The Polished Hoe

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Polished Hoe is a novel by Barbadian writer Austin Clarke, published in 2002 by Thomas Allen Publishers. It won the 2002 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2003 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Canada and the Caribbean, and the 2003 Trillium Book Award.

The story is told by Mary-Mathilda, a respected woman on the island of Barbados. It unfolds over about 24 hours in the 1950s after World War II. Mary-Mathilda confesses to murdering Mr. Belfeels, a rich plantation owner who has long controlled and mistreated her. She has worked for him as a field laborer, kitchen helper, and maid, and he has also been her lover. They share a son, Wilberforce, who becomes a doctor after being funded by Belfeels. Belfeels lives with his wife and two daughters and keeps Mary-Mathilda away from town in a house on the edge of the plantation. He objectifies her and treats her harshly.

A crucial turn comes when Mary-Mathilda learns a dark secret: she is Belfeels’ daughter, a truth revealed by her mother. This revelation, along with Belfeels’ cruelty, drives Mary-Mathilda to murder him. The confession is delivered as she speaks with Percy, an old friend who is a police sergeant, and as she reflects on life on the island.

The novel is written as connected short stories. Clarke has said he was inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales and aimed to create a new language by creolizing Oxford English, blending formal style with Caribbean speech. He also drew on Miles Davis for some sections and based parts of the book on his own experiences with racism, including a real-life incident from his travels.

The Polished Hoe was first published in November 2002 and has since appeared in Dutch. A twentieth-anniversary edition was released in 2022 with a foreword by Rinaldo Walcott. Critics generally praised its atmosphere, memory, and language, while noting the slow pace and some ambivalence about the central character. The novel remains an important work in Caribbean literature and in Clarke’s body of work.