Metaphors of Belonging in Andrea Levy’s Small Island

Abstract

This chapter explores the role of metaphor in Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004) and particularly the way it transcribes the diasporic subject’s emergence from the metaphorical shackles of imperialist discourse and entrance into the official history of postcolonial Britain. Metaphor has traditionally articulated the interaction between the metropolis and the colonies, and Small Island engages with the conventional filial metaphor of the centre of empire as the ‘mother country’ and the colonies as her children. Levy also interrogates other conventional metaphors of the colonial and postcolonial condition, such as the house to represent the nation or the individual and, particularly, daffodils as a metaphor for imperial control, a trope that originated, as we shall see, in the use of Wordsworth’s poem ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ in colonial education. Undoubtedly, Levy’s use of easily apprehensible metaphors for the complex condition of the postcolonial and diasporic subject has played a role in the success of her novel which has become a popular text and has opened up broad discussions about ethnic and cultural formations in the recent history of Britain.