Coveting Art, Women, and Racial Dominance

Desire and greed of the intellectual, material and sexual variety, plague Howard and Montague in Zadie Smith’s, On Beauty. Much like Howard “covets” Kiki’s family house (17), and Montague desires rare Haitian paintings, both characters project this same desire on people. These accretions, of the human (servants, and sexual acts) and material (art, property) kind are what support the desire for superiority and control. Monty, for example, has an affair with Chantelle, a poor African-American student, who’s status as a discretionary student, Monty debates, wishing Chantelle would “earn” her rights to academia (367). He is taking direct action to control her future and her access, which he tries to deny, to education. While at the same time exploiting her as a charity case and sexual endeavor. Smith parallels the exposure of Monty’s affair Howard’s affair with Monty’s daughter- also a student.

Victoria’s beauty is consistently being pointed out and Howard’s affair with her seems to stand in for conquering the aspects of life that he is, in reality, miserably failing at. She parallels the aesthetics of art that are wantonly coveted and competitively analyzed. Just as Howard misinterprets the Self-Portrait with Lace Collar (28) and “hang(s) himself” with his own words, he is ‘misguided’ into an affair with both Claire and Victoria. Claire also symbolizes Howard’s intellectual, or privileged desire to conquer the philosophies of art, as Clair is the archetypical artist of On Beauty. Art, however, seems to represent subjugated and oppressed peoples who have suffered under colonialism, racism and sexism. Monty is the colonial oppressor who uses art to uphold social order and the perpetual impoverishment of black people, like Chantelle who’s exploitation is synonymous with Monty’s misappropriations of Haitian art. Howard is the oppressor, who takes on the role, taken on by many imperialist nations, of father and educator. His character is further complicated, politically because Smith castes Howard as a liberal, Monty as a conservative – alluding to the failure by both political sides, to understand, philosophize and de-sexualize race and gender.

Questions:

How does the environment of elitist academia surmise mixed-race identity in On Beauty? Where does the concept of art fit in and how does this microcosm work? Does it really work at all? Does the setting of the novel exclude certain readers?

How does Zadie Smith conceptualize women? How do some of her points intersect feminism with racism? I can’t help but think of the historically fraught racial exclusivity of Feminism and women based movements after being introduced to the character, Kiki.