When ‘Progress’ Means Alienation | Beyond Bourgeois Individualism
#onhisbirthdaytoday
8th June 2026
One quintessentially postcolonialesque feature that we find in postcolonial novels is the subversion of the traditional ‘Western’ conceptualisation of the bildungsroman!
Btw, dear reader, I’ve kinda attempted coining this new phrase - quintessentially postcolonialesque - slightly rephrasing it from Bernard Shaw’s 1891 essay, “The Quintessence of Ibsenism”. 😊
So why does Lamming subvert the traditional ‘Western’ bildungsroman?
That’s because the traditional bildungsroman (like in Jane Eyre, or Huckleberry Finn) is basically individual-driven, tracking that individual’s moral and psychological growth, and finally culminating in their harmonious assimilation into the social order. However, for Lamming, this ‘individual-centric’ social order is a strategic colonial hierarchy designed meant to subjugate the colonised, and hence he makes the Barbadian village of Creighton as the real protagonist in his 1953 novel, In the Castle of My Skin.
Although the novel tracks the coming-of-age of a boy named G., Lamming skillfully makes the village of Creighton as the real protagonist, as Lamming feels that, the individual’s psychological awakening is intertwined with the collective socio-political awakening of the entire peasant class!
Well, this then takes us to the concept of “bourgeois individualism”.
So what is bourgeois individualism?
It is a concept rooted in Marxist and critical theory that highlights a particular model of human identity that emerged alongside the rise of capitalism and the middle class - the bourgeoisie.
Bourgeois individualism presents the human being as an individualistic, isolated, self-contained, and fundamentally self-interested actor, where the said individual views the society not as an organic community, but merely as a marketplace to maximise their own profits.
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe could be cited as a towering archetype to this credo!
When Defoe’s protagonist Crusoe is stranded on an island, he quickly sets about commodifying the environment around him and thereby domesticates nature, by building enclosures around him!
Lamming seeks to deconstruct this concept of bourgeois individualism in his novel, In the Castle of My Skin.
Take for example, the concept of education that he foregrounds in the novel. In general, education is seen as a vehicle of empowerment meant to empower the individual and integrate them into the society, thereby empowering the society that they dwell in.
However, Lamming subverts this by presenting colonial education as an apparatus of alienation. As G. progresses through the high school system, he does not become more integrated into his community! Instead, he becomes estranged from his peers, his mother, and his cultural roots. That’s because his education forces an internalisation of British values, leaving him isolated within the “castle of his skin.”
“Progress” in the colonial context, then equates to a forced sense of alienation rather than cultivating a true sense of belonging!
That’s hence Lamming denies closure in the novel.
While the western bildungsroman ends with the protagonist finding their proverbial place in the world, Lamming concludes his novel with G. preparing to leave for Trinidad, totally isolated and alienated from his village and deeply uncertain about his future. By doing so, Lamming presents us with an impactful takeaway – that, true harmony requires confronting the historical trauma of race and class that has subjugated and enslaved the colonised natives.
Now, for a few lines highlighting the USP of the legend on his birthday today, from The Gale & The Guardian –
The Guardian has given a fitting tribute to the legend on his passing away, four years ago! And I quote –
The six novels and the collections of essays by George Lamming, who has died aged 94, did much to shape Caribbean literary culture. He also contributed to it as an educator and activist intellectual, mentoring a host of young writers and scholars in the Caribbean and beyond.
Intensely aware of the impact of colonialism on individual lives and the evolutionary process of social, political and economic reconstruction in the region, Lamming was inspired by the idea of a unified Caribbean.
Now from The Gale –
George Lamming is a novelist and essayist born in Barbados, who led a Caribbean renaissance in England. Ngugi wa Thiong’o has singled out three works as having impressed and influenced him in particular: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin (1953), and Peter Abrahams’s Tell Freedom (1954). Informally, Ngugi’s political thinking was revolutionised by his exposure to works by Karl Marx and Franz Fanon and by socialist academics.
Happy birthday to the visionary who showed us that the true protagonist of history is never the individual, but the people!
As eminent critic Scupin Richards puts it,
In a highly materialistic world that continues to be greatly obsessed with the illusion of the self-made individual, Lamming’s writing and his legacy remind us that true progress is never about rising above your community, but rising with it.
How true!
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