The Polished Hoe
Critique • Quotes
First editionFirst publication
2002
Literary form
Novel
Genres
Literary
Writing language
English
Author's country
Canada
Length
Approx. 160,000 words
The hoe of justice
Austin Clarke's best known and most awarded novel can divide readers, if not critics. Stylistically The Polished Hoe falls into the category of the poetic novel. There it joins the works of many other acclaimed novelists but especially, it sometimes seems, Canadian authors. Fellow Giller Prize winners Michael Ondaatje and Anne Michaels come to mind, among others.
For some readers, poetical text enriches the novel experience, while for others it's a distraction from the narrative power of prosaic language.
But we shouldn't generalize on either account. Poetic novels are poetic in their own ways. The Polished Hoe isn't dense with metaphor and precious imagery, nor overly pretty and refined, like some other poetical novels. Clarke's vocabulary may be colourful but it is as down to earth as the implement in the novel's title.
Rather the poetic nature of The Polished Hoe comes mainly from its oblique manner of telling the story. The narration is circular, repeating and multi-layered. More so than it needs to be, an impatient reader may cry.
Connecting the pieces
The novel's timescale is just a single night and day as Bimshire (Barbados) resident Mary-Mathilde confesses to killing the local plantation owner by telling the story of her life. But in both memory and conversation she jumps around to cover events and impressions of the present, recent past and long past. The resulting disjointed narrative requires the reader to continually try to connect the fragments and sort out how much of what Mary-Mathilde says is reliable. For some critics this makes for a postmodernist masterwork (though I'm never really clear what "postmodernist" means, apart from confusing).
Another exotic element of The Polished Hoe is the Caribbean dialect mixed with more literary English. It's never difficult to understand, and it helps suggest the slave and colonial past of Bimshire, and the joint heritage of Mary-Mathilde, her family, the plantation owner she killed, and the police she confesses to.
What can make the novel a hard slog though is not its supposed poetical or postmodern features but its very slow progress. Mary-Mathilda's narration doesn't just time-shift but it meanders through each period. Some lengthy digressions add little to the understanding of this otherwise fascinating character and why she did what she did. Personally I'm not opposed to digressions from main plots—as long as they're engaging enough to make readers forget they're on a digression. Despite Clarke's obvious facility with pointed prose, you can often find yourself wondering where you are in the story and start grasping for through lines.
Getting the gist
And talking about the plot, well, quite early in the novel we figure out how The Polished Hoe is likely to end. Understood, for Clarke—and likely for his devoted readers—the plot itself is not as important as the history, the place, the ambience, the characters' thoughts, feelings and experiences—all that ephemeral stuff that attaches to and drives the human actions and reactions that make up the plot, such as it is.
Still, this narrative-obsessed reader can't avoid the feeling quite early in the novel he gets the gist but has to continue through more repetitious material. Some secrets of Mary-Mathilde's world may be unveiled along the way but nothing that could not be revealed more directly—if they haven't already been guessed.
In a final note, I've seen some wags declare online the title and cover of The Polished Hoe are an obvious joke. The title is said to be slang for a sophisticated prostitute, while the picture of the Black woman from behind enforces this racy (if not racist) interpretation.
This is very unlikely. And quite stupid really.
But the title does allow a more realistic and darker interpretation. Mary-Mathilde's hoe, which she like hundreds of others used in their daily work on the plantation, can be seen as evoking past and present colonialism. The "polish" represents her forced extraction from that brutal life to be placed into a more refined existence where she can personally serve her oppressor. The polished hoe also becomes the weapon used to wreak justice.
— Eric
Critique • Quotes
