hunger strike and were force fed so

Holloway has a large symbolic role in the history of women's rights in the UK.

Suffragettes imprisoned there include Emily Davison, Constance

Markievicz, Charlotte Despard, and Ethel Smyth. In 1912 the anthem of the

suffragettes - "The March of the Women", composed by Ethel Smyth with lyrics
by Cicely Hamilton - was performed there. [Oscar Wilde was also held there (pre-

1852)]

Here desire to break down walls = Jericho allusion. “One day I hear that song on

trumpets and these walls will fall and rest.” (325) Will get to irony of this later. First:

Joshua leads the Isralites to Canaan to finally claim the promised land. They start at

Jericho. The Lord tells Joshua that seven priests shall bear before the ark of the

covenant seven trumpets (shofars), circling the city once every day for seven days.

And on the seventh they’ll blast the trumpets and all the people shall shout and the

wall of the city collapse (6:2-5). And once the wall fell down, “they utterly destroyed

all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and

ass, with the edge of the sword.” (6:21 KJV).

But connected to Rahab story: second chapter of Joshua tells how Joshua sends two

spies to Jericho. There they “came into an harlot’s house, named Rahab, and lodged

there” (Joshua 2:1, KJV). The king of Jericho is told that two men from the Israelites

have come to lodge with Rahab and he sends for her but she lies and hides the spies.

She tells them their god is the true God and asks that in return for her help they spare

her and her family when they invade. The two spies give her a scarlet thread to bind in

her window so that none of the inhabitants in that house get murdered during the

invasion. “And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father’s household, and

all that she had; and she dwelleth in Israel even unto this day” (6:25). (Obs: Rahab is

spared by a crimson thread just as the Israelites are spared of the plagues in Egypt by

marking their homes with red blood).

Obs: The spies are not named but Rahab, the prostitute, is. “The idea of a prostitute

as the hero of the narrative was troubling to the Rabbis. Thus she is said […] to have

become a pious convert because of her encounter with the spies; she then marries
Joshua and becomes the ancestor of nine prophets […]. In Christian tradition she is

reckoned as an ancestor of Jesus (Matt. 1.5) and as an example of living by faith

(Hebrews 11.31).” (Note to Joshua 2:2 in JSB). [importance of naming; and Selina as

failed Rahab?]

Following Jericho walls episode is Achan episode: Achan steals gold and silver from

Jericho (doesn’t hand it in for God) and causes a military excursion to fail as

consequence. He is found out, confesses, and is stoned to death along with his family

and then they’re (or, more likely, the stolen booty; unclear) set on fire (Joshua ch 7).

Selina’s loss of savings without consequence to landlady disproves this.

In prison Selina hardens: “I don’t care for nothing now, it’s as if my heart hard like a

rock and I can’t feel” (323). Compare with the “cold and smooth” hand of the officer

that takes her to Holloway (322) and at the start, when Selina claims “Plenty people

there [in London] have heart like stone” (310).

Related to self-alienation (something Selvon’s characters also experience). “my arm

moves of itself. I pick up a stone and barn! Through the window.” (319) and

“Afterwards I ask myself, ‘Why I do that? It’s not like me.’” Her explanation: “But if

they treat you wrong over and over again the hour strike when you burst out that’s

what.” (p. 320). She’s glad of breaking the window but “as to my song it go right

away and it never come back.” (ibid.) [dismantling of “He who is without sin”

commandment; reinforced by song following: “Don’t trouble me now/ You without

honour” (320)]

In prison “there’s a small looking glass in my cell and I see myself and I’m like

somebody else. Like some strange new person.” (324) [compare with Woolf’s looking

glass]. Also, mentally responds to lady waiting for train “I come so far I lose myself

on that journey” (p. 327).

 One of the main ways this alienation is seen is through language. Falls partly within

the colonial language dilemma. W/r/t “how to negotiate the chasm between a colonial

language and an African-derived culture” (Gikandi), see León Laleau’s poem

“Trahision” (1931, Haiti):

“This haunted heart that doesn’t fit

My language or the clothes I wear

Chafes within the grip of

Borrowed feelings, European ways.”

Story is narrated in creole and words like “fout” and “doudou” remain untranslated--

linguistic gap. First time one of them appears (“fouti”) is when Selina is angry at the

neighbours calling her worse than a white tart: “You a dam fouti liar” (319). The

second one (“doudou”) is after that incident when she recalls her grandma when

singing the song (320). Link with her past and identity: after all, language “is both a

means of communication and a carrier of culture” (Ngugi, Decolonising the Mind 13).

“I would never be part of anything. I would never really belong anywhere, and I

knew it, and all my life would be the same, trying to belong, and failing. Always

something would go wrong. I am a stranger and I always will be, and after all I didn’t

really care. Perhaps it’s my fault, I really can’t think far enough for that. But I don’t

like these people, I thought. I don’t hate -- they hate -- but I don’t love what they love.

[…] I don’t know what I want. And if I did I couldn’t say it, for I don’t speak their

language and I never will.” -- from Smile, Please, quoted in Gildersleeve 33.

“Language, Bakhtin suggests in The Dialogic Imagination, defines worldview.

‘Language gives expression to forces working toward concrete verbal and ideological

unification and centralization, which develop in vital connection with the processes of

sociopolitical and cultural centralization,’ making the removal of language from self-
processing impossible.” - Afsari-Mamagani, G. E. (2012). "Dialogic Conflict and

Speech Identity in Jean Rhys' Let Them Call it Jazz." Inquiries Journal/Student

Pulse, 4(08). Retrieved from http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/a?id=679.

“With Selina telling her story in patois, “Let Them Call It Jazz” responds to literary

modernism’s linguistic dilemmas and transforms the marginalized female voice into

one of authority.” - Czarnecki, Kristin. “Jean Rhys's Postmodern Narrative Authority:

Selina's Patois in ‘Let Them Call It Jazz.’” College Literature, vol. 35, no. 2, 2008,

pp. 20–37. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25115491.

See Selina’s refusal of the prison books “about a murder, and the other one is about a

ghost and I don’t think it’s at all like those books tell you.” (324) Compare with

Moses’ claim: “Is so it is in this country […] Sometimes the words freeze and you

have to melt it to hear the talk.” (p. 35). Also with “the suicide of the Haitian poet

Edmond Laforest, who tied a Larousse dictionary around his neck before he drowned

himself to protest the hegemony of the colonial library.” (Gikandi)

The only occasions when ‘proper’ English is printed are times when Selina quotes

British people. E.g. Sims saying “Just what I’m going to talk about. Give it a week

longer Selina.” (p. 315). But even sometimes when quoting she transcribes into

Patois: “ ‘These people terrible liars,’ she say and I think ‘it’s you a terrible liar’” (p.

315).

“Does Selina misrepresent the English woman by putting her words into patois,

thereby diminishing her narrative credibility? Or does the English woman “speaking”

patois become less credible instead---culturally inferior or low-class, the common

English perception of patois? Of which woman is this bit of patois more revealing?”

(Czarnecki 21).

Holloway song: “I don’t hear the words --- only the music.” (325) After song,
Selina regains vitality (she starts eating) but learns the power of silence/assimilation

(“Then I say a little of what really happen in that house. Not much. Very careful.”

(325)). The lesson in the end is that “I know what to say and everything go like

clockworks” (327). She lies and gets ahead (e.g. her new job). But Selina never sings

again (“I never sing now” 327).

Selina ends up faking an English accent after her release and it is only then that she

becomes integrated into society. Note Harris’ efforts and Galahad putting on an

accent to soothe the crying child in p.88, right before the black hand speech

When song is jazzed up, after Selina’s complaint that it’s not like that, everyone

defends the arrangement saying it’s “first class” (327); note comparison with lying

father. [Obs: Selina gets five pounds from musician, same as her fine for public

disorder.]

For Lonsdale, the title is a devil-may-care positive attitude: “Selina’s song may have

been taken from her and she may no longer sing, but she realizes that its meaning has

not been: “let them play it wrong. That won’t make no difference to the song I

heard.”” (3).

But then, if “To name the world is to ‘understand’ it, to know it and have control

over it. […] To name reality is therefore to exert power over it, simply because the

dominant language becomes the way in which it is known.” (Ashcroft et al, P-CR

283), is that really a victory? The fact that the narrative is written in creole seems to

suggest that language is important and empowering. If she lets them call it jazz, isn’t

she letting them win?

Moreover, isn’t there a certain irony in the “let them”? She tries to correct them and

fails; it’s not like she has any power to stop them. Is her buying the pink dress really a

triumphant gesture when she never wore her previous dress (unwarranted
consumption) and used to exist unbound by the economic superstructure?

Obs: Selina doesn’t care about money, therefore outside of consumer capitalism. “I

don’t trouble about money” (p. 313). Yet, Mr Sims expresses what Selvon’s

characters experience about money: “It gets you. My God it does. […] Money. […]

Ways of making it.” (LTCIJ 314). Selina: “I work hard for my money” (317),

referring to her savings, but doesn’t seem to be as constricted as the LL, e.g.

Ironically, the high end dress store appreciates Selina’s methodical, careful sewing

(327), unlike her first job. “That’s very expensive in London” (the customized

attention) --- British value of something they otherwise depreciate because of

racial/sexual discrimination. Same with Holloway song.

Moreover, does Selina appropriate the Holloway song by saying it was “hers”?

Selina modifies the original song (adds trumpets) and claims it was “for her”, despite

it being for all the Holloway prisoners. Irony that jazz is trumpets. But then, “Even if

they played it [the Holloway song] on trumpets, even if they played it just right, like I

wanted --- no walls would fall so soon. ‘So let them call it jazz,’ I think, and let them

play it wrong.” (328). So cynical conclusion?

If one sees the Other as completely Other, then there is no incentive to try to adopt

the POV of that Other as it is irrelevant to you. “Genuine and thorough

comprehension of Otherness is possible only if the self can somehow negate or at

least severely bracket the values, assumptions, and ideology of his culture” (Ashcroft

and Griffiths, P-CR 18). Selina doesn’t do this at the start but does at the end. So is

the end one of comprehension?

Selina “draw[s] [her] energies from a resistance to established, dominant narratives

and emphasize[s] the importance of the social construction of subjectivity not just in

traumatizing the individual but also as the basis for a resistance to those
metanarratives” (Herb Wyile and David Pare, qted in Czarnecki 31). --- does she?

Veronica Gregg views Rhys’ imagination as “profoundly racialized, even racist”

(quoted in Czarnecki 31) because of “her use of West Indian ‘black people’ as props

to the Creole identity and as cultural objects” (quoted in Czarnecki 32).

LTCIJ and LL parallels

Both LL and LTCIJ mention Notting Hill as key location (“the Gate”). Rum important

for characters in both narratives.

“I think I go but I don’t go. Instead I wait for the evening and the wine and that’s all.”

(LTCIJ 312). Compare with Moses: “Every year he vowing to go back to Trinidad,

but after the winter gone and birds sing and all the trees begin to put on leaves again,

and flowers come and now and them then old sun shining, is as if life start all over

again, as if it still have time, as if it still have another chance. I will wait until after the

summer, the summer does really be hearts.” (LL p.140-1).

“I laugh like my grandmother” -- can’t run away from her roots. (p. 319)

“I’m disappointed in you Selina. I thought you had more spirit.”, Mr Sims tells her

(314). Contrast with “Woman must have spunks to live in this wicked world.” from

Wide Sargasso Sea.

Wikipedia:

Rhys was born in Roseau, the capital of Dominica, an island in the British West

Indies. Her father, William Rees Williams, was a Welsh doctor and her mother,

Minna Williams, née Lockhart, was a third-generation Dominican Creole of Scots

ancestry.

Rhys was educated in Dominica until 16, then sent to England to live with an aunt.

She attended the Perse School for Girls in Cambridge, where she was mocked as an

outsider and for her accent. She attended two terms at the Royal Academy of

Dramatic Art in London by 1909. Her instructors despaired of her ever learning to

speak "proper English" and advised her father to take her away. Now unable to train

as an actress and refusing to return to the Caribbean as her parents wished, she

worked with varied success as a chorus girl.

“As far as I know, I am white -- but I have no country really now” - Rhys, qted in

Gildersleeve 32.

Brathwaite suggests a ‘jazz’ model for novels by West Indians written IN the West

Indies: “The ‘jazz novel’, in the normal course of things, will hardly be an ‘epic’.

Dealing with a specific, clearly-defined, folk-type community, it will try to express

the essence of this community through its form. It will absorb its rhythms from the

people of this community; and its concern will be with the community as a whole, its

characters taking their place in that community, of which they are felt and seen to be

an integral part. The conflicts which give this kind of novel meaning will not be

Faustian conflicts of self-seeking knowledge or the Existentialist stoicism of

alienation.” -- from the “Jazz and the West Indian Novel” excerpt in the PCR, 330. -->

Note how this model breaks in the case of Rhys’ story because of Selina’s isolation

(and alienation) outside of Martinique. But Rhys’ novel does have what Brathwaite

calls “elements of protest [that] are also closer to jazz than they are, say, to the waltz,

the raga or the highlife.” (331)