Jamaica Kincaid’s Main Female Protagonists, Their Personalities and Relationships in Novels Lucy and Annie John
Jamaica Kincaid’s Main Female Protagonists, Their Personalities and Relationships in Novels Lucy and Annie John
Every person’s character is created and formed in background the person grows up in, and is influenced by everything that surrounds him or her, like friends, teachers, television and other media, and of course, family. And if our person is a female, the strongest influence always comes from her mother and their relationship, and this is clearly visible in Jamaica Kincaid’s novels, where mother daughter relationships are fundamental in heroines’ character development, their view of the world, and their life style. The mother operates not only as an embodiment of the personal sphere but also as a mediator of the political and ideological values present in childhood. Motherhood as an institution is universally major theme in writings by black women writers, and Kincaid’s novels are mainly personal narratives about the construction of one’s identity marked by colonial and family oppression. The mother-daughter relationships in her novels reflect the tension between colonialism and nativeness. Kincaid herself experienced cultural and familial displacement, and now neither can she identify with her mother, nor her country (Sklenkova, 6). And as Kincaid states "I write about myself for the most part, and about things that have happened to me. In my writing I suppose I am trying to understand how I got to be the person I am" (Kincaid, interview with Kay Bonnetti) her work Annie John is labeled a fictionalized autobiographical work (LeSeur, 154).
Both Annie and Lucy are described very well and developed naturally, mature, and both experience a change in relationships with their mothers, which take place when the girls see and experience other world than their mother country. Both of them grew up on the Caribbean island of Antigua during the British colonial rule. Both of them correspond to Kincaid’s real life path. And as she narrates them in the first
Every person’s character is created and formed in background the person grows up in, and is influenced by everything that surrounds him or her, like friends, teachers, television and other media, and of course, family. And if our person is a female, the strongest influence always comes from her mother and their relationship, and this is clearly visible in Jamaica Kincaid’s novels, where mother daughter relationships are fundamental in heroines’ character development, their view of the world, and their life style. The mother operates not only as an embodiment of the personal sphere but also as a mediator of the political and ideological values present in childhood. Motherhood as an institution is universally major theme in writings by black women writers, and Kincaid’s novels are mainly personal narratives about the construction of one’s identity marked by colonial and family oppression. The mother-daughter relationships in her novels reflect the tension between colonialism and nativeness. Kincaid herself experienced cultural and familial displacement, and now neither can she identify with her mother, nor her country (Sklenkova, 6). And as Kincaid states "I write about myself for the most part, and about things that have happened to me. In my writing I suppose I am trying to understand how I got to be the person I am" (Kincaid, interview with Kay Bonnetti) her work Annie John is labeled a fictionalized autobiographical work (LeSeur, 154).
Both Annie and Lucy are described very well and developed naturally, mature, and both experience a change in relationships with their mothers, which take place when the girls see and experience other world than their mother country. Both of them grew up on the Caribbean island of Antigua during the British colonial rule. Both of them correspond to Kincaid’s real life path. And as she narrates them in the first
Cited: and Consulted Kincaid, Jamaica. Annie John. New York: Penguin, 1991. Kincaid, Jamaica. Lucy. New York: Penguin, 1986. LeSeur, Geta. Review: Mother Imagery in the Novels of Afro-Caribbean Women by Simone A. James Alexander. JSTOR Online Database: African-American Review, 2002. Bonneti, Kay. Interview with Jamaica Kincaid. Missouri Review, 2002. <http://missourireviews/interviews/kincaid.html>. Sklenkova, Zuzana. Diploma Thesis: Politicizing the Personal: Mother-Daughter Relationship in Jamaica Kincaid’s Writing. FF MU Brno, 2003.