Small Island

Small Island

by

Andrea Levy

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Small Island makes teaching easy.

Hortense Roberts Character Analysis

Hortense Roberts, one of the novel’s protagonists, is a young Jamaican woman who immigrates to England. Hortense is born out of wedlock to a famous Jamaican bureaucrat, Lovell Roberts, and a penniless maid, Alberta. Raised as an outsider by her father’s cousins, Philip and Martha Roberts who prize status and respectability above all else, Hortense learns to value their world while also feeling insecure about her place in it as a illegitimate child of low birth. As a young woman, she attends a colonial teaching college, where she imbibes the narrative of British colonial superiority. Her craving for respectability and her worship of Britain lead her to immigrate to London, but the hostile and racist society she finds forces her to reevaluate her preconceptions of Britain. At the beginning of the novel, Hortense is often stuck-up about manners. She’s also self-centered, betraying her best friend Celia to marry Celia’s fiancé, Gilbert Joseph, and taking no pains to understand or empathize with her new husband. However, as an embattled immigrant develops new wisdom and flexibility—for example, she learns to appreciate her unpolished but loving husband, rather than scramble for acceptance from British people who look down on her. Later, Hortense singlehandedly delivers Queenie’s baby and then adopts it, displaying new empathy and acceptance of unconventional circumstances. Even though she’s still struggling for a foothold in British society, at the end of the novel, Hortense has achieved a respectful and loving marriage and embarks on life as a new mother. She emerges as a mature and warm-hearted woman, maintaining her dignity and generous spirit in the face of the prejudice she faces every day.

Hortense Roberts Quotes in Small Island

The Small Island quotes below are all either spoken by Hortense Roberts or refer to Hortense Roberts. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Manners and Civilization Theme Icon
).
Chapter 3: Hortense Quotes

With such a countenance there was a chance of a golden life for I. What, after all, could Alberta give? Bare black feet skipping over stones. If I was given to my father’s cousins for upbringing, I could learn to read and write and perform all my times tables. And more. I could become a lady worthy of my father, wherever he might be.

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Lovell Roberts, Alberta
Page Number: 32
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4: Hortense Quotes

I could understand why it was of the greatest importance to her that slavery should not return. Her skin was so dark. But mine was not of that hue—it was the color of warm honey. No one would think to enchain someone such as I. All the world knows what that rousing anthem declares: “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.”

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Celia Langley
Page Number: 59
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33: Hortense Quotes

For this dismal garment, which I had taken to be her dressing gown, was her good outside coat […] She look on me distasteful, up and down. I was dressed as a woman such as I should be when visiting the shops in England. My coat was clean, my gloves freshly washed and a hat upon my head. But Mrs. Bligh stare on me as if something was wrong with my apparel, before telling me once more, “I’m not worried about what busybodies say. I don’t mind being seen in the street with you.”

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Queenie Buxton
Page Number: 272
Explanation and Analysis:

She think me a fool that does not know what is bread? But my mind could not believe what my eye had seen. That English people would buy their bread in this way. This man was patting on his red head and wiping his hand down his filthy white coat. Cha, why he no lick the bread first before giving it to me to eat?

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Queenie Buxton
Page Number: 275
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 51: Gilbert Quotes

Hortense should have yelled in righteous pain not whimper in my ear […] Come, let me tell you, I wanted to tempt these busybodies closer. Beckon them to step forward and take a better look. For then I might catch my hand around one of their scrawny white necks and squeeze. No one will watch us weep in this country.

Related Characters: Gilbert Joseph (speaker), Hortense Roberts
Page Number: 380
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 53: Hortense Quotes

And I said to myself, Hortense, come, this is a gift from the Lord—life. What price is a little disgust on your best dress? I decided to pay it no mind.

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Queenie Buxton, Baby Michael
Page Number: 400
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 56: Gilbert Quotes

“Gilbert, come, you no scared of a little hard work. I can help you.” She spun round the room. “With a little paint and some carpet.” She moved to the corner leaning over to spread out her arms and say “And a table and a chair here,” before rushing to the fireplace with the suggestion, “and two armchairs here in front of an open English fire. You will see—we will make it nice.”

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Gilbert Joseph
Page Number: 417
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 59: Hortense Quotes

For at that moment as Gilbert stood, his chest panting with the passion from his words, I realized that Gilbert Joseph, my husband, was a man of class, a man of character, a man of intelligence. Noble in a way that would some day make him a legend […] But this Englishman just carried on, “I’m sorry… but I just can’t understand a single word that you’re saying.”

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Gilbert Joseph, Bernard Bligh
Page Number: 435
Explanation and Analysis:

Michael Joseph would know his mother not from the smell of boiling milk, a whispered song or bare black feet but from the remembered taste of salt tears. Those tears that on that day dripped, one at a time, from her eye, over his lips and on to his tongue.

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Queenie Buxton, Baby Michael
Page Number: 437
Explanation and Analysis:
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Hortense Roberts Quotes in Small Island

The Small Island quotes below are all either spoken by Hortense Roberts or refer to Hortense Roberts. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Manners and Civilization Theme Icon
).
Chapter 3: Hortense Quotes

With such a countenance there was a chance of a golden life for I. What, after all, could Alberta give? Bare black feet skipping over stones. If I was given to my father’s cousins for upbringing, I could learn to read and write and perform all my times tables. And more. I could become a lady worthy of my father, wherever he might be.

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Lovell Roberts, Alberta
Page Number: 32
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4: Hortense Quotes

I could understand why it was of the greatest importance to her that slavery should not return. Her skin was so dark. But mine was not of that hue—it was the color of warm honey. No one would think to enchain someone such as I. All the world knows what that rousing anthem declares: “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.”

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Celia Langley
Page Number: 59
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33: Hortense Quotes

For this dismal garment, which I had taken to be her dressing gown, was her good outside coat […] She look on me distasteful, up and down. I was dressed as a woman such as I should be when visiting the shops in England. My coat was clean, my gloves freshly washed and a hat upon my head. But Mrs. Bligh stare on me as if something was wrong with my apparel, before telling me once more, “I’m not worried about what busybodies say. I don’t mind being seen in the street with you.”

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Queenie Buxton
Page Number: 272
Explanation and Analysis:

She think me a fool that does not know what is bread? But my mind could not believe what my eye had seen. That English people would buy their bread in this way. This man was patting on his red head and wiping his hand down his filthy white coat. Cha, why he no lick the bread first before giving it to me to eat?

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Queenie Buxton
Page Number: 275
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 51: Gilbert Quotes

Hortense should have yelled in righteous pain not whimper in my ear […] Come, let me tell you, I wanted to tempt these busybodies closer. Beckon them to step forward and take a better look. For then I might catch my hand around one of their scrawny white necks and squeeze. No one will watch us weep in this country.

Related Characters: Gilbert Joseph (speaker), Hortense Roberts
Page Number: 380
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 53: Hortense Quotes

And I said to myself, Hortense, come, this is a gift from the Lord—life. What price is a little disgust on your best dress? I decided to pay it no mind.

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Queenie Buxton, Baby Michael
Page Number: 400
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 56: Gilbert Quotes

“Gilbert, come, you no scared of a little hard work. I can help you.” She spun round the room. “With a little paint and some carpet.” She moved to the corner leaning over to spread out her arms and say “And a table and a chair here,” before rushing to the fireplace with the suggestion, “and two armchairs here in front of an open English fire. You will see—we will make it nice.”

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Gilbert Joseph
Page Number: 417
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 59: Hortense Quotes

For at that moment as Gilbert stood, his chest panting with the passion from his words, I realized that Gilbert Joseph, my husband, was a man of class, a man of character, a man of intelligence. Noble in a way that would some day make him a legend […] But this Englishman just carried on, “I’m sorry… but I just can’t understand a single word that you’re saying.”

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Gilbert Joseph, Bernard Bligh
Page Number: 435
Explanation and Analysis:

Michael Joseph would know his mother not from the smell of boiling milk, a whispered song or bare black feet but from the remembered taste of salt tears. Those tears that on that day dripped, one at a time, from her eye, over his lips and on to his tongue.

Related Characters: Hortense Roberts (speaker), Queenie Buxton, Baby Michael
Page Number: 437
Explanation and Analysis: