I apologize for not posting in a while - the pace of things here has picked up quite a bit! I am hard at work on my first UCL essay right now, for my Ancient World in London Collections class (I'm writing about whether or not the British Museum should return artifacts like the Elgin Marbles or the Rosetta Stone to their countries of origin), so in the spirit of that I've decided to post two of my papers from over the summer. The first is from my Multicultural London Literature course and is focused on the novel "Small Island" and the experience of London immigrants, while the second is a close reading of one passage in "Much Ado About Nothing" ('close reading' is a very popular theme in UK courses, it seems). If anyone was wondering what I'm actually doing school-wise over here in London, here's some of it! (And if no one was wondering, I promise to post soon with pictures and escapades).
ESSAY:
The Migrant Experience: Drawing from Historical and
Fictional Accounts
“The feeling I had to know that I’m going
to touch the soil of the mother country, that was the feeling I had. How I can describe? It’s just a wonderful feeling. You know how it is when a child, you
hear about the mother country, and you know you’re going to touch the soil of
the mother country, you know what feeling is that? And I can’t describe it. That’s why I compose the song. Imagine how I felt.
Here’s where I want to be, London.” (Lord Kitchener, quoted in Phillips Windrush, 64).
From the first few notes of Lord Kitchener’s
calypso song “London is the Place for Me,” the optimism and hope of the
Caribbean migrants arriving on the SS Empire Windrush is immediately
evident. Composed before Lord
Kitchener had even glimpsed the United Kingdom, the song refers to the “lovely
city” where Kitchener can “feel like a millionaire” and live a “magnificent”
life. These ideas of England
and especially London as the apex of the British Empire, a place where
opportunity was everywhere and dreams could be easily achieved, were characteristic
of most (if not all) migrants arriving on British soil. The feelings that typified these
Caribbean migrants are present not just in personal statements by Lord
Kitchener and other passengers aboard the Windrush and later ships, but also in
the artistic creations, from Kitchener’s popular calypso lyrics to later
literature and poetic works, of the 1950s and beyond.
Andrea
Levy’s 2004 novel Small Island describes the experiences of four characters, two English and two
Jamaican, who find their lives inextricably bound together in the aftermath of
the Second World War. Though
telling a fictional story, Levy describes many aspects of actual Caribbean
migrants’ experiences and captures the essence of how many immigrants
felt. In Small Island, Gilbert, a young Jamaican man who
volunteers to join the RAF to fight for his mother country, returns to his home
island after the war and finds himself longing to return to England: “If you
would listen then we would talk – widen your eyes with stories of war and the
Mother Country… Come, ask a question you have always wanted to know. The King – oh, a fine man, and
Shakespeare too. Paved with gold,
no – but yes, diamonds appear on the ground in the rain” (Levy 172). Gilbert so strongly believes in his mother
country that he essentially sells himself, promising to marry a woman he does
not love and who doesn’t give any indication of loving him, for the price of a
passage to England. Like her new
husband, Gilbert’s wife Hortense idealizes the land of England and initially
idolizes its inhabitants. Hortense
repeats several times that England is her “destiny,” a choice of words that
alludes to all the hopes and sureties that Hortense associates with the
country. Like Lord Kitchener, long
before she reaches the shores of England Hortense is sure that she knows what
her life will be like there: “I [will] walk to the shop where I am greeted with
manners… politeness… and refinement.
A red bus, a cold morning, and daffodils blooming with all the colours
of the rainbow” (Levy 82-83).
Hortense is sure of what England and English people will be like, and
she holds the cultivated and civilized inhabitants of her future home in high
esteem. While training to be a
teacher in Jamaica, Hortense aspires to be like the white tutors at her
college, the “white women whose superiority encircled them like an aureole…
[whose] formal elocution, eminent intelligence, and imperial demeanour demanded
and received obedience from all who beheld them” (Levy 57). The words Levy uses to describe
Hortense’s attitude towards these white women (especially “superiority” and
“imperial”) imply reference to both the historical fact of British
preponderance (superiority of British armed forces allowing creation of Empire)
and the more complicated idea of ‘colonisation of the mind’ (in which the
imperial administration established the English at the top of a hierarchy of
civilization, with colonists necessarily filling in the lower rungs of the
cultural ladder).
While
Small Island is a fictional
account of Caribbean migrants in the post-war years, these characters’ feelings
arise from historical reality, not only from members of the Windrush generation
but from even earlier historical accounts as well. Olaudah Equiano, a freed slave who rose to prominence in the
Abolitionist movement and published an account of his life as a slave in 1789,
wrote over 150 years prior to the arrival of the Windrush:
“I now not only felt myself quite easy with
these new countrymen, but relished their society and manners. I no longer looked upon them as
spirits, but as men superior to us; and therefore I had the stronger desire to
resemble them; to imbibe their sprit, and imitate their manners; I therefore
embraced every occasion of improvement; and every new thing that I observed I
treasured up in my memory” (Equiano).
The language in this passage is
overwhelmingly positive, giving quite a clear picture of how much Equiano
reveres the white Englishmen. In the 18th century, the
slave trade was very much in practice and the attitude of white superiority
would have been beaten (figuratively and quite possibly literally) into
enslaved African and Caribbean peoples.
Describing his initial reaction to the appearance of white Englishmen in
his native land, Equiano writes early in his Interesting Narrative that “the white people looked and acted…
in so savage a manner.” As his
account progresses, however, and Equiano describes his increased maturity and
education, he proclaims that despite the things he finds curious about the
English (including their “eating with unwashed hands”), he was “astonished at the wisdom of the white
people in all things.” Hundreds of
years later, Levy borrows much of the sentiment and even the wording from
Equiano’s account in her fictional portrayal of Hortense and Gilbert’s arrival
in England; words like “superior” and
“imitate” appear again and again in Levy’s novel, along with many other
expressions of the Jamaican’s attempts to resemble the British, from Hortense’s
baking fairy cakes to Gilbert’s desire to get a degree at an English
university. Hortense’s description
of the English women “whose superiority encircled them like an aureole” is
strikingly similar to Equiano’s initial description of the English people as
“like spirits” – both phrases implying a spiritual or divine aspect to the
British as seen by African or Caribbean people.
Levy’s
novel describes the experiences of a few characters who were just part of a
much larger social context.
Following in the footsteps of the initial passengers of the SS Empire
Windrush, people from the Caribbean flocked to England in great numbers after
the end of World War II. More
Caribbean migrants arrived in the UK during the 1950s than people from African,
India or Pakistan. Approximately
500-700 Caribbean immigrants came to the UK in 1948 – less than 10 years later,
by 1956, over 40,000 Caribbean people had settled in Britain (Moving Here).
Most were hopeful and expectant that their move to this fabled mother
country would bring about positive changes in their lives and afford them
opportunities they could not have had in their native countries. MovingHere.org, a website sponsored by the National
Archive, chronicles the experiences of many migrant populations through
original documents as well as transcripts and recordings of personal
accounts. Through interviews with
immigrants of the Windrush generation and afterwards, the site provides a
picture of the actual migration experiences for hundreds of people moving to
the UK. “We were the envy of our
friends back home,” reads the account of Trinidadian Esther Jones, “we were
bound for the land of freedom and opportunity… [I had] a sense of awe at the
history of my motherland” (Moving Here).
Another immigrant arriving on the SS Auriga, which sailed from Kingston
to the UK in 1955 carrying 1100 passengers, is quoted as saying, “emigration
was at the time a life belt thrown out to a drowning generation” (Moving
Here). Benjamin Zephaniah, a black British
poet of Barbadian and Jamaican descent, wrote a poem describing the experiences
of those in the Windrush generation that borrows its title from the headline of
Peter Fryer’s newspaper article “The men from Jamaica are settling down” (Moving
Here). Zephaniah writes about immigrants
arriving with “shiploads of hope” about their futures in “de land of de hope
and de glory… de land of pleasant pastures green.” From these personal reports and many others, along with
literary depictions like Zephaniah’s poem and Levy’s novel, it is evident that
there existed a commonality of experience shared not just by Jamaican migrants
aboard the SS Empire Windrush but by immigrants from all around the Caribbean
during this generation and afterwards.
Contrary
to the high hopes of the migrant population, however, the English reception of
and response to these Caribbean transplants was strikingly mixed. Initially, the British government
encouraged the arrival of Caribbean immigrants as a labour force to fill the
shortage of workers in various British industries. The Nationality Act (1948) ensured that Commonwealth
citizens were also recognized as British subjects, a stipulation that ensured
Caribbean migrants could live and work in the UK without being subject to
immigration control. The
Commonwealth Immigrants Bill passed in 1962, however, imposed strict
regulations on immigrants from the colonies settling in the UK and caused an
immediate decrease in the number of Caribbean migrants arriving in
England. The popular reaction to
these new arrivals was similarly ambivalent, a lingering effect from the
various responses during the Second World War to Caribbean servicemen and other
volunteers from the colonies which Levy portrays through Gilbert’s fictional
experience. Arriving in Yorkshire
for RAF training and visiting an English countryside village for the first
time, Gilbert and his fellow West Indian servicemen are greeted with quite the
range of reactions. “‘We’re all in this together, lad,’” one elderly villager
tells Gilbert, “‘We’re glad to have you here’” (Levy 114) while another man,
who refuses to look Gilbert in the eye, responds to Gilbert’s assertion that he
has joined the RAF to fight for his country with a “‘Humph. Your country?’”
(Levy 115). Back in Jamaica,
Hortense’s Welsh principal declares to her that “many people, of whom I am one,
believe that no matter what their colour, no matter what their creed, men who
are fighting to protect the people of Great Britain from the threat of invasion
by Germans are gallant heroes” (Levy 66).
Just a few years later in England, Queenie deals with extreme prejudice
and judgement from her neighbours and her own husband for allowing black
boarders in her home after the war.
Her husband Bernard declares,
“The war was fought so people might live
amongst their own kind. Quite
simple. Everyone had a place. England for the English and the West
Indies for these coloured people… Everyone was trying to get home after the war
to be with kith and kin. Except
these blasted coloured colonial.
I’ve nothing against them in their place. But their place isn’t here.” (Levy 388)
Clearly, British reactions to the arrival
of Caribbean immigrants were quite varied. Migrants also found that their expectations of England and
its inhabitants were often proved shockingly incorrect. A Jamaican immigrant named Owen,
sharing his story on MovingHere.org, writes that initially he was so excited to be in
England that he didn’t even feel the cold of the English winter but describes
his later shock at how difficult it was for Caribbean migrants to find
accommodation, as most English landlords would prohibit blacks and Irish from
letting a room. Another immigrant,
James Alcide, describes telling his wife about signs that said “No Blacks, No
Dogs Allowed” and not being able to convince her that these signs actually
existed. Echoing these actual
accounts of immigrants’ surprise and shock at reality of England, Levy
describes Hortense’s amazement at the coarseness of the English people she meets
(and her utter surprise when they cannot understand her carefully pronounced
speech) and the West Indian airmen’s astonishment at finding a white man
sweeping the street in England. In
one short sentence, Gilbert illustrates the disappointment and disillusionment
of the common immigrant experience by describing how England “deceives” her
Caribbean immigrants, betraying “all us pitiful West Indian dreamers who sailed
with heads bursting with foolishness” (Levy 269). In a long passage of Small Island, Gilbert personifies England as a literal
Mother, “beautiful… refined, mannerly and cultured,” who calls for help from
the best men of her colonies but greets them upon their arrival as a “ragged,
old and dusty… stinking cantankerous hag” (Levy 116) who doesn’t embrace her
colonial children or even recognize them.
Though this passage is told in much more colourful and descriptive
language than most of the historical accounts gathered from Caribbean migrants
at this time, Gilbert’s feelings of disappointment and disenchantment are
typical of many descriptions of immigrants’ arrivals in England.
Not
all was tragic, however, as the lively melody and huge popularity of Lord
Kitchener’s song attests. Small
Island ends on a somewhat
hopeful note, with Gilbert and Hortense finally starting to love one another
and adopting Queenie’s half-black child in an attempt to provide the baby a
better future. Zephaniah’s poem
recognizes the struggles of Caribbean migrants but speaks of a new generation
(of which Zephaniah himself was a part) and new era of radicalism, black
writers, and cultural celebrations like blues music and carnival. Like the optimistic lyrics of “London
is the Place for Me”, Zephaniah’s poetry proclaims his hope for his people and
his future, proclaiming “De future is made up of what
we can do,” and his feelings toward his home country are reinforced by another
of Zephaniah’s poems “The London Breed.”
Despite the past legacies of British imperialism and rampant racism,
Zephaniah – like Lord Kitchener and a host of other Caribbean and colonial transplants
before him – sees London as his city and has high hopes for what the future in
England holds.
References
Equiano,
Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative
of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. London: Union Street, Marylebone, 1789.
Levy, Andrea. Small Island. New York: Picador, 2004.
Moving Here:
Migration Histories – Caribbean and Moving Here: Stories.
Web.
<
http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/caribbean/caribbean.htm>
Accessed 14 July 2011.
In the first scene
of Act II of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Don John approaches a masked Claudio and, pretending to believe he
is speaking to Benedick, tells Claudio that Don Pedro is not in fact wooing
Hero for Claudio’s sake but intends to marry Hero himself. In earlier sections of this scene
(specifically Don Pedro’s wooing of Hero, Ursula’s conversation with Antonio,
and Beatrice’s witty words with a masked Benedick), action has occurred with
many characters on stage, including three stage directions of characters
stepping aside so that a new conversation can draw the audience’s
attention. Just prior to this
extract, all the characters but Don John, Borachio and Claudio exit the stage,
leaving the three men alone to heighten the drama of these lines. The audience is clearly told that the
masked man on stage is Claudio, yet he answers to the name of Benedick and is
unrecognizable enough that he fully believes he could be mistaken for his
friend; no matter how this scene is staged, we know Claudio must be wearing a
mask when Don John and Borachio approach him to maintain the idea that they
could mistake him for Benedick.
Though a reading solely of the lines of this extract would suggest the
possibility that Don John may actually believe he is speaking to Benedick, the lines
immediately preceding this section make it clear that Don John and Borachio are
unquestionably trying to trick Claudio (Borachio tells Don John: “that is
Claudio. I know him by his bearing.”)
Borachio and Don John’s description of the (false) situation with Don
Pedro and Hero is meant to throw Claudio into a sense of jealousy and betrayal;
the villains twice use the word “swear” to underscore the truth of their
story. They further
emphasize that Don Pedro plans to marry Hero “tonight” to thrust Claudio into a
state of despair; as Humphreys describes in the footnotes of the Arden edition,
this is meant “to precipitate Claudio into a sense of hopeless crisis”
(118). As in other sections of the
play, Don John cloaks his ill intent under the guise of caring for other
characters, telling Claudio he should help Don Pedro by preventing the marriage
as Hero’s social status is not high enough for the prince (later he tells
Claudio of Hero’s disloyalty as if despite their differences he is just looking
out for a good friend of his brother).
Don John’s deceit, hiding his tricks under a pretext of concern, is
highlighted by his urging Claudio to have “the part of an honest man” when the
audience, if not Claudio, is fully aware of Don John’s dishonesty. The themes of deception and duplicity,
present throughout Much Ado About Nothing, are
underscored in this scene by the disguises the characters are wearing in the
form of costumes and masks for Leonato’s party. The masks serve as a physical symbol of the misapprehension
that occurs throughout the play.
After
Don John and Borachio exit, Claudio speaks an 11-line soliloquy about this
supposed betrayal. He remarks on
how people betray their friends for love and counsels that anyone in love
should act on it himself, not depending on help from his friends. He calls beauty a “witch” under whose
“charms” loyalty and integrity disintegrate into desire and lust, remarking on
how often this occurs with men in love but his lack of suspicion that it would
happen to him. Claudio switches
into verse for much of his soliloquy, a stylistic choice on Shakespeare’s part
that amplifies the drama and tragedy of his words (especially in contrast to
the comic prose sections, particularly the conversation between Benedick and
Beatrice, that directly precede this extract). While the switch from prose to verse heightens Claudio’s
speech, the way Claudio brings in language of the body (“all hearts,” “own
tongues,” “every eye”) serves to make his soliloquy more intimate and creates a
stronger connection with the audience.
Much of the language and imagery of this passage speaks to the context
of early modern culture in which this play would have been first
performed. For example, Claudio
uses language of business in describing love, illustrating the early modern
idea of marriage as a contract. He
wishes he had “negotiated” for himself, instead of letting Don Pedro act as his
“agent” – these are not words we would typically associate with romance and
marriage today, but in early modern society marriage was as much an economic
decision as it was an emotional one (despite his many professions of love for
Hero, Claudio is sure to ask right away if Hero is Leonato’s only heir). In another example, the idea of beauty
as a witch speaks to the idea at this time of female sexuality as a dangerous
and treacherous thing; Claudio claims that “beauty is a witch against whose
charms faith melteth into blood”.
Carol Cook, in her article on gender difference in Much Ado, points out that Claudio’s language removes blame from the male
figure (Don Pedro) that Claudio believes has betrayed him and instead holds the
“witch” of Hero’s beauty responsible.
Cook further describes how “Hero is subsumed into an archetype of
destructive female power – of the sorceress who deprives men of their wills and
dissolves the solidarity of masculine bonds into the ‘blood’ of passion and
violence” (193). Female sexuality
was seen as a threat to the family unit (as men were ever fearful of being
cuckolded) and thus a threat to society as a whole, as the family was the cornerstone
of early modern society and represented a ‘little Commonwealth’. As Barbara Everett describes, women
(specifically in terms of their sexuality) could be seen as a “hypnotic and
possibly devilish enemy” (102) to society if they were not chaste, silent, and
obedient. The idea of female
beauty as a witch that could undo the bonds of loyalty among men is a telling
illustration of this fear of women and female sexuality in early modern
society.
What
occurs in the few lines of this extract presages many of the actions that occur
later in the play, especially Don John’s villainy in tricking Claudio to ruin
his impending marriage to Hero, and Claudio’s quickness to believe he is the
victim of a betrayal. As Cook highlights, Claudio’s soliloquy reveals that
“Claudio’s distrust of the witchlike powers of female beauty is close to the
surface and easily triggered” (193), which proves integral to the plot when Don
John later suggests to Claudio that Hero has been unfaithful. Having seen Claudio’s quickness to
believe the worst of his friend, the audience is not surprised when Claudio
immediately believes the worst of his bride. Unlike later scenes however, Claudio wholeheartedly believes
he is betrayed based on nothing other than the word of a man with “a very
melancholy disposition” (later in the play it is implied the Claudio actually
observes the misleading interaction between Margaret and Borachio) and no other
characters are deceived along with Claudio. The footnotes of the Arden edition of Much Ado suggest that “Shakespeare somewhat exonerates him [Claudio] by
showing others no less deceived” (Humphreys 118) later in the play when Don
Pedro fully believes Hero’s infidelity as well. Humphreys suggests that Claudio is exonerated in this scene
as well, citing Benedick as another deceived character according to the line
“You must wear it one way, for the Prince hath got your Hero.” This is not compelling evidence,
however, of Benedick sharing in Claudio’s belief in betrayal; perhaps
Shakespeare leaves Claudio to be deceived alone in this scene to prepare the
audience for his future acceptance of Hero’s betrayal, and later gives him
‘exoneration’ in the form of Don Pedro’s complicity so as to temper the feeling
of Claudio as a fickle and changeable man. Even the language of this extract is
echoed in later parts of the play; during the (first) wedding scene, Claudio
again bids farewell to Hero and bemoans love:
“But fare thee
well, most foul, most fair!
Farewell…
For thee I’ll
lock up all the gates of love,
And on my eyelids
shall conjecture hang,
To turn all
beauty into thoughts of harm,
And never shall
it more be gracious.” (Act IV, Scene I)
The echoing of
words (“farewell”, “beauty”) and ideas (beauty as something that could be
harmful, Claudio’s language of body parts) reminds the audience of Claudio’s
earlier capriciousness and perhaps serves to reassure us that things may not
all turn tragic; since we have already seen one scene in which Claudio is
reconciled with his supposed betrayer, we expect that another resolution may
lie in the future.
Though
these few lines are but a small part of Much Ado About Nothing, the language, themes, and imagery can serve to enhance a reader’s
insight into the play as a whole.
Actions in this extract foretell some of the upcoming plot and language
from this scene appears again at later points in the play. The audience gains a clear perception
of Don John’s perfidy and Claudio’s capriciousness. Moreover, especially important for modern audiences, this
extract showcases the play’s context and highlights some early modern ideas,
specifically regarding marriage as a contract and the danger of female
sexuality.
References
Cook, Carol. “The Sign and Semblance of Her Honor:
Reading Gender Difference in Much Ado About Nothing. PMLA. Vol 10, No. 2 (March 1986), 186-202.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/462403> Accessed 4 August 2011.
Everett,
Barbara. “Much Ado About
Nothing.” Shakespeare: Much
Ado About Nothing
and As You Like It
– A Casebook. Ed John Russell
Brown. London: Macmillan,
1979. 100 – 109.
Humphreys, A. R.,
ed. The Arden Edition of the
Words of William Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing. London: Methuen, 2009.
Mares, F. H.,
ed. The New Cambridge
Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
