Geography and Community in 'Small Island' and 'NW' 

Andrea Levy’s Small Island and Zadie Smith’s NW are both attempts to illustrate the perspectives of everyday people, struggling in a fragmented society and community. Exploring, not only the attitudes and constructs that sow division, but their character’s individual experiences: childhoods, regrets, longings, and fears for the future. However, these novels depict London at two, very separate stages in the city’s history. Levy takes a look back, from 2004, to 1948. She reflects on the hardships of those that came before; taking inspiration from her own Jamaican heritage, she tells a story of the formation of a new community from the literal ruins of post-war London, and of the ideological clashes that are inherent in times of social change. NW, instead, examines the sentiments and emotions that permeated the early 2010s (that in many ways, still persist today). Rather than a city violently torn apart by war, this novel places the reader in a London that has grown stagnant. People have slowly grown apart from each other feeling frustrated, dissatisfied, and afraid of what’s coming. 

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The critic, Vanessa Guignery, explores the notion of “line-crossing”[1] in NW, which she defines as an “ethical gesture of reaching out towards the Other”[2]. Both Levy and Smith’s novels highlight the drawing of lines between people (and creations of the Other) in the forms of racial/cultural division, colonial and gender constructs, and the class hierarchy. Though Levy and Smith present these themes as visual motifs and lines drawn in the physical environment. 

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In the lines of NW’s first paragraph, the novel’s first protagonist: Leah Hanwell, is “In a hammock, in the garden of a basement flat. Fenced in, on all sides.”[3]. The novel’s opening boldly sets the tone for its first part, titled “visitation,” with a disordered, stream-of-consciousness writing-style, featuring some of the novel’s most visceral passages. Leah’s Willesden council estate is characterised as something that confines her, literally beneath other members of society, with the “posh bit”[4] nevertheless in close proximity. NW’s narrative features many moments of liminality, where the characters observe and must traverse the borders between the districts of the city and its hostile architecture. Chapters “9” and “10” depict Leah’s vivid experience of urban travel. The robotic and convoluted list of steps that must be taken, contrasted by a stream of images, senses and fragments of frantic conversations that must be navigated, emphasising the labyrinthine nature of the city.

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Even though the perspectives and writing style changes, the novel is permeated by scenes that ooze this feeling of confinement or longing for a different reality. Which, of course, reflects the personal situations of the characters. Leah and Natalie are best friends that have grown apart, now living in separate classes of the social hierarchy but also are both in marriages where lines of communication have been broken. Felix’s life is has seen great improvement, he has won a battle with addiction and has found himself in a promising new relationship, though nevertheless the “’Apple ain’t fallen far from the tree’”[5] Smith tells the story of people that are confined within a society that does not offer clear answers to the uncertainties of life, nor a sense of direction for the future.

 

Similarly, Small Island’s London is also fragmented by class and geography, though this novel presents the unique reactions surrounding the imminent shifts in the social dynamics of Britain, that followed the Second World War. People both feared and welcomed new opportunities for class mobility, as well as mass immigration and multiculturalism. These differing reactions can be gleamed in the characters of Bernard Bligh, who expresses a total rejection of the Other, and Queenie Bligh, who accepts social as a form of both survival and self-realisation. However, the social reality of the time was that multiculturalism, the subversion of gender roles and social mobility, was inevitable in Britain, the world had entered a new era. Levy explores this reality through motifs of environmental destruction and nature; the literal tearing down of social lines.

 

London’s Blitz brought the same fear and uncertainty to every community of London. Where bombings occurred seemingly randomly and indiscriminately, which introduced a constant, looming threat of displacement to the lives of all Londoners. The imagery that Levy uses captures the nature of the threat that people faced. The bombers are described as “like thunderclouds”[6], “dark formations”[7], a “threat that sits on you like an ache”[8]. This volatile reality that these communities were thrust into, elicited multiple reactions. The character of Bernard represents those that tried to hold on to the social lines that were previously put in place, leading him, and his neighbours, to irrational xenophobia towards even displaced fellow Londoners: “’Now these Cockneys. I ask you.’” [9] They simply fear a future that could threaten their perception of the world. Queenie, however, adapts to the changing environment by committing herself to take action in support of the needy. She chooses to invite a family of working-class refugees into her home, and to work at the local rest centre where she must “find out who they had once been and where they had once lived” [10]. This can be seen as an act of line crossing, an outreach towards an Other through which Queenie is able to empathise them. Levy presents this empathy as a way forward in the crumbling society of the past, which contrasts with Smith’s depiction of a present generation that is yet to find its way. She seems to adopt a Marxist perspective in her portrayal of these acts of empathy as political rejections of social lines and class hierarchies. Though, simultaneously, Queenie‘s choice of action reflects a growing desire for agency among women, and her empathetic nature is later presented in a post-colonial context: her willingness to befriend and live amongst immigrants. Levy acknowledges the intersection between the different areas of social reform.

 

While, in Small Island, such social reform is brought about by a series of dramatic events that force their way into the characters’ lives, the main characters of NW seem to be in desperate search of a “dramatic event”[11]. Natalie wishes to construct her own identity, Felix wishes to direct himself towards a stable and content life, and Leah wishes to find a solution to the unfair and brutal nature of the world. However, by the novel’s conclusion, Smith never fully grants any of the characters their wishes. In chapter “160. Time Speeds Up”, during the section titled “host”, detailing Natalie Blake’s experiences throughout her life, Smith writes: “There is an image system at work in the world. We wait for an experience large or brutal enough to disturb it or break it open completely, but this moment never quite arrives”[12]. These “images” may refer to the vague, aesthetic expectations that different people are pressured to conform to.

 

The character of Natalie, who was named Kiesha prior to university, is described to have felt a ”breach”[13] between her perception of herself and others’ perceptions of her. This fragmentation of identity is reflected in the structure of  ”host”: a series of 185 short and often disparate experiences. Kiesha’s weak sense of personal and cultural identity causes her to reconstruct her identity from the ”images” that she is exposed to, in the form of Natalie. Vanessa Guignery describes her to be ”liable to instances of self-intervention and simulacrum”[14], and highlights the importance of dress code as an ”aspect of identity construction”[15]. Natalie attempts to adopt a post-colonial image of a successful lawyer who has overcome their economic, gender and racial disadvantages, whilst also being a mother who is in control of her children. Though, she finds herself constantly ”In drag”[16]and ultimately inauthentic. Leah’s husband, Michel, highlights an important truth: “’Dress for the job you want not the one you have’. And it’s the same with names I feel”[17]. Smith explores the social reality of our current times that upper-class society presents itself, superficially, as multicultural in the sense that it includes people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. However, it simultaneously necessitates the erasure of one’s cultural identity and the rejection of community in favour of a private and insular reality. In which, Natalie remains confined by performative social expectations and personally undefined. The critic, Annalisa Pes, poses that ”Natalie is a victim of the post-postcolonial burden”[18], the pressures placed upon second and third generation immigrants to make something good of their parents’ struggles.  Though Smith shows us that Natalie’s success ”is gained at the high price of denying her origins”[19], and that this sentiment merely gentrifies and alienates the generation’s sense of belonging as part of a community. As the character, Phil Barnes, says: ”they just feel no hope, the young people [...] We’ve used all their resources”[20].

 

This term, “post-postcolonial”, could perhaps frame NW as a thematic successor to Small Island, a novel that explores a firmly postcolonial period of history. Furthermore, Hortense’s story somewhat mirrors Natalie’s, though Hortense leaves the story with a very different outlook on her identity as to where she began, and Natalie exits the narrative as much the same person. Initially, Hortense internalises many colonial concepts into her identity, such as her perceived superiority over others the fact of her lighter complexion (“With such a countenance there was a chance of a golden life for I”[21]), or her faith in the concept of the ‘Mother Country’. She is exposed to these sentiments from an extremely young age, having been taught a very British curriculum at school and taken from her own mother to be raised by wealthy relatives, so that she may become a ”lady worthy”[22] of her distant father. Like Natalie, she is exposed to colonial “images” and expectations, then constructs her identity around them. Hortense idealises Britain and British culture, expecting to be warmly welcomed into the country and provided with a successful career. When faced with the reality of the country: a war-torn nation, ridden with corrupt bureaucracy and hostile paranoia, she undergoes a disillusionment with her constructed identity. Though, unlike Natalie, Hortense is able to find a new, stable sense of belonging in the form of a loving marriage to Gilbert, as a member of a diaspora and as a mother figure to Queenie’s child. Her transformation as a character is signified by her decision to take responsibility in raising the second generation of the postcolonial community that she is now a part of. 

 

The tone of Small Island’s conclusion is ultimately one of defiant determination, although it is underlined by uncertainty. The social attitudes of the characters are, once again, in conflict with the social reality. Queenie longs for a socially accepting community, though she tragically must forfeit her relationship with her biracial son, so that he may be raised among a community that truly values him; something that people like Bernard could not possibly provide him with. However, Queenie, Hortense and Gilbert all make gestures of defiance towards this reality. Gilbert performs and act of line-crossing by attempting to reconcile his differences with Bernard, Queenie provides her son with a small line of connection to his origins through a small photograph of her and a stash of money, which Hortense determines to keep hidden from Gilbert and to “put them to good use”[23] when they are required. Levy‘s narrative is framed, far less through traditional narrative structure, and more as a snapshot of its character’s lives. While they undergo significant transformations of identity, the central thematic battle for belonging remains to be won. Though, in the face of the future struggles, Levy maintains a face of stone-cold resilience, which she captures in her final image: “I paid it no mind as I pulled my back up and straightened my coat against the cold.”[24] Smith, however, subverts Levy’s attitude, by depicting a present where people of various cultural backgrounds live amongst each other, but continue to feel like they do not truly belong.

 

Though each novel’s social dilemma goes unresolved by their conclusions, their power as stories comes from their capacity to give voices to the individuals within communities, who cross social lines in order to connect the fragments of society.  The novels’ honesty about the brutal and unfair reality of our world gives the characters’ experiences more poignance. Nobody ever reaches a fantastical, utopian society. Rather, the purpose of the novels is to pay homage to struggle itself, the gestures towards a more connected society, hope in face of such a bleak reality. The boldness of this struggle emphasises the tragedy of Felix’s murder, of Nathan’s fade into obscurity, or the defiance of Michael’s adventures, or the selflessness of Gilbert and Hortense when adopting Queenie’s child.  Levy and Smith diverge, however, in the ways that their stories relate to the present day. Levy aims to recontextualise multicultural society as something that had to be fought for and was resisted against, where Smith aims to make us aware of the more subtle inequality and division that still persists today, calling attention to the ongoing struggle for community and belonging in our world.

 

[1] GUIGNERY, V. (2014). Zadie Smith’s NW or the art of line-crossing. E-rea, (11.2), p.3. doi:https://doi.org/10.4000/erea.3892.

[2] GUIGNERY, V. (2014). Zadie Smith’s NW or the art of line-crossing. E-rea, (11.2), p.1. doi:https://doi.org/10.4000/erea.3892.

[3] [3] Zadie Smith (2013). Nw. London Etc.: Penguin Books, p.3.

[4] [4] Zadie Smith (2013). Nw. London Etc.: Penguin Books, p.10.

[5] Zadie Smith (2013). Nw. London Etc.: Penguin Books, p.101.

[6] Levy, A. (2004). Small Island. S.L.: Nick Hern, p.268.

[7] Levy, A. (2004). Small Island. S.L.: Nick Hern, p.268.

[8] Levy, A. (2004). Small Island. S.L.: Nick Hern, p.268.

[9] Levy, A. (2004). Small Island. S.L.: Nick Hern, p.270.

[10] Levy, A. (2004). Small Island. S.L.: Nick Hern, p.279.

[11] Zadie Smith (2013). Nw. London Etc.: Penguin Books, p.174.

[12] Zadie Smith (2013). Nw. London Etc.: Penguin Books, p.269.

[13] Zadie Smith (2013). Nw. London Etc.: Penguin Books, p.178.

[14] GUIGNERY, V. (2014). Zadie Smith’s NW or the art of line-crossing. E-rea, (11.2), p.35. doi:https://doi.org/10.4000/erea.3892.

[15] GUIGNERY, V. (2014). Zadie Smith’s NW or the art of line-crossing. E-rea, (11.2), p.36. doi:https://doi.org/10.4000/erea.3892.

[16] Zadie Smith (2013). Nw. London Etc.: Penguin Books, p.278.

[17] Zadie Smith (2013). Nw. London Etc.: Penguin Books, p.63.

[18] Pes, A. (2014). Post-postcolonial issues and identities in Zadie Smith’s NW. European English Messanger, [online] p.5. Available at: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Post-postcolonial+issues+and+identities+in+Zadie+Smith%27s+N-W.-a0395306601.

[19] Pes, A. (2014). Post-postcolonial issues and identities in Zadie Smith’s NW. European English Messanger, [online] p.4. Available at: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Post-postcolonial+issues+and+identities+in+Zadie+Smith%27s+N-W.-a0395306601.

[20] Zadie Smith (2013). Nw. London Etc.: Penguin Books, p.111.

[21] Levy, A. (2004). Small Island. S.L.: Nick Hern, p.38.

[22] Levy, A. (2004). Small Island. S.L.: Nick Hern, p.38.

[23] Levy, A. (2004). Small Island. S.L.: Nick Hern, p.529.

[24] Levy, A. (2004). Small Island. S.L.: Nick Hern, p.530.