Claire is the one who instigated the affair, and yet she calls herself a victim. She is a completely selfish woman, as demonstrated by the fact that she wanted to wreck one of the most successful marriages she had ever seen.
Anything that is seen as beautiful is immediately suspect. The end of the novel de-reifies beauty...Zadie Smith hates the objectifying of women, but she wants to be able to talk about beauty. Howard, for example, claims to be above the idea of turning art into beautiful objects, but as soon as some good-looking women "seduce" him, he immediately sleeps with them. This presents itself as a HUGE contradiction.
Meanwhile...Zora has been working to keep Carl in her poetry class, because Monty has been trying to get the non-paying, "unqaulified" students kicked out of the program. Monty, however, has been sleeping with one of those students, and wants her kicked out so that he can cover up for what he is doing. At the party, Zora, Jerome, Victoria, and Carl are all confronting one another. Carl alludes to the fact that Howard slept with Victoria, and tells them outright that Monty has been sleeping with Chantelle. Jerome understands what Carl doesn't say, but Zora is too concerned with the Carl/Victoria situation to make sense of the allusion. Carl, surrounded by all these liars, sees the academic life as full of smoke and mirrors. He is tired of being a "plaything" for radical intellectuals: "You got your college degrees, but you don't even live right. You people are all the same" (418-419). Consequently, after this party, Carl never comes back to Wellington...he has seen the intelletual world for what it is, and wants nothing to do with it.
Racial issues also come into play towards the end of the novel, during the confrontation between Levi and Kiki. Levi has stolen Mrs. Kipps's painting and Kiki finds it hidden under his bed. She and Levi thus get into an argument about who the painting has been stolen from--Levi insists that the money from the painting should be redistributed, and Kiki repeatedly tells her son that he should never steal, bottom line. Levi also blames him mother for "selling-out" by marrying a white man, and paying her Haitian maid only four dollars an hour.
By the last two pages of the novel, Howard is in a downward spiral...Kiki knows about Victoria and she has moved out. The children don't tell Howard where Kiki is living, and he lives with the kids in the Welligton house. They despise him, and yet they still talk to him--miraculous. In the very last scene, he is giving a speech in Boston, trying to get hired at Harvard. When he looks out in the audience, Kiki is there. He makes eye contact with her, and she smies...
BLOG ABOUT BEAUTY On these last two pages
No comments:
Post a Comment