The general theme of the study could have been chosen for Caribbean literature only, so much have the family and family fictions been one of its harrowing concerns. From Vic Reid’s Jamaican novel New Day (1949), offering perspective on the historical events of Morant Bay rising in Jamaica in 1865through the eyes of Johnny Campbell and his family, to Lawrence Scott’s Night Calypso (2004), there has been an unending stream of novels foregrounding the family as a prime concern. This paper seems to develop a comparative study of Austin Clarke's The Polished Hoe and Denise Harris’s Web of Secrets in the same way.