Touring the Portobello road

Portobello Road by Ruth Rendell is set in an area of London and traces the lives of a number of Londoners—rich and poor alike, the wealthy middle class and those with no hope of a job, eccentric and ordinary — living near the Portobello Road Market, whose paths cross one day by accident.

The background of Portobello Road is the street that gives the novel its title. “The street is long, like a centipede snaking up from Pembridge Road in the south to Kensal Town in the north. . . . Shops line it and spill into the legs, which are its side streets. ” It is a vibrant place where anything and everything is for sale: “What he (Wren) sought wasn't readily obtainable even in the sort of shops whose business (he thought) was to sell it. On occasion it was a weary quest he undertook. ”

The area is depicted as an irresistible magnet, which catches and pulls people back and makes them return again and again: “The moment you set foot in the market, you feel a touch of excitement, an in drawing of breath, a pinch in the heart. And once you have been, you have to go again. Thousands of visitors wander up and down it on Sundays. <...> Its thread attaches itself to you and a twitch on it summons you to return. ” It is the town artery, which pulsates and attracts people in the haze of its mystery. The spirit of the spot is felt through the minute details, which become important for describing: time, place, people, plot development and structure correlations.

The scenes of Portobello life serve to introduce all the important characters and events in the novel. Each scrape of description speaks volumes and adds additional shades to the development of the plot. All the characters spend a considerable proportion of their time walking along the Portobello Road with its abundance of shops and antique stalls in the search of their goods, adventure, pleasure or just whiling away free time.

“He (Joel) walked up the western side, past knitwear shops and blanket shops and print and china shops... .These were there in abundance, shops on the left, stalls on the right, and people, hundreds of people, walking, dawdling, strolling between them and up the road itself All the people looked busy and they looked happy”.

This place has a special impact and impressions on the feelings of the customers, it helps to reveal their inner world, characters and life style, making their hearts pulsate. Their attitude to the market is different and every person perceives its atmosphere in his own way. For Joel, the place “was blazing with light and colour, packed with jostling people, voices and music, a flourishing trade... ” Joel's mother considers the market to be a dangerous place, somewhere to be careful:

“When she was young his mother had lived in Notting Hill and she told him - she went on speaking to him when Pa did not - that if your house was burgled and your silver stolen the police would advice you to go and look for it on the stalls in the Portobello Road where you were likely to find it up for sale. ” In Eugene's view “not that he disliked the Portobello Road, but he preferred it on Sundays when it was half empty and you could see its buildings and feel its charm ”.

Portobello is like a metaphor for life - life is like a market place that is being stocked by all flocks of people: selling and buying, bargaining, choosing and offering, - each with their obsessions, tastes, foibles, problems, dreams and despairs; with its busy hectic life presented to the viewer in bright and vivid colors as a mosaic picture.

The Portobello area of West London has “a rich personality -vibrant, brilliant in colour, noisy, with graffiti that approach art, bizarre and splendid. An indefinable edge to it adds a spice of danger.

There is nothing safe about Portobello ...”

Arousing hope and expectation, yet tinged with danger and vagueness, the market attracts Joel Roseman, a psychologically damaged young man hoping to get out of his semi-darkness to reach light, safety and understanding from his parents. “Joel Roseman never walked with a purpose, a destination. He wasn't going anywhere... For a long time now he had found life better in darkness. No one took any notice of him. Joel could always spot happiness, he was an expert at noticing it, perhaps because in everyone he personally knew it was absent”. He lives in darkness perceiving the world through voices and sunglasses, being isolated from people and the family:

“It was very quiet. The poor live among strident voices, clatter, crashes, deafening music, barking dogs, shrieking children, but places inhabited by the rich are always silent. Tall trees, burgeoning into spring leaf, line their streets and their gardens bloom with appropriate flowers all the year round. Joel was reminded by the silence, if by nothing else, of Hampstead Garden Suburb where Pa and ma had a big low-roofed house squatting in landscape grounds ”.

The grey, dismal environment and the life of the class to which Lance belongs, naming it "poky little place" is contrasted to the luxury of Eugene's home.

“[Eugene ’s]room dazzled Lance, the pictures, the furniture, the jugs and pots and statue things, the curtains, yards and yards of them trailing on the carpet, the satin cushions coloured like jewels, the little tables, the clocks, the books done in leather and gold, the crystal that a sunbeam turned to diamonds. He stood and stared, feeling a fool, wishing he hadn't come - then glad he'd come, determined to make the most of it ... He had never seen anywhere like it. He didn't know places like this existed except on TV... ”

The sight of wealth and his own hopeless social position made Lance plan his burglary:

“The rest of the empty day stretched before him. He would liked to go somewhere for the evening... He'd never been to a club, he couldn ’t afford it, he couldn’t afford anything. His benefit was basic.

He was a “Jobseeker ’ but he didn 't know what to say at interviews, he just sat there in hopeless silence. No one wanted to employ him and now he had given up trying, though poverty was a perpetual trial to him... ”

The novel reveals some social stereotypes fretting over minor foibles. Ruth Rendell depicts the modern world shaped by everyday legal addictions, which influence people and form their style of life, change relationship with other people and break their destiny. Portobello is a diverse depiction of life in all its manifestations, investigating and featuring a magnificent depiction of one of London’s most intriguing place—and the dangers mixed with fears beneath its neighborhoods.

Life goes on, mingling the ordinary and exotic, balancing the common place and eccentric, measured and bustling rhythms, the past and the present, the old and the young, but the Portobello Road continues to live, being a trap for shopkeepers, pickpockets, serious thieves and a native institution, an antiques haven and a junk yard, a customers' paradise or just the best place to go for lazy walkers, where they might spot and find adventure:

“The Portobello Road changes very little. On Saturday mornings the young pour out of Notting Hill Gate tube station and off the number seven bus and the number twenty-three, on their way to spend their week's wages at the stalls and in the shops, on soaps and beads and pashminas and herbs and all the perfumes of Arabia. To sit at the pavement tablets drinking cappuccinos and lattes and Chardonnay. The old people come with their shopping trolleys because they have always come, because, if you live around there, the Portobello Road is where you do your shopping... And in the deep of the night all is silent while the centipede street draws breath and prepares for another day ”.