70 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel
washing his car and comments disapprovingly to herself: “I want to
tell him that in England you have to become a part of the neigh-
borhood. Say hello to people. Go to church. Introduce your kids to
the new school” (p. 16). Indeed, such pursuits of conforming to a
routine, going to church, gossiping with the pub landlord, are what
could be labeled the cultural tropes of “home” that are observed
and identified by Dorothy and that differ conspicuously from the
ones we initially observe in Solomon’s African birthplace. This is an
important observation, because Phillips is careful to illustrate the
degree of peculiarit y associated with each conception of “ home” that
subsequently becomes lost or distorted in each of the characters.
In spite of the critical attitude she exhibits earlier in the narra-
tive, Dorothy strikes up a brief but meaningful relationship with
Solomon that brings comfort to both. Such comfort is sorely needed
to assuage the loneliness both characters suffer. However, whereas
Solomon’s loneliness is brought about by his being deracinated and
having to move a great physical distance, Dorothy’s solitariness
is caused by a sense of detachment that occurs almost within an
entirely static space: “England has changed,” she tells us (p. 1). But
we learn that this failure to assimilate into the community is not only
a problem brought about by the changes in the physical composition
and appearance of the society and its spaces. Like Solomon, who
describes himself as “a man burdened with hidden history,” Dorothy
is haunted by a troubled past (p. 300). As the plot unfolds, the nar-
rative gradually delves beneath the layers of routine and small-town
fastidiousness that regulate her life to reveal a number of unsettling
psychological scars.
Evoking the story of Eva Stern, whose narrative traced a chilling
descent into madness and suicidal depression, Dorothy’s mental dete-
rioration develops as a clear consequence of her inability to overcome
the events she endured in her past. Indeed, such depictions of psy-
chological illness, particularly those caused by ethnic discrimination
or the social isolation that attends the experience of immigration, are
to be found in a number of Phillips’s other novels. Again, another
example is Rudy Williams in Higher Ground , whose increasingly
extreme political attitudes toward American civil-rights issues result
in a progressively volatile psychological state. In Dancing in the Dark