Zadie Smith’s On Beauty is a novel about politics at all levels, from a broader examination of liberal versus conservate values to more local issues like the office politics of running a university. The mixed-race Belsey family embodies liberalism, with Howard in particular defending traditionally liberal values like education and skepticism. By contrast, the Kipps family represents conservatism, with Monty being an ardent defender of Christianity and a critic of affirmative action, welfare, and homosexuality. But while the Belsey and Kipps families might seem like polar opposites, it soon becomes clear that the political divisions between them aren’t absolute. Jerome, for example, is a Belsey, but he has some conservative views, including a devotion to Christianity that confuses his father. Meanwhile, Victoria is a Kipps, but she rejects conservative ideas about virginity and chastity that are important to Monty and Michael’s version of Christianity.
In the novel, this broad conflict between liberalism and conservatism plays out in the office politics of Wellington College. Monty wants to give a series of lectures, presenting them as a free speech issue, while Howard wants to stop the lectures, which he considers a form of hate speech. It soon becomes clear, however, that this conflict is driven more by the longstanding personal hatred between Howard and Monty than the men’s respective lofty ideals. As more characters join the debate, they too have a personal stake in it. Zora, for example, only supports her father to impress a professor whose class will be important on her résumé (Claire) and a boy she finds attractive (Carl). And so, On Beauty portrays politics and personal life as intertwined, showing how personal experience both informs a person’s abstract political views and influences how they interact with others.
Politics in Academia ThemeTracker
Politics in Academia Quotes in On Beauty
Kiki slapped the table. ‘Oh, God, this isn’t 1910 – Jerome can marry who the hell he wants to marry – or are we going to start making up visiting cards and asking him to meet only the daughters of academics that you happen to –’
‘Might the address be in the green moleskin?’
It is an unnatural law of such parties that the person whose position on the guest list was originally the least secure is always the first to arrive. Christian von Klepper’s invitation had been added by Howard, removed by Kiki, reinstated by Howard, removed by Kiki and then, at some later point, apparently extended once more in secret by Howard, for here was Christian, leaning into an alcove in the living room, nodding devotedly at his host.
Too quickly, Claire removed her hand from Howard’s body. But Kiki wasn’t looking at Claire; she was looking at Howard. You’re married to someone for thirty years: you know their face like you know your own name.
Last year, when Zora was a freshman, sophomores had seemed altogether a different kind of human: so very definite in their tastes and opinions, in their loves and ideas. Zora woke up this morning hopeful that a transformation of this kind might have visited her in the night, but, finding it hadn’t, she did what girls generally do when they don’t feel the part: she dressed it instead.
Howard smiled gratefully but shook his head. He was beyond the point of learning new tricks. He got on his knees and plugged the projector’s cord into the wall; a snag of blue light leaped from the socket. He pressed the button on the back of the projector. He twiddled the connected cable. He pressed hard on the light box, hoping to engage some loose connection.
She paused. She sat very straight in her chair.
‘I think it’s inappropriate,’ she said.
They had been skirting around this for ten minutes. Now the word had been used.
‘I don’t think that’s how things go down now,’ Levi said at last, gently, not wanting to disappoint his father, but needing to catch the bus. It was a nice enough story, but it was making him late for work.
‘It’s true that men – they respond to beauty . . . it doesn’t end for them, this . . . this concern with beauty as a physical actuality in the world – and that’s clearly imprisoning and it infantilizes . . . but it’s true and . . . I don’t know how else to explain what –’
‘Are you interested in refining what you have?’
‘But your class – your class is a cult classic. I love your class. Your class is all about never ever saying I like the tomato. That’s why so few people take it – I mean, no offence, it’s a compliment.’
Monty put his hands on each side of his own belly. ‘Really, Dr Belsey, this is too stupid to answer. Surely a man can write a piece of prose without “intending” any particular reaction, or at least he can and will write without presuming every end or consequence of that piece of prose.’
For the first time it occurred to Howard that this gorgeous, single nineteen-year-old giving her attention to a 57-year-old married man (albeit with a full head of hair) might have other motives besides pure animal passion. Was he – as Levi would put it – being played?
Zora Belsey’s real talent was not for poetry but persistence.
‘Well, my God. What a tricky bastard. Moral majority my arse. Well, you’ve got him. My God! You should go in there and spit-roast him. Destroy him!’
Zora forced her fake nails, left over from the party, into the underside of the table top. ‘That’s your advice?”
Howard looked back at the woman on the wall, Rembrandt’s love, Hendrickje. Though her hands were imprecise blurs, paint heaped on paint and roiled with the brush, the rest of her skin had been expertly rendered in all its variety – chalky whites and lively pinks, the underlying blue of her veins and the ever present human hint of yellow, intimation of what is to come.