Poetry Notes on 'Colonial Girls School'

Literary Analysis of Colonial Girls School

Themes: Children, Education, Identity, Colonialism/Racism, Gender & Inequality

Literary Devices: Repetition, Imagery, Metaphor, Allusion

In Colonial Girls School, the poet protests against a colonial system that has tried to

emasculate and stifle natural speech, humour, physical appearance, dress, manners. She

rebels against a system that imposed educational offerings, irrelevant and meaningless.

The poet rails at cultural emasculation as she saw an attempt to transform personality, and

character, to deny self-awareness and self-hood. Stanza one lists details,

While some readers may agree with the poet’s rant against the

significance of Latin to the Caribbean mind, others will approve or

be in agreement with an exposure to Shakespeare as significant

in our lives.

 Muffled our laughter

 Lowered our voices

 Let out our hems

 Dekinked our hair

(Lines 3 - 6)

These all point to the impositions the system enforced or perpetuated.

The poet recalls an attempt to debase or devalue natural human behaviour “how our

loudness, our laughter/debased us."

The repetition as conveyed in the choric ‘chant’ throughout the poem lays emphasis on a

system that has denied self-hood, self-esteem and an indigenous cultural tradition. The

expressions, “nothing about us/nothing of our landscape/feeling nothing/finding nothing

about us” are all part of a denial of self, both mental and emotional.

The system of education-offerings of History, Geography and cultural tradition of an alien

or foreign landscape, the political and civil affairs of distant lands have been meaningless.

She asserts that these offerings are ‘mumbo-jumbo’, and irrelevant. The denial of

indigenous offerings leaves her discontented.

But the poem ends on softer note with some measure of consolation that the colonial

impostors during her schools years are now fading or disappearing for “northern eyes/in

the brighter world before us now/pale."

Colonial Girls School

by Olive Senior (1985)

Borrowed images

willed our skins pale

muffled our laughter

lowered our voices

let out our hems

dekinked our hair

denied our sex in gym tunics and bloomers

harnessed our voices to madrigals

and genteel airs

yoked our minds to declensions in Latin

and the language of Shakespeare

Told us nothing about ourselves

There was nothing about us at all

How those pale northern eyes and

aristocratic whispers once erased us

How our loudness, our laughter

debased us

There was nothing left of ourselves

Nothing about us at all

Studying: History Ancient and Modern

Kings and Queens of England

Steppes of Russia

Wheatfields of Canada

There was nothing of our landscape there

Nothing about us at all

Marcus Garvey turned twice in his grave

‘Thirty-eight was a beacon. A flame.

They were talking of desegregation

in Little Rock, Arkansas. Lumumba

and the Congo. To us: mumbo-jumbo.

We had read Vachel Lindsay’s

vision of the jungle

Feeling nothing about ourselves

There was nothing about us at all

Months, years, a childhood memorising

Latin declensions

(For our language

-‘bad talking’-

detentions)

Finding nothing about us there

Nothing about us at all

So friend of my childhood years

One day we’ll talk about

How the mirror broke

Who kissed us awake

Who let Anansi from his bag

For isn’t it strange how

northern eyes

in the brighter world before us now

Pale?