Girl, Woman, Other

Winsome is Shirley’s mother and Clovis’s wife. As first-generation Barbadian immigrants, Winsome and Clovis have made immense sacrifices so that their English-born children could find success and opportunity in England. Winsome meets Clovis not long after arriving in England. The couple immediately bonds over their shared immigrant background. Winsome feels indifferently toward Clovis but marries him because he offers safety and stability; this is one of the many sacrifices that Winsome makes as an immigrant. Soon after marrying, Clovis convinces Winsome to move south to a fishing town. She agrees, but only because, as his wife, she feels obligated to accompany him. Though racism prevents Winsome from getting work as a fisherman, he insists that they settle in the countryside, which Winsome tolerates until she can no longer sit back and watch her children experience racism from their teachers and peers. In a moment of feminist conviction, Winsome tells Clovis she’s taking the children back to London with or without him; Clovis follows the family to London. Decades later, Winsome falls in love and has an affair with Shirley’s husband Lennox, whom she sees as a better version of Clovis—as a member of the younger, more progressive generation, Lennox treats Shirley as his equal, whereas Clovis expected Winsome to be an obedient wife. In their old age, Winsome and Clovis return to their native Barbados, and their quality of life immediately improves. Winsome, for instance, starts attending a women’s book club, allowing her to explore intellectual pursuits that her hard life as a first-generation immigrant denied her. Their homecoming challenges reductive immigrant narratives that suggest life is always ultimately better in an immigrant’s adopted country. Winsome struggled for much of her adult life to give Shirley the opportunities Shirley would need to succeed in England, so Shirley’s perpetual unhappiness puzzles and wounds Winsome.