In Britain, the writers who are concerned with the state of their country in their works often carry a ‘burden of representation’. But while Black British writers of state-of-England novels often depict their own community as well as other silenced voices in Britain, white British writers of state-of-England novels hardly address multiculturalism. Given the plural nature of British society, the writers who are interested in social questions are expected to include multiculturalism in their works and are criticized for not doing so.
However, some issues arise from such an expectation, which relate to the artistic freedom of the writer. First of all, ‘forcing’ a writer to represent multiculturalism and its different actors presents some dangers, such as the risk of providing only caricatures of a particular ethnic or cultural group or the danger of “marginalization from within,” as Rushdie puts it. Then, a multicultural country is naturally a very complex society that can be perceived and depicted in different ways, depending on each writer’s perspective. Criticizing writers for not representing multiculturalism faithfully implies that an objective depiction of reality is possible and/or desirable. But this idea is rejected by most contemporary writers, who believe that reality and its depiction are subjective. Finally, representation is not the only way to acknowledge multiculturalism. The paper discusses these issues by focusing on novels by Caryl Phillips, Zadie Smith, Graham Swift, Margaret Drabble and Maggie Gee.