Hortense’s Searching For Identity

Jamaican-born Englishwoman Andrea Levy is one of the representative contemporary writers.Due to the immigration influence of her parents,the themes of Levy’s works,especially the most prominent masterpiece,Small Island(2004),are mostly related to British colonial history and the life of ethnic groups.This novel mainly describes a Jamaican black immigrant couple,Gilbert and Hortense’s experiences of pursuing their own identities in different social backgrounds,revealing the dilemma of different social and ethnic groups and different individuals living in London,and wonderfully interpreting various themes such as racial prejudice,cultural conflict,identity construction,etc.Since its publication,the novel has attracted considerable attention from critics.Scholars at home and abroad have also conducted in-depth research on its theme,structure,and characters’ perspective and so on.In Small Island,this black couple with hybrid identities dare to challenge the authority of white British people.After the failure of the remodeling process,they seek to dissolve the colonial dualistic model in an attempt to build a black cultural identity equal to that of white people.Therefore,the reconstruction process of heterogeneous,fluid,negotiatory and mixed cultural identity perfectly fits Homi K.Bhabha’s post-colonial theory and this thesis aims to focus on his three theories of hybridity,mimicry and the third space to analyze the encounters and predicament of Hortense’s immigration to Britain.Firstly,the thesis briefly introduces Andrea Levy and her masterpiece Small Island,summarizes literature review at home and abroad,explores the significance of this research and shows the significance and role of Homi K.Bhabha’s colonialism theory in analyzing the reconstruction of diaspora’s cultural identity in the global context through elaborating its specific connotation.The second chapter mainly talks about the embodiment of cultural hybridity.Living in an immigrant country,cultural differences in daily life have caused Hortense’s dual identity dilemma.Precisely because of those differences,the third chapter emphasizes Hortense’s process of exploring her dual cultural identity.And the fourth chapter analyzes the establishment of identity.The awakening of self-consciousness prompts her changing from resistance to compromise and finally to integration,but she still keeps persistent to achieve harmony with white people by depending on her ethnic black culture.The last chapter is a summary of the entire thesis.That is,the construction of black cultural identity is a continuously changing process.Only experiencing cultural hybridity,negotiation and a harmonious state can she reposition and construct her own cultural identity in the third space.Based on the above analysis,by using Homi K.Bhabha’s post-colonial theory to analyze the situation of the black’s identity construction,this thesis is expected to provide a new perspective for researches hereafter,deepen readers’ understanding of the protagonists’ identity seeking and have a certain enlightening effect and practical significance on people in treating immigration objectively under the globalization background at the same time.