Self-Fashioning Of Jamaican Immigrants And British Lower Class In Andrea Levy’s Small Island

Andrea Levy (1956-) is a Jamaican-British writer who is a representative of the second generation of Jamaican immigrants in London. Because of this particular background, almost all her works are related to the identity issue of Jamaican immigrants.Through these works,Levy tries to present the histories of Jamaica,and the true situations of those black Jamaican immigrants.As the masterpiece of Andrea Levy,Small Ilsland tells the story of four protagonists:a black Jamaican couple and a white British couple, which is based on the true life stories of Levy’s parents. The story is mainly set in London during the Second World War and in 1948. From the narrative perspectives of the four protagonists respectively, the novel gives a presentation of their life experiences, and reflects the true situations of Jamaican immigrants and ordinary British people around the Second World War.Most of the previous studies at home and abroad have analyzed the identity issue of the Jamaican immigrants, the national and racial problems in the novel. Main theories adopted are Cultural Identity theory, Postcolonial Feminism theory and so on. Several scholars have discussed the problem of rewriting the history from the perspective of the war. But few scholars pay attention to the identity changes of both the black Jamaican immigrants and lower class in Britain. This thesis tries to make a study of this novel from the perspective of New Historicism by adopting the conceptions of "subversion","containment","self-fashioning" and "negotiation". Based on the detailed analysis of the power relations in Small Island, including the national, racial conflicts between the black Jamaicans and the white British, the class difference in the British society, this thesis tries to discuss the "self-fashioning" of Jamaican immigrants and lower class in Britain through "negotiation" in the process of their subversion of the powers and the containment of the subversion. Faced with both national and racial discriminations, the black Jamaican couple Gilbert and Hortense try to "subvert" the discriminations,yet be contained by the power in the end. They are in a process of changing their identity from Jamaican immigrants to Londoners,and try to integrate themselves into the British society. As for the white British couple, as lower class, the wife Queenie tries to subvert the class distinction through marriage, and this kind of marriage is doomed to be a failure.Both Queenie and her husband Bernard betray their marriage during the war. But after Bernard comes back home after the war, Queenie chooses to continue her marriage with Bernard. For Queenie, marriage is a way to becoming middle class and she is self-fashioned as the spokesperson for the British society in the end. By analyzing the "self-fashioning" of the Jamaican immigrants and lower class in Britain, this thesis aims to dig out the identity changes of Jamaican immigrants in Britain, and also the life situation of the lower class in Britain, trying to provide a different interpretation of the novel.