Hortense Roberts Flashcards
Who plays Hortense in the National Theatre adpatation of Small Island
Leah Harvey
How is she described
Often stuck-up about manners.
She’s also self centered, betraying her best friend Celia to marry Celia’s fiancé, Gilbert Joseph
taking no pains to understand or empathise with her new husband.
who is Hortense
one of the novel’s protagonists, is a young Jamaican woman who immigrates to England.
Hortense is born out of wedlock to a famous Jamaican bureaucrat, Lovell Roberts, and a penniless maid, Alberta.
Raised as an outsider by her father’s cousins, Philip and Martha Roberts who prize status and respectability above all else, Hortense learns to value their world while also feeling insecure about her place in it as an illegitimate child of low birth.
What did she do before she came to London
he attends a colonial teaching college, where she imbibes the narrative of British colonial superiority
How is she at the end of the play
even though she’s still struggling for a foothold in British society, at the end of the novel, Hortense has achieved a respectful and loving marriage and embarks on life as a new mother.
She emerges as a mature and warm-hearted woman, maintaining her dignity
generous spirit in the face of the prejudice she faces every day.
