In the Castle of My Skin and Barbados

The action of In the Castle of My Skin is historically specific. A documented incident that contributed to the momentum of independence for Barbados was a 1937 labor strike that turned into a riot. So severe were the riots that there was a British commission of inquiry that led to various social reforms, but not until 1962 did Barbados obtain independence ("Barbados," 1975). Thus the narrative of In the Castle of My Skin is located in a context of incipient change, just as G, the novel's coming-of-age hero, is situated on the brink of life change. But the theme of change is also situated in a context of modern colonialism and class warfare, with the white landowners who own G's village, the Creightons, in the position of the master colonizing class and G. and his people the colonized.

Significantly, the culture of Barbados is also owned by the British, with the village school being devoted to turning out loyal little Englishmen of color. The entire environment, in other words, has been colonized, with the colonists and not the natives in charge of replicating in a tropical setting the ethos of the mother country. In a curious way, the social structure presented in the novel is given ironic treatment by the title. Consider the adage, "An Englishman's home is his castle." In In the Castle of My Skin, the budding little Englishmen by no means own even their most personal selves. Gradually, as G grows in self-awareness, he finds that he does have a castle and that its identity i

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which left no place, and no need, for doubt" (Fromm, 1969, p. 58) was challenged by Friedan's Feminine Mystique. That 1962 text focused chiefly on evidence that women who had bought into the American dream found that they wanted more out of life than nuclear-family fulfillment, and a good deal of feminist discourse grew out of it. Another strand of feminist thought grew out of New Left and civil rights activism, where women activists found themselves marginalized, expected to make coffee, so to speak, for the guys who were about the business of fixing the world. Disenchantment, disaffection, and dissociation followed: "Left-wing sexism has forced females and homosexuals into sexual politics" (Dixon, 1977, p. 22). Elsewhere, Kaplan refers to "the young male left who wanted the women in the movement as tea-makers, typists, envelope lickers, and, in the memorable words of Stokely Carmichael--'prone'" (Kaplan, 1983, p. 55). Activist/mobilized women began to develop their own analytical rhetoric (thank you), and the evolution of feminist critique as it is commonly understood today was embarked upon. Feminist discourse was further expanded by articulations of women of color who were as much marginalized inside the "women's liberation

Category: Foreign - I