I was intrigued by the passage on page 149. Anna describes a picture.
"There was a little girl in a pink dress eating a large yellow biscuit studded with currants - what they called a squashed-fly biscuit - and a little boy in a sailor suit, trundling a hoop, looking back over his shoulder at the little girl. There was a tidy green tree and a shiny pale blue sky, so close that if the little girl had stretched her arm up she could have touched it. (God is always near us. So cosy.) And a high, dark wall behind the little girl.
Underneath the picture was written:
The past is dear,
The future is clear,
And, best of all, the present.
But it was the wall that mattered.
And that used to be my idea of what England was like. 'And it is like that, too,' I thought." (Rhys 149).
I found it very existential of Anna to like the "dark wall" rather than all of the pretty colors in the picture (149). She goes out of her way to describe them, but then she likes the background better. I think this signifies how she feels lonely and does not know what to do. She wants to blend into her surroundings and not stand out anymore because she does not get what she wants when people do pay attention to her. I was confused, though, about the last sentence. I did not understand to what she was referring. Is England like the "dark wall" or the colorful scene in the foreground? If so, maybe she has changed as a person and feels differently about the way things are going for her.
Great observation! I feel Anna's attention to this wall rather than the colors around her was surely a reflection of her true character. Through the story people, men especially, are telling her she could be so much more enjoyable if she smiled every now and then or were nicer. I do feel that Anna associates more with the gloom of the dark wall because that is how she feels most of the time.
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