Zadie Smith’s White Teeth explores in-depth the roles of gender, race, and class in post-colonial Britain as it follows the lives of Samad and Alsana, and Archie and Clara. Alsana clearly holds very traditional views, which transfer to her idea of gender roles, though they may not line up with English society. When first meeting Clara, Alsana notes her shorts, “red shorts of a shortness that [she] had never imagined possible, even in this country” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 1238). Because she is shocked by the length of Clara’s shorts, Alsana shows her view that women should dress modestly. This quote also shows that English society is not as rigid as Indian society in reference to women’s dress. Alsana also shows the view of gender in English society during her conversations with Neena and Clara. First, her nickname for Neena of “Niece-of-Shame” because of her sexuality shows that English society is more liberal and accepting than Alsana’s native Indian culture (Greenblatt, 2018, 1244). In addition, she tells Clara that she should “choose Sarah [as the name of her baby] and let that be and end to it. Sometimes you have to let these men have it their way” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 1245). This idea is instantly rejected by Neena, who advocates for communication between husband and wife and generally holds more feminist views. Neena goes on to say that she would have to consider abortion if she were pregnant with a boy and Smith mentions her ascribing to feminist views, which shows that abortion and feminist ideas may be accepted in English society. Because Zadie Smith presents Alsana’s views of gender as antiquated and traditional, we can presume English society is more liberal, allowing the acceptance of homosexuality, abortion, and independence for women—vastly different from the oppression and control over women in Alsana’s homeland.
Alsana also shows the view of black people in Britain with her comments about Clara. At their first meeting, Alsana thinks, “So some black people are friendly,” as if she expected it impossible for people with that skin color to be friendly (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 1238). She further expresses these prejudiced views when she fights with Samad about her unhappiness in London and disagrees about their having friends: “I don’t know them! You fight in an old, forgotten war with some Englishman…married to a black!...These are the people my children will grow up around? Their children—half blacky-white?” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 1242). Her disbelief at Archie’s marriage to a black woman, her disapproval of her children growing up around that family, and her derogative adjective for Archie and Clara’s children all show her prejudice and view of black people, translated through post-colonial society. Zadie Smith also portrays the importance of class in English society through Samad’s experiences at the restaurant he serves at. Shiva, another waiter who pulls big tips, “abuse[s]” Samad, while his cousin Ardashir, the owner, constantly gives Samad “condescension” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 1240). When forced to share a five pound tip with the entire wait staff, Shiva exclaims, “You all live off my back!” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 1240). Just paragraphs before this explosion, Samad debates keeping a fifteen pence tip for himself since he is struggling so much to provide for Alsana and their future children. Shiva looks down on Samad for being a forty year old waiter who lives off shared tips, shown through his abuse and degrading remarks. Ardashir’s greediness and condescension toward his cousin further show the importance of class and the experience of those in a lower class. Just the condescension alone shows that he looks down on Samad, as English society does on all in the lower class. When Samad asks for a pay raise to finance a new home in a better neighborhood, Ardashir “want[s] his cousin to feel that he ha[s] at least considered the case in all his friendly judiciousness before he decline[s]” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 1241). Clearly, he has no intention of giving Samad a pay raise, wanting to keep his wealth, but he wants him to think he considered it even though he didn’t. He justifies this inconsideration and lack of concern by saying, “If I made allowances for every relative I employ I’d be walking around like bloody Mr. Ghandi. Without a pot to piss in” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 1242). Ardashir is more concerned with his social class and wealth than with the financial stability of his cousin, which shows his greed and the influence of society on his views. Zadie Smith expertly uses White Teeth as a landscape to explore gender, race, and class within post-colonial English society. Works Cited Greenblatt et. al., (Eds). (2018). The Norton Anthology of English Literature The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. Minor Characters. Retrieved from www.shmoop.com/white-teeth/minor-characters.html.
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Jean Rhys’s The Day They Burned the Books explores the idea of paternegacies and inheritance in detail, correlating with the themes for unit seven. The story follows Eddie, a young boy with a mulatto mother and white father in the West Indies during colonization. His father’s legacy is English culture, represented mainly through his expansive library. Eddie’s father built a library that he filled with new books each time the mail came from England. Clearly, the library and books were important to him. Eddie connects to his father’s love of reading, shown through his asking to borrow Arabian Nights in the beginning of the story and his continued reading of other books throughout the story. Because the library acts as part of his father’s legacy that he connects to, when Mr. Sawyer passes away, Eddie gravitates toward the library, saying, “My room…My books” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 725). Without his father, Eddie just has his legacy to keep, which leads him to the library. Eddie holds tight to this legacy as he fights his mother when she begins emptying the room and burning the books: “’No,’ he said again in a high voice…he rushed at her, his eyes starting out of his head, shrieking, ‘Now I’ve got to hate you too. Now I hate you too” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 725).
While Eddie fights for his father’s books, he did not value other parts of his father’s legacy as much. While talking about parts of English culture, Eddie says he “do[es]n’t like strawberries”—a part of England the children around him talked and wondered about (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 724). He goes on to say that he “do[es]n’t like daffodils either,” even though his father and other adults from England talk about how beautiful they are (Greenblatt, 208, p. 724). These quotes show that Eddie does not value some parts of English culture—another part of his father’s legacy. Eddie does not connect to these parts of English culture like he does to books, so this part of his father’s legacy will not live on in him. However, since he has a love of reading instilled in him, he will hold tight to the remains of his father’s library and continue to cherish this part of his legacy forever. When our parents die, we honestly choose which parts of their legacies live on by honoring those legacies, so Eddie not honoring his father’s English culture along with his mother not passing it on to him, will end that part of the legacy. Our parents’ legacies are, of course, in their hands, but once they die, the choice of whether or not to honor and continue those legacies is ours to make, just like Eddie. Works Cited Greenblatt et. al., (Eds). (2018). The Norton Anthology of English Literature The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. Jennings, H. (2019). Units 4-8, 20th C. [Word Document]. Retrieved from pilot.wright.edu/d2l/le/content/507860/viewContent/2741935/View?ou=507860. As time progresses, different issues become important to us. These issues, like the times, change often. Today, we are concerned with issues like gender equality and LGBTQ+ affairs. However, in the twentieth century, a major issue was imperialism. Not surprisingly, during this time writers expressed their ideas on imperialism. One such author is Joseph Conrad in his Heart of Darkness. The story is a man named Marlow’s retelling of his experience going to Africa to colonize and sharing his thoughts on imperialism, colonists, and natives. One topic Marlow touches on throughout the story is savagery.
Marlow establishes his view of indigenous people in new lands early in the story as he wonders about what the Romans thought as they expanded their empire, saying, “Sandbanks, marshes, forests, savages—precious little for a civilised man to eat” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 76). To Marlow, all the Romans saw were nature and “savages,” not nature and humans living in the area before them. From this, we know Marlow thinks indigenous people are not human, not like the “civilised” colonists, but are savages—barbaric and uncivilized. He also establishes his view of colonists—as civilized and superior—in this quote. Throughout the rest of the story, Marlow refers to the natives as “wild men,” “criminals,” and “savages” rather than people (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 76 and 83). This view of natives is extremely dehumanizing and degrading. Another way Marlow dehumanizes the Africans is by never referring to them as individuals. Rather, he groups them together, saying, “a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 99). Refusing to acknowledge the natives as individual people and only referring to them as one mass of all the natives together takes away their individuality and humanity. Marlow talks about the natives “howl[ing] and leap[ing], and sp[inning], and ma[king] horrid faces,” actions that make them “not inhuman” in Marlow’s words, but savages (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 99). Marlow decides the Africans are savage because they have different customs than he and his fellow colonists do. Also, although he claims they are not inhuman, the degrading references and treatment of the Africans effectively strips them of their humanity, whether Marlow directly acknowledges it or not. Another instance Marlow shows his view of natives is when he talks about first landing at the station to wait for his journey to Kurtz. As he makes his way to the station, he encounters some Africans, chained together, approaching him. So, instead of continuing on his way, he decides to “let that chain-gang get out of sight before [he] climb[s] the hill” out of fear of them attacking him (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 84). His diction—“chain-gang”—paired with his fear of attack again shows his view of natives being savage. The men are chained together, making an attack significantly more difficult. In addition, they are being forced to work for the colonists and would face punishment for attacking a white man. “Chain-gang” also villainizes the men, even though they have not done anything to Marlow. He also talks about how the natives are “simple” people who can be scared off by blowing a steam whistle, which he uses to support his ideals, failing to recognize that they may be scared of the whistle because they are unaccustomed to the sound (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 112). While Marlow and his colleagues may believe the African natives are “savage,” I would argue that the colonists themselves are the real savages. They invade these natives’ home, force them to work to the point of fatal exhaustion, and press new ideas, beliefs, and customs on them—all while taking their humanity and calling them savages. The colonists have an “International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs” tasked with pulling African customs from the natives and replacing them (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 110). I am sure the colonists would have caused an uproar had this occurred in their native countries. Moreover, the colonists take a punishment and no pity approach to making the natives work for them, shown through the beating of an African and the exclamation, “Transgression—punishment—bang! Pitiless, pitiless” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 91). The accountant also says that “one comes to hate those savages—hate them to the death” after being interrupted by a native’s groaning in pain as he tries to enter information into the books (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 86). So, on top of the forced cultural assimilation and pitiless punishment, the colonists get annoyed with the natives for making any sound that disrupts them, even if the sounds come from pain inflicted by them and are very human sounds. They also chained natives together, allowed only enough cloth to cover their genitals, and starved them to the point of malnourishment—another way to steal their humanity and humiliate them. I believe true savagery is dehumanizing others, forcing new ideas and death on others, and feeling superior to others because of your own view of your being “civilized” and their being “uncivilized.” Who are we to decide who is worthy of humanity, whose ideas are correct, or who is more civilized and worthy of independence and life? I believe in Heart of Darkness, the colonists are the true savages as they force “attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair” on the natives and pull their humanity from their grasp (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 84). Work Cited Greenblatt et. al., (Eds). (2018). The Norton Anthology of English Literature The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. Sexuality is a topic widely discussed through the ages. From sex not being sentimental to the debate over homosexuality, it often appears in literature. One writer who incorporates her views on sexuality in her work is Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf writes of a woman, Mrs. Dalloway, preparing for a party while diving into her consciousness, uncovering old memories. Within Mrs. Dalloway’s day, she is reminded of her old friend Sally Seton. As she thinks about Sally, Mrs. Dalloway reveals that she was in love with Sally and that they shared a kiss once. When they first met, Mrs. Dalloway was instantly infatuated with Sally, so much so that “she could not take her eyes off Sally” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 301). They sat for hours “talking in her bedroom at the top of the house, talking about life, how they were to reform the world” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 301). Woolf says the strange thing about Mrs. Dalloway and Sally was “the purity, the integrity, of [Dalloway’s] feeling for Sally” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 301). I think we can all relate to being unable to move our eyes away from someone we find attractive. I think we can all relate to the chemistry of talking for hours about anything and everything when we meet someone we click with. And I think we can all relate to purity and integrity of our feelings, truly caring and wanting the best for our partner. I think we can all relate to Mrs. Dalloway’s love for Sally.
So, while Mrs. Dalloway “fe[lt] what men felt” toward other women, she “resented it” (Greenblatt, 2018, p. 301). From the details of their first night together and her reminiscing, we know Mrs. Dalloway had a great love in Sally, pure and genuine. Yet she resented it. Why? Homosexuality was illegal for men during World War One—just before Mrs. Dalloway’s story—and remained illegal until 1967 in the United Kingdom—where Mrs. Dalloway is set (Homosexuality in the First World War). While homosexuality between women was never actually outlawed, “societal norms forbid [it],” calling homosexual acts “acts of gross indecency” (Homosexuality in the First World War). So, while it was not illegal for Mrs. Dalloway to be attracted to and in love with another woman, she faced public isolation and disgust for her “acts of gross indecency.” As anyone would be, she was conflicted between her true feelings and going against the rigid social norms of the time—much like women pursuing their passions during the Victorian age. From Mrs. Dalloway and Sally, we know that homosexuality was still socially unacceptable, which held people in love with those of the same sex forced to pretend they love another and to hide their true identity. Much like in the Victorian age, these people faced isolation, discrimination, and persecution simply for loving who they loved. Times had progressed in other ways, like women’s roles beginning to change, but society still had some work to do—which has been done in the years following 1967, when homosexuality was legalized in the United Kingdom. We have undoubtedly made much progress in accepting homosexuality and changing society from Mrs. Dalloway’s time, though there is always, of course, more work to be done. Works Cited Greenblatt et. al., (Eds). (2018). The Norton Anthology of English Literature The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. Homosexuality in the First World War. Retrieved from www.eastsussexww1.org.uk/homosexuality-in-wwi. |