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[ Home > Papers > Ulla Rahbek ] Representations of Englishness in Timothy Mo´s novel Sour Sweet
* * * In The English People, George Orwell posits the following experiment: "It is worth trying for a moment to put oneself in the position of a foreign observer, new to England, but unprejudiced, and able because of his work to keep in touch with ordinary, useful, unspectacular people" (1947: 8). The foreign visitor, Orwell suggests, would probably make the following generalisations about the typical Englishman: "artistic insensibility, gentleness, respect for legality, suspicion of foreigners, sentimentality about animals, hypocrisy, exaggerated class distinctions, and an obsession with sport" (ibid: 8). In Timothy Mo´s 1982 novel, Sour Sweet, we are introduced to a small group of foreigners, new to England and through their work able to get in touch with the common people. Unprejudiced they are not, however, but as willing to generalise as Orwell´s imagined, ideal observers. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the representations of Englishness, of English people and the English way of life Mo provides us with in this novel, as seen through the eyes of a small family of Chinese immigrants. The Chinese new-comers to England - conceived of as the "land of promise" (Mo, 1982: 1) - are Lily, her husband Chen and their Son, and her sister Mui. The setting is London in the 1960s, roughly fifteen years after Orwell´s portrait of the English people, and in many ways, a different world all together. Lily´s husband initially works as a Soho waiter, but after some unfortunate business with the Chinese Triad society - in effect another group of immigrants - Chen decides to go underground. The inclusion in the book of the Chinese mafia is interesting, but will not be discussed in this paper. Suffice it to say that for the purposes of my argument, finding the Triads in England may be seen as an ironic counter argument to Orwell´s claim that because the English dislike bullying and terrorism, "[g]angsterism on American lines could not flourish in England" (1947: 15). Almost twenty years later, gangsterism is established, and this may be viewed as symptomatic of the great changes taking place in post-war Britain. And what is more, through their mafia eyes, the well-loved English Bobby is redefined as a representative of English bandit authorities! Mo thus highlights the transformation of the "indulgent tradition" of the Bobby that the historian Clive Emsley has detected (1992: 114-135). Chen soon establishes a Chinese take-away in a derelict area in South London. The house he leases is the only one left in a row of houses destroyed by the Blitz, and as such a reminder of the War that haunts Orwell´s portrayal of the English. The Chens, however, are as proud of their ramshackle house as the average Englishman is of his home, and it affords them the privacy Chen desires. We may well interpret this pleasure in their new-found home as an ironic comment on the well-known saying that the Englishman´s home is his castle. Here Chen hides himself in the kitchen, while his wife and sister-in-law sit behind the counter and face the increasing number of English customers who eagerly wait to devour the food the Chens laughingly call lupsup. Lupsup, we are told, is rubbish served from the tourist menu, and it is "fit only for foreign devils" (Mo, 1982: 17), the category into with the local English are placed throughout the novel. As the story progresses, we soon realise that the three major characters represent three ways of coming to terms with their new environment. And as they try to cope with the to their eyes unpredictable English they also make generalisations about them, based on a mixture of prejudice, misunderstanding, half-understood TV-series and baffling local behaviour in restaurants and other public spaces. In this process, many of the familiar and accepted notions of Englishness are exaggerated, unmasked and turned up-side-down.FOOTNOTE1 The way in which Timothy Mo achieves this effect is through the structuralist concept of defamiliarisation. Defamiliarisation, from the Russian word for "making strange", is a concept developed by the Russian Formalist Victor Shklovsky in the essay "Art as Technique" (1917). Defamiliarisation is achieved when you describe an object as if you see it for the first time or when you render things that are usually regarded as familiar, unfamiliar and strange. By opposing the habitual, you are able to see things in a new, critical light. Techniques that Timothy Mo uses in order to achieve defamiliarisation, and thus to startle the reader into a reevaluation of prejudices and habits, include first and foremost ironic reversals of characteristic stereotypes. Through stereotyping, Mo is able to emphasise the differences the characters feel exist between themselves and the unknown English other. In the book, the Chinese are portrayed as named individuals who time and again encounter groups of largely unnamed English people. The superior Lily, for example, never misses an opportunity to judge the English other, so much so that the sum total of her reflections may be labelled "Occidentalism". The effect of this reversal is humorous and satiric, as well as critical, in a gentle but persuasive manner. Through their work, then, the Chens get into contact with the local English. When Chen worked as a waiter, he often discussed the clientele, "their hosts and patrons, the English" (Mo, 1982: 29), with his colleagues, and the idiosyncracies of the English never cease to amaze the waiters. The English habit of not paying the restaurant bill happens so often that it is believed to be a national sport. Seen in the light of comments made by, for example George Orwell and Jeremy Paxman, on the English love of sport, this is easily interpreted as Mo´s ironic remark on this popular past time. The "sport" of not paying is incomprehensible to the Chinese waiters, however. They have less difficulty in understanding the odd behaviour of typical English customers, described in the following manner: "loud and rowdy behaviour... including fencing with chopsticks and wearing inverted rice bowls on the head like brittle skull-caps, writing odd things on lavatory walls, and mixing the food on their plates in a disgusting way before putting soya sauce on everything" (29)FOOTNOTE2. In spite of such decidedly strange conduct, the restaurant proprietor prefers English patrons to Chinese because they "consumed expensive and unsuitable wines as well as beer with their meal and did not share the irritating obsessions of the Chinese customers with their totally unreasonable insistence that a meal be made up of fresh materials..."(ibid: 29). In this comical way, Mo satirises the English lack of culinary sophistication. Mo seems to be voicing his amazement that although Britain was once an Empire, it never acquired the expected savoir-faire when it comes to fine cuisine. Again, we are reminded of Orwell who (in his development of the characteristic English suspicion of foreigners) observed that although many English soldiers spent four years in France during World War One "they did not even acquire a liking for wine" (1941: 147). But it is from Lily, snug on her high stool behind the take-away counter in their increasingly flourishing business, that we are introduced to most generalisations about the English. She judges English barbarism and strangeness from the vantage point of her innate sense of superiority, secure in her knowledge that she knows best. Here, too, Mo seems to be poking fun at, in his usual manner of turning accepted notions up-side-down, what the American Martha Gellhorn has called the "superiority complex" of the English (quoted in Paxman, 1999: 129). As Lily sits there, day after day, her English improving faster than her understanding of the "pink faced foreign devils", she is bemused and horrified by what she observes. When her sister Mui tells her that they have quite a lot of regular customers, Lily is surprised. Why? Because to her they all look the same: "Lily found it difficult except in certain obvious cases to distinguish between those bland, roseate occidental faces. They all looked the same to her. And how quickly their pink skin aged. How few types of face there were compared to the almost infinite variety of interesting Cantonese physiognomies: rascally, venerable, pretty, raffish, bumpkin, scholarly" (Mo, 1982: 137). Here we have an exceptionally good example of the technique of defamiliarisation, where by taking racial stereotypes and reversing them, we are forced to look with new eyes at the local English. Mui, however, castigates Lily. Throughout the novel she acts as Lily´s foil, so also when it comes to interpreting the English. In many ways, she is the mediator between Lily and their host country. Mui is more open to English customs, and she understands the English better. Her advice to Lily is this: "I suggest you look at the English people on the television a bit harder, younger sister" (ibid: 137). That will teach Lily that the English are human, after all, and not bears, pigs and devils who defy all kinds of reason and understanding. Mui´s introduction to England comes through the small TV screen. By watching Crossroads and Coronation Street with horror and fascination, Mui gradually learns about the English language, English settings, and, most importantly, about English characters. She develops names for these types based on their most recognisable traits: Boy, Hairnet, Drinker, Cripple, Crafty etc. The narrator explains the result of her TV obsession thus: "The composite picture she was able to glean of the British population was an alarming one. More than ever, Mui was reluctant to leave the flat" (ibid: 10). This quote illustrates very well the narrative tone of irony prevalent in the book. Furthermore, we notice the common pattern of generalisations: from a couple of popular TV-series, Mui confidently expresses opinions about society at large. And what is more, as is typical of many of the cultural encounters in the book, this meeting between the immigrant and the host-society also takes place in the arena of popular, "low" culture. It is all the more shocking, then, when she comes face to face with a real life Englishman. Next to where the Chens have established their business is a garage, and it is the proprietor of this enterprise who has the honour of introducing Mui to the real thing. As he steps into the Chen´s house, Mui can hardly contain herself, the "excitement of seeing a flesh and blood Englishman, as opposed to a flickering one dimensional image on the screen, in her house for the first time" (ibid: 104) is almost too much to bear. This Englishman happens to be Mr. Constantinides, big and hairy, and judging from his name, an immigrant or a descendent of immigrants himself. However, to the Chens, he is a typical Englishman. And this is in character with Mo´s portrayal of the English. We are introduced to a multicultural London, with Greek, Indian and Chinese restaurants, West-Indian bus drivers, Asian and Indian school kids and Jewish tailors. In many subtle and not so subtle ways, Mo emphasises what Daniel Defoe pointed out almost three centuries ago: "... A True Born Englishman´s a contradiction!/In speech, an irony! In fact, a fiction!" (quoted in Paxman, 1999: 58). As they venture into the baffling, slightly scary world of South London, the Chens meet more English people, and they develop a liking for bus conductors. Just like Orwell´s point that the minute you set foot on English soil, you notice the gentleness of the English, because England "is a land where the bus conductors are good-tempered and the policemen carry no revolvers" (1941: 142), so the Chens feel a certain affinity with bus drivers. However, as is typical of the world of Sour Sweet, the bus conductors singled out for special admiration are West-Indians or Asians. But it is significant that although they probably do not look like the gentle bus conductors of Orwell´s description, they still in the eyes of the Chen family represent decent aspects of a society sorely lacking in decency. Indeed, when Lily at the end of the book is forced to consider a new way of making a living, driving a bus is the first thing that springs into her mind (Mo, 1982: 277). But it is not only ordinary English people the Chens face. In due course they also have to put up with interfering representatives of English official authorities. The arrival of the tax inspector, "the brigand in a raincoat" (ibid: 164) turns out to be a success, however, as Lily learns from the kindly, grand-father-like figure how to cheat and deduct the cost of most of the running of the business. Thus he redeems himself in her eyes, but the general impression she gets of figures of authority is summed up in one word: "Idiots!" (ibid: 165). That is also why she does not bother with a driver´s licence, and instead puts a little tea money in a plastic folder so she can bribe her way if necessary (ibid: 152). In this light hearted manner, she circumvents English red tape in a way other immigrants would never dream of doing. George Lamming´s West-Indian migrants, for example, (in his novel The Emigrants, 1954) discuss English bureaucracy in a fashion as unfamiliar to Lily as is English authority in general: "You know you ain´t supposed to do it without a licence. ´Tis different from back home where you could set up a little place an´ it ain´t nobody´s business. Here every damn thing is something for papers, permission, and signing here an´ there, an´ the income tax an´ all that... Livin´ here England is like having a job, ah mean o´ job apart from your work... The things you got to remember to answer, you tired before you start to work" (Lamming, 1994: 150). Not so for Lily, whose boundless energy daunts most people and acts as a stark contrast to the English idleness Lily faces every day. When it is time for Son to go to school, Lily is introduced to another shocking aspect of English society. Son´s school is soon labelled "the academy of misrule" (ibid: 229) and the lack of discipline and academic work worries Lily so much that she decides to send him once a week to a Chinese school so that he will be taught respect and proper conduct. Apparently, Lily knows nothing about the traditional English pride in their school system. Nor does she seem to share the idea that English schools are often said to be the envy of the Commonwealth. Lily´s philosophy of education is straightforward - "it didn´t matter what [Son] studied so long as he didn´t like it" (ibid: 229) - so the fact that Son enjoys his school is worrying. The English schooling is, according to Lily, eccentric, peculiar, bewildering and undemanding. But what can you expect from an absurd society whose "discipline was either lax or to the point of non-existence or ferocious - like beating Hong Kong factory workers senseless with truncheons and then giving them free medical treatment" (ibid: 247). In fact, Lily is only pleasantly surprised once, when Son sings a song to her about being a teapot and supplements the song with the appropriate gestures. Lily is delighted and surprised: "Imagine the English having a tea song. This was really quite civilised of them - for a change. But what a peculiar, eccentric thing to teach children in school, she couldn´t help thinking" (ibid: 212). In Mo´s fictional world of comic reversal, the proof of civilisation comes in the form of a nursery song, traditionally considered an example of "low", popular culture. We may also detect in this witty point a teasing of the English and their pride in the quality of their national literature. Both George Orwell and Jeremy Paxman admit that while the English have no artistic sensibility, they have a literary tradition of world acclaim. However, neither of the commentators include nursery rhymes in this corpus. Son´s school results in a series of unexpected problems for Lily. When she teaches Son how to fight, he soon gets into trouble when he hits a girl. The teacher, probably brought up with the so-called English sense of fair play, scolds him for dirty and unfair fighting. Lily is taken aback with what she considers is "the amazing perversity of the foreign view point": "What was ´fair´ about fighting, or ´unfair´? You fought to win and you won any way you could" (ibid: 235).FOOTNOTE3 As Son begins to develop a taste for the traditional English fare of mince, jam tarts and custard, he also embarks on the slow journey towards assimilation. Just as the worst Chinese food is served to the local English, so the bad English school dinner is served to the immigrant. Again, multicultural exchanges do not provide examples of the best of those cultures. Still, Son likes English lupsup just as much as the natives like Chinese lupsup. It is hardly surprising that this worries and confuses Lily, given the low view she has of the local English. She is afraid that Son will eventually grow into a "foreign devil boy", and is at loss to prevent this. As the world around her changes, Lily becomes less cocksure. Her husband Chen, who in the course of the novel is relegated to the wings, is eventually hunted down and killed by the Triad. Lily and her sister know nothing of this, and they cannot understand why he has disappeared. With him, Mo seems to be saying, goes the rigid adherence to the rules of the society the immigrant has left behind. Without accepting change, survival in England is impossible. Mui, on the other hand, adapts so much so that she behaves like a typical irresponsible young English girl and ends up pregnant. To Lily´s consternation, when the baby is born, she shows the marked characteristic of Western parentage. Mui further shocks Lily by getting married to a family friend and taking out citizenship. For Mui, England is home; she and her new husband plan to set up a new business - a fish and chips restaurant. And while they wait for this to become possible, Mui´s husband claims unemployment benefit. Lily is convinced Mui is mad. But Mo seems to be echoing Paxman´s claim "[t]hat being English is a matter of choice" (76) - perhaps because it is, as he further suggests, a state of mind (1999: 77)FOOTNOTE4. Mui chooses to become English, in her own way, and ends up a British citizen selling "quintessential English food" (Paxman, 1999: 259), fish-and-chips, to customers of many ethnic groups. Mo seems here to be staking a claim for a redefined notion of Englishness. Hanif Kureishi echoes Mo when he presents this appeal in the essay, "The Rainbow Sign": "It is the British, the white British, who have to learn that being British isn´t what it was. Now it is a more complex thing, involving new elements. So there must be a fresh way of seeing Britain and the choices it faces: and a new way of being British after all this time" (1986: 38). It seems to me that Mo accentuates this new way of being British in his book. It is part of his irony, though, to employ the narrower and more complex term English most of the time rather than the politically correct term British. At the end of the book, Mo´s image of the family as an amoeba, the smallest living creature, seems an apt one, both for the family of Chinese immigrants the novel has introduced us to, and for the story´s vision of society at large. The amoeba-like entity, we are told, behaves thus when it encounters change and challenge, "[it] shuddered like a jelly on impact with the obstacle but jelly-like suffered no damage, poured itself around the problem, dissolved what it was able to and absorbed what it could not" (Mo, 1982: 228). The only way for a family and its members to survive is to adapt and accept change. That is why Chen dies and why Mui thrives. And although Lily never seems to understand the host-country, she does learn several survival techniques. A nation and its inhabitants, Mo seems to be saying, must also adapt or die. Like Kureishi, and like Orwell, he suggests that change is the only way forward. By way of conclusion, we may again turn to Orwell, who employs this image of England, "... England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past, and, like all living things, having the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same" (1941: 159). The living organism that is the family and the nation thrives on change and inclusion. Orwell, Kureishi and Mo are right, rigidity and stagnation are the natural enemies of the move forwards that they all suggest is the core of survival. References: Emsley, C 1992. "The English Bobby: An Indulgent Tradition", in Roy Porter, ed., Myths of the English, 1993, Cambridge: Polity. Fowler, R 1990. Linguistic Criticism. Oxford: OUP. Hall, L1995. "New Nations, New Selves: The Novels of Timothy Mo and Kazuo Ishiguro", in A. Robert Lee, ed., Other Britain, Other British: Contemporary Multicultural Fiction, London: Pluto. Kureishi, H 1986. My Beautiful Laundrette and The Rainbow Sign. London: Faber and Faber. Lamming, G 1994. The Emigrants. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan. Lewis, P 1982. "Hong Kong London", TLS, 7 May, 502. Mo, T 1982. Sour Sweet, London: Vintage. Orwell, G 1947. The English People. London: Collins. Orwell, G 1941. "The Lion and the Unicorn", in The Penguin Essays of George Orwell, 1994, London: Penguin. Paxman, J 1999. The English. A Portrait of a People, London: Penguin. Ross, R L., ed. 1991. International Literature in English: Essays on Major Writers, NY & London: Garland. Rothfork, J 1989. "Confucianism in Timothy Mo´s Sour Sweet", Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 24:1, 49-64. Shklovsky, V 1917. "Art as Technique", in David Lodge, ed., Modern Criticism and Theory, 1988, London: Longman. Footnotes: 1. The Chens have no concept of Britain, only of England. Indeed, for the Chinese the distinction between English and British seems irrelevant, uninteresting, even. Their world is centred on the fringes of London, with the odd trips into the heartland of Chinatown, to Heathrow or to the seaside. The people they observe represent the English people in general to them, as they are not concerned with the finer points of regional belonging. Furthermore, the Chens never discuss features such as class, occupation and accent which are usually considered markers of identity and belonging. There is thus a nice discrepancy between the knowing narrator and the blithely ignorant characters. 2. In the TV series, Goodness Gracious Me, the sketch where a group of Asians go out for an English in their local Bombay restaurant, taunt their waiter ("Clive of India") and order chips with everything while worrying about the constipation which is the inevitable result of eating English food, serves as another example of satire on English food and restaurant behaviour. 3. Perhaps Lily´s reaction is a result of her upbringing. Contrary to Chinese stereotypes, she has been brought up as a boy. Through rigorous training, her father teaches her to become a prizefighter. The narrator emphasises that she is rather "manly", and a marked contrast to Chen and Son, who are both weaklings when compared to Lily. 4. Compare also the interesting reflections Jeremy Paxman has on the difference between being English and being British (1999: 74, 240). |
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