Gender and Exile: Immigrant Women in Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage and “Higher Ground” in Higher Ground

Abstract

Caryl Phillips’s The Final Passage and “Higher Ground” in Higher Ground are centred on women moving to England. The move is both physical and
psychological as these women, Leila from the Caribbean in The Final Passage and Irina/Irene, a Jew from Poland, in “Higher Ground” go to London to negotiate new spaces. However, the issue I handle in this paper is whether London can be a veritable refuge for the immigrant woman to express herself. Can the woman create an identity for herself out of home? What are the factors in the metropolis that lead to her marginalization? These are some of the questions that I shall answer in this paper. The paper aims to demonstrate that immigrant women in the metropolis, no matter their race, equally face the unjust oppression of patriarchy as we find in the treatment given to Leila and Irina/Irene as they attempt to build new identities out of home. In this connection, my paper defends the contention that women who migrate to the Metropolis, as seen in Phillips, suffer double oppression; firstly, as people of inferior races (Black and Jewish) and secondly, as women in the eyes of men. My arguments will be guided by feminist views especially those of postcolonial feminists whose work attempts a link between colonialism and the marginalization of women.