Small Island: Isolation/Disappointment Flashcards
‘_____________ my ____ against the ____’
‘Straightened my coat against the cold’ (Hortense)
- Last line in the novel
- Embracing the coldness (hostility/isolation) rather than cowering away
- Sense of resilience
- Facing reality, no longer living in idealised veneer
- However, suggest discrimination/prejudice is ongoing, England has not adapted, Horetense has
‘Just this? You bring me all the way just for this?’ (Hortense)
- ‘this’ = Euphemism
- Minimal/disappointment with mother country
- Disillusionment
‘You will not be __________ to _____ here’
‘You will not be allowed to teach here’
- Hortense seeks out teaching job but is told she does not have the qualifications
- She is humiliated and faces blatant discrimination
‘Why no one in this _______ understand my _______’
‘As if I had been ________ in _______’
‘Why no one in this country understand my english’
‘As if I had been speaking in tongues’
- Hortense attempts to assimilate into her preconceived stereotypes about the English
- Idealised views of mother country mismatch the reality
- Barriers to her assimilation
‘I never ________ England to be like this. So _________’
‘I never expected England to be like this. So cheerless’
- Hortenses disappointment of England experessed
- Expectation vs reality
‘Leave ____, leave ________, leave ____’
‘Leave home, leave love, leave familiar’
- Anaphoric triplet of ‘leave’
- Emphasises countless sacrifices made for mother country yet doesn’t feel appreciated
‘Even the ________ can find no _____ but ____’
‘Even the sunshine can find no colour but grey’
- Pathetic fallacy (highlights Englands coldness)
- Hortense misses Jamaicas warmth, literally and metaphorically
- Relfelcts negative attitudes of host country
‘They had _________ ways to us and knew _______ of _______’ - Blanche
‘You’ll soon get ____ to our ________’ - Queenie
‘They had different ways to us and know nothing of manners’
‘You’ll soon get used to our language’
- Representative of British monocultural and colonial views
- Ignorance towards other races/cultures
- Institutionalized racism
- Possessive pronoun ‘our’ isolates immigrants from their host country
- Unintentional racism = racism embedded in England
‘We cant ___ your ____’
‘When are you _____ back to the ______?’
‘We cant use your sort’
‘When are you going back to the jungle?’
- Gilbert subjected to racial prejudice/discrimination when searching for a job
- Hostile host country
‘No one will _________ us _______ in this country’
‘No one will watch us weep in this country’
- Following Hortense’s rejection from teaching
- ‘weep’ = connotations of mourning/grief, mourning over expectations of host country
- Replaced with disappointment + shattered by rejection
‘Hortense’s reeling _________ after a sharp ______ from the Mother Country’s ________’
‘Hortense’s reeling wounded after a sharp slap from the Mother Country’s hand’
- Hortense after being rejected from teaching job
- Visceral effect of ‘sharp slap’
- Physical + emotional effect of the host country on her
‘I have ________ that this is a very _______ country’
‘I have found that this is a very cold country’ (Hortense)
- Polysemic ‘cold’ = both unwelcoming/unfriendly + cold in terms of weather
‘Wrapping my _______ around me to keep the ______ from __________ me’
‘Wrapping my arms around me to keep the cold from killing me’ (Gilbert)
- Reinforces Gilbert’s loneliness in the host country
- Forced to shelter himself/comfort himself against both the cold weather + the cold treatment of England
‘She think me a _______ that does not know what is _________’
‘She think me a fool that does not know what is bread’
- Queenie over-explaining simple universal items e.g grocery shop, bread
- Highlights ignorance of English towards other cultures, assumes Hortense lacks understanding/knowledge
‘should ______ off the ____________ into the road if an English person wishes to ______’
‘should step off the pavement into the road if an English person wishes to pass’
- English association with superiority, Hortense treated as insignificant in comparison to English
