Throughout Rhys's texts, more intensely in some than others but always significantly, colour functions as a symbolic code. Rhys provides depth and complexity by developing such poetic metaphors within her spare prose. By colour, I mean both a painter's palette and the consciousness of skin shade and the social construction of race which is so clearly an indication of a West Indian consciousness at work in Rhys's texts. By politics, I mean that colour conveys a complex and detailed sense of power relations, mainly to do with how the life force, libido itself, is repressed by hierarchical social organisation. Much can be said about complexities of race, culture, gender and nationality through this coding of colour, which repays close reading because it proves to be quite subtle and integral to Rhys's characterisation and settings.