“The finest coat in England”: The dressed body in Andrea Levy’s “That Polite Way that English People Have”

Andrea Levy’s short story “That Polite Way that English People Have” follows Hortense – later developed into a protagonist from her novel Small Island – on her journey from Jamaica to Britain. Told from a female perspective, the story places a seemingly mundane garment – a coat – at the centre of the action. To examine the symbolism behind the coat that Hortense buys from her white employer and dons before departure, the article draws on works by Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth Wilson that theorize the close connection between dress, body, and identity, as well as on studies by Stuart Hall and Carol Tulloch addressing the clothing of the Windrush generation. The article argues that, in Levy’s text, Hortense’s coat functions as a metaphor for aspiration, assimilation, and eventually disillusionment, reflecting both the coming-of-age process that she undergoes on the journey and the gap between expectation and reality experienced by Caribbean immigrants in post-war Britain.