Masculinity In The Lonely Londoners

In Samule Selvon’s 1956 novel The Lonely Londoners much of the characters’ interactions with each other are focused on sexual relationships between the West Indian male characters (“the boys”) and the European white women whom they pursue, whether these interactions be between men and women or between male friends. The way these relationships are described by the boys to each other perpetuates the systematic devaluing of women in British society, reducing their personhood to mere sexual conquests in an effort to prove their own masculinity. These scenes have lead some critics to dismiss the novel as too overtly sexist to be groundbreaking from a racial or immigrant perspective. However, the women that the boys have relations with (both working class and rich) have a similar perception of their partners and seek them out in order to feel liberated from oppressive white men in their lives or to fulfill their own racist sexual fantasies. Neither party is seeing the other as a full person but rather a body made up of its minority parts, a body to conquer and gossip about later. “The boys” see the women they sleep with as a way to feel as if they fit into society and to reaffirm their masculinity to themselves and those around them. As MacLeod says in his essay, …show more content…
They are marginalized by the white men in their lives (such as Beatrice’s father, who dictates with whom she is allowed to spend time) so associating with West Indian men gives them a sense of agency, even superiority, over a man – something that is rare to them. Dating and sleeping with black men is a way to transgress the norms of society set out for them with few consequences. As long as they don’t give birth to “curly-hair children” (Selvon 1956: 51) and settle down with a white man in the end there are no long-term consequences to these