Cultural Identity Constructions In Latecomers

Anita Brookner(1928-2016)is a prominent woman writer in the twentieth-century British literary world,and is the Booker Prize winner in 1984.Latecomers is one of the most representative works by Anita Brookner,which marks the maturity of her writing skills and the transformation of her narrative perspective.Scholars both home and abroad have done many researches on Latecomers from various perspectives of post-modernism,Jewishness,narrative techniques and etc..Nevertheless,there are few studies that analyze the theme of identity crises in Latecomers.Actually,as the offspring of Jews,Brookner has been searching her cultural identity in the multicultural Britain and has written her thoughts on cultural identity in her novels.Latecomers is the typical example.Hence,the thesis pays special attention to the issue of constructing cultural identities in this novel.The manifestations of protagonists’ cultural identity crises can be divided into two aspects: the survivors’ loss of Jewish cultural identities and the second-generation’s being trapped in the "bi-cultural dilemma".The causes can also be traced from two aspects.On the one hand,the Holocaust trauma destroyed survivors’ coherent consciousness of old cultural identities and their memories of the homeland,resulting in a sense of rootlessness.On the other hand,under the influence of cross-transmission trauma,the second generations were isolated from the British culture because of their Jewish family backgrounds,while in the meantime,they were also estranged from the Jewish culture since they can not inherit family memories from their parents.Suffering from losing their old identities and being unable to acquire new identities,two generations tried to assimilate the British mainstream culture.However,they could not achieve the homogenization of the intrinsic cultural patterns,though they could complete the assimilation of extrinsic cultural patterns.Their cultural identity crises still loomed.For survivors,only by healing their traumas and returning to their native culture can they reconstruct their cultural identities.As for the second generation,blind cultural assimilation can not solve their identity crises and rebuilding hybrid identities is the best way for them.By analyzing the tortuous process of protagonists’ quests for identity reconstruction which includes being trapped in identity crisis,trying to seek assimilation and eventually reconstructing identities by healing their traumas or taking a hybrid way,Brookner exhibits the importance of curing trauma and building hybrid identities.