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The novel presents Leah Hanwell and Natalie Blake’s pathogenic vulnerability in their instrumentalized marriages caused by traumatic experiences as social underdogs in the capitalist market. Through marrying high, Natalie outgrew her humble beginnings in Caldwell while Leah made a desperate move into marriage to cope with her existential anxiety. Therefore, their marriages doomed by utilitarian intentions or nihilistic imprudence are dysfunctional and disturbing in lack of mutual understanding and sincerity, which further disempowers them and leads to emotional disorder and even mental breakdown.

Natalie Blake views marriage as a social ladder through which she manages to overcome familial, class and race barriers. As a result, her marriage with Frank De Angelis from an affluent Italian family features an unscrupulous pragmatism. Raised up in a Jamaican plumber family, poverty is Natalie Blake’s first language. When the phone did not ring with news “of pipes leaking or backed-up toilets” (Smith, NW 178) for her father to repair, a strong anxiety would flood the small flat of her family. Natalie suffered a disturbing insecurity in a financially unstable family in childhood, which promotes her to seek economic security in men “socio-economically and culturally alien to her” (211) intentionally. Therefore, Natalie’s attraction to Frank generates first and for most from his aura of relaxing effortlessness with his Ralph Lauren wardrobe and indescribable accent that point to his privileged social and economic status. Smith ironically names Natalie’s marriage with Frank as a three-act play— “The invention of Love” in episode 69, 88 and 91, implying that it is a delicate scheme by Natalie.

2.2 Estranged Friendship as Failed Inter-racial Bonding

Female protagonists’ pathogenic vulnerability also generates from their estranged friendship in the capitalist market that produces disparities and alienation. The novel charts the friendship of the two female protagonists through a modernist blending of past and present, with particular attention to their estrangement from each other in later life. Their initial bonding comes about through a near-death experience of Leah which highlights their different ethnic identities: in a children’s pool party, Keisha Blake saved Leah Hanwell’s life, for which Leah’s mother Pauline, a self-important Irish woman, thanked Keisha’s mother. This act of gratitude “in itself was a kind of event” (175) in the deteriorated inter-ethnic conflicts in the community. Thus, in fact, Keisha’s act eased the division between the Jamaican and Irish parts of the London immigrant population and their friendship has served to embody a comradeship across ethnicities. However, their path diverges and their inter-ethnic bonding is corrupted by neoliberal class disparity and competitiveness.

The estrangement between Leah and Natalie in the future was laid down in their childhood when Natalie experienced inequalities between her and Leah in racist environments. In episode 6 titled “Some Answers” in the “Host” part, the young Keisha Blake and Leah Hanwell make a para本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。