"It's all Interconnected": Naming as Representational Affirmative Action and Character Development in Zadie Smith's On Beauty. Issue 8 (17th November 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Derdeyn, LeeAnn
• Is Part Of: English studies. Volume 99:Issue 8(2018)
• Page Start: 922
• Page End: 943
• Publication Date: 2018-11-17
• Subjects: English philology -- Periodicals; English literature -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; Philologie anglaise -- Périodiques; Littérature anglaise -- Étude et enseignement -- Périodiques; 420
• DOI: 10.1080/0013838X.2018.1519219
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0013-838X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Critics assert that characterization in Zadie Smith's On Beauty is fatally shallow and stereotypical. Instead, it is an authorial coup by Smith. This claim is established through three underlying arguments: that 1) part of Zadie Smith's typecasting in On Beauty extends to the naming of Howard and Kiki Belsey's children, 2) this function of naming by Howard and Kiki is a pre-emptive racial identification, an optative affirmative action, and a practice of nominative determinism that depends upon an understanding of language as representational, and 3) Kiki's and Howard's motivations in naming establish the precedent of a happy, united, early Belsey marriage against which can be measured Howard's current behaviour and the flatness of Kiki, Jerome, Zora, and Levi as a consequence of his rigid, negative professional and personal emptiness. Still, naming denotes unique identity and attention. Analysis of the ending scene of naming shows hope for Howard and his family.