A Critical Review of the Novel Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid - Research Paper Example

A critical review of the novel ‘Lucy’ by Jamaica Kincaid Lucy, a novel by JamaicaKincaid (Elaine Potter Richardson), was first published in 1990. This book, first of the series to be based outside the Caribbean scenario, tells the story of a young girl named Lucy who comes to America to work as an au pair to a white, wealthy couple. The entire story is narrated in first person and closely reflects Kincaid’s own life. In fact, the main protagonist Lucy Josephine Potter shares a name and also the birthday with Kincaid. Therefore, in a certain sense this book can also be called an autobiography that is more or less based on the writer’s own life and experiences. We notice this trend of having an autobiographical base in nearly all of Kincaid’s books, where stories have been taken from the writer’s own life. In the novel ‘Lucy’, we find the main protagonist is an immigrant who comes to United States form Antigua in West Indies, like Kincaid herself. When compared to Kincaid’s other works we find that the chief character Lucy at nineteen is a slightly older character representation than the main characters in her previous works. This gives a more mature outlook to the novel which is interlaced with a cynical note. This work by Kincaid though retaining the piqued nature of her previous work ‘A Small Place’(1988) does not have the surrealism and repetitive nature of the latter, making ‘Lucy’ a far simpler story to read. The novel is a journey where a young girl slowly transcends into a mature woman as she explores her feelings, her loneliness, her sexuality and her conflicts with her mother. This novel in a non-linear manner moves smoothly and effortlessly between the past and the present through various dreams, dialogues and flash backs and the whole book bears a testimony to the strength of Kincaid’s narrative prowess. Like other American literatures based on the tales of immigration, this book too talks about the experiences of an immigrant who is new to the American way of life and is slowly adjusting to it. Identity crisis which forms a basis of many a colonial immigrant literature is not presented vividly here. Instead, we find this problem to be represented quite intrinsically in her relationships with her own country, her white employers and her new surroundings. Jamaica Kincaid was born in 1949 in Antigua in West Indies which was then under British colonial rule and her childhood was not a very happy one. However, at a very young age, she developed a liking for books and literature and soon this became an escape route for the young Jamaica when she felt lonely and miserable. Her mother encouraged her to read, however she did not wish Jamaica to take up higher studies and complete her graduation. Her mother under the strong British influence was puritan in her outlook and tried to compel her daughter to follow her views. As Jamaica grew older, she rebelled and her relation with her mother took a turn for the worse. At the age of sixteen Jamaica left her homeland to go to America where she earned her living as an au pair and also studied photography and completed her GED. She did not finish her graduation and started writing in 1973 under a different name to mark her start of a new life and also to disguise her real identity. She married Allen Shawn in 1979 and still continues to write. Her latest books include’ Talk Stories’ (2001), My Garden (2001), and ‘Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalayas’ (2005). Her relationship with her mother has formed a basis for many of her books, like that of in her first work of fiction “Girl” and also in her later works like ‘At the Bottom of the River’ (1983), and her first novel, ‘Annie John’ (1985) and ‘Lucy’ (1990). All these books explore the mother daughter relationships, where she draws parallel between a rule of a mother and that of an imperial rule. They also explore the journey of a child into womanhood and the strains of growing up under a colonial rule. In all her books, Kincaid finds a wonderful way to address social issues within the boundary of a home. Her writing style is simple yet full of lyrical themes that do poetic justice to her books. Her books are similar to that a beautiful picture painted with the varying colors of vivid imagination. Another aspect that stands out in her writing is her non-linear style of writing. Kincaid takes experiences form her own life to write stories but unlike many other Caribbean writers, she does not try to develop an independent tone and cut off her roots. She uses her colonial literary roots and weaves out endearing stories drawn from her own forbearance and resilience in life. She rejects the idea of being a socio political writer, though her stories are mainly Afro- oriented and often talk of gender inequalities, race distinction and class-consciousness. Her book ‘Lucy’ explores all the above-mentioned social disparities as she embarks on a journey to find true freedom. It is has been often said that ‘Lucy’ is a continuation of her work that was left unfinished in her first novel ‘Annie John”. We find that the narration of ‘Annie John’ ends with a scene of departure and ‘Lucy’s story starting with an arrival, giving a feel that where the first novel ends, the second one picks up its threads from there. As Oczkowicz comments “Lucy (1990) picks up at the point where all her previous works ended and explores the possibilities of transcending the heroine’s post- colonial predicament” (Oczkowicz, Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy: Cultural “Translation” as A Case of Creative Exploration of the past, p.143). Summary of the novel “Lucy”: The novel “Lucy” starts with chief protagonist Lucy immigrating to America from West Indies in the search for a better life. On reaching, she is overwhelmed by everything new, right from the refrigerator, the elevator, to the weather outside. Instead of feeling excited coupled with a sense of relief at being able to escape form a home she so despised, Lucy feels disillusioned and is terribly homesick. To console herself Lucy remembers her grandmother’s cooking and dreams of it. She likes the family who has hired her but their happy lives seem incredibly charmed to her. Coming from a different tradition, later Lucy understands the farce played out by the seemingly happy couple. She can judge them objectively from the position of an ‘outsider’ and compares them to her own family. In spite of feeling isolated and miserable in the cold and a boring new place, Lucy grows quite fond of her employers and one day in the future hopes to have family like them. Lewis who is the father of the young children is a successful lawyer and his wife Mariah, becomes a source of comfort and support for the young Lucy. Though being quite close to the Mariah, Lucy is quite conscious of the differences between their upbringings. Mariah has been brought up in comfortable circumstances, while Lucy looks back in anger at her own impoverished childhood under the influence of the colonial rule. Though suffering from homesickness, Lucy has no pleasant memories of the people she has left behind in her homeland. Her differences with her mother increases and there develops a strong love- hate relationship from her side. In general, she feels animosity towards her mother, though sometimes she does remember certain tender moments with her too. As a harsh winter gives way to spring and hope, Lucy thinks that she can start a new life, away from the influences of her ‘motherland’. During the summer Lucy goes with Mariah and her daughters to the Great Lakes for a vacation, Lucy soon discovers that Mariah is quite similar to her mother in her dominating ways. As Mariah tries to control Lucy’s life, there develops friction between the two of them and they argue about almost everything. Lucy feels strongly about Mariah’s pampered existence and views her with a sense of increasing anger and pity. The next summer the family is back again at the Lakes for their vacation, this time with Lewis. During this time, Lucy develops a special bonding with the couple’s oldest daughter, Miriam, whom she finds to resemble herself. As Mariah’s best friend, Dinah appears on the scene Lucy slowly finds cracks appearing in the façade of happiness that Lewis and Mariah had been putting on so far. She feels disillusioned but is attracted towards Dinah’s brother Hugh with whom she develops a sexual relationship which is pleasant but does not involve any emotional attachment, at least from Lucy’s side. It’s only relief that Lucy feels when the vacation is over and the family goes back to the city. She refuses to open any of the letters that her mother sends her from Antigua, yet cannot do away with them altogether and starts fearing that ultimately she cannot escape her mother’s influence. Soon Lucy falls for her best friend Peggy’s colleague Paul and starts sleeping with him, but again cannot emotionally connect with him. When finally Mariah throws Lewis out of the house owing to his extra marital affair, Lucy comes to know that; her father had died leaving her mother penniless. Here we find Lucy telling Mariah that her mother had started neglected her once her brothers had arrived and though Mariah tries to help her, it is of no avail. Soon Lucy decides to move out with Peggy, much to Mariah’s chagrin. This happens exactly after one year of Lucy’s arrival in America and it is almost as if Lucy embarks on a new journey once again. Here again there are initial hiccups that Lucy has to overcome, like Peggy’s irritating behavior and Paul’s too close for comfort, presence. However, these things soon sort out with Peggy and Paul going in for a secret liaison and Mariah moving away to another place. Finally, at the end Lucy gets the first taste of real freedom but also feels the lack of true love. Analysis of the chapter ‘Poor Visitor’: This is the first chapter where Lucy arrives in America as an au pair, but is deeply disappointed at first. Here we find Kincaid using the writing style of a white Caucasian male ‘bildungsroman’ but giving it the perspective of a black Caribbean female lead. A ‘bildungsroman’ is a type of novel that depicts the gradual transitions of the main character from a youthful stage to that of a mature adult. Here Lucy has to adjust to a new way of life, very different from her cultural upbringing. She faces a lot of problems and unhappiness, as she slowly takes stock of her surroundings and learns to see everything in a new light. Even the weather is different as Lucy notes “I was no longer in a tropical zone and I felt cold inside and out, the first time such a sensation had come over me" (Kincaid, p.6). She feels home sick and starts to dream about her life back home of "pink mullet and green figs cooked in coconut milk" (Kincaid, p.7), when she had earlier thought that “these people I left behind, my own family, would not appear before me in one way or the other” (Kincaid, p.8). Here in this chapter Kincaid describes the room allotted to Lucy and says that it is more or less like a cargo box. However here we find that Lucy refuses to accept the position that society has carved for her. As she contemplates about her situation, she says “But I was not cargo. I was only an unhappy young woman living in a maids room, and I was not even the maid. I was the young girl who watches over the children and goes to school at night” (Kincaid, p.7). Thus, we find Lucy to be alienated from her position that society has offered to her and refuses to accept that she is an au pair, even less a servant. Though it is Lewis, who terms Lucy as a ‘poor visitor’ it also signifies the unhappy and alienated position of Lucy in completely new country. Here in this chapter Kincaid does not bring in the concept of black-white conflict but surprisingly brings in a conflict between the African-American maid and the Caribbean Lucy. It is Lucy who comes out with her head held high with deep pride in her culture and heritage. Thus, Kincaid makes Lucy transcend all boundaries of color and race yet keeping intact her basic cultural heritage. Analysis of the chapter ‘Mariah’: In the opening of this chapter, we find Mariah waiting eagerly for the daffodils to bloom, yet this very reminder of daffodils makes Lucy angry. As a child, she won accolades for reciting the poem ‘Daffodils’ by Wordsworth, without ever seeing the flowers. This was a cruel reminder of her days in school under the colonial rule and their system of education where poems describing the beauty of the ruling foreign country were taught, ignoring the beauty for their own native land. Here Kincaid uses the image of daffodils as a symbol to describe the differences in perceptions between Mariah and Lucy. Where Mariah sees only beauty, Lucy visualizes the same thing as a sign of confinement and disgrace. In this chapter, again we find Lucy resenting her mother’s letters as a sign of interference. When spring with its heavy snow, fails to bring in the daffodils Mariah is highly disappointed. Lucy fails to comprehend this and wonders, “How do you get to be a person who is made miserable because the weather changed its mind, because the weather doesnt live up to your expectations? How do you get to be that way?" (Kincaid, p. 20). When finally the winter ends and the flowers make their appearance, Mariah takes Lucy to see the beautiful scene. Lucy however without any reason wants to kill the flowers. She says, “I wished I had an enormous scythe; I would just walk down the path, dragging it alongside me, and I would cut these flowers down where they emerged from the ground” (Kincaid, p. 29). To Lucy, these flowers not only represent the injustice meted out to her country but also seem to represents Mariah’s dominating attitude where she is trying to convert Lucy and trying to make her see the world in the way she does. Here in this chapter we find that in contrast to Lucy’s difficult childhood, Mariah having lived a very idyllic life, right from her childhood days, not shadowed by any disillusionment or disappointment. Mariah always expected to get the best from life while Lucy’s mother in sharp contrast always expected the worst outcome and relayed the same depressing outlook though her letters to Lucy. In fact, Lucy for this very reason refuses to read the letters. We see this when Lucy says “I had come to feel that my mothers love for me was designed solely to make me into an echo of her; and I didnt know why, but I felt that I would rather be dead than become just an echo of someone” (Kincaid, p. 37). In the chapter Kincaid very subtly brings in the topic of racial discrimination where we find that, Lucy making a note in the train that all women with same color like that of Mariah were being served by the people having dark skin color, similar to that of hers. Analysis of the chapter The Tongue”: The chapter opens with the first kissing tale of Lucy, at the age of fourteen, which she describes as “I was sucking the tongue of a boy named Tanner….” (Kincaid, p. 43). Here Kincaid uses the term sucking to dispel any notions of emotional intimacy. Everything attached to this incident is completely physical with the mention of varying smells and the comparison of the Tanner’s tongue to that of boiled cow tongue in sauce. In America while having a sexual relationship with Hugh, she does not feel emotionally attached to him. Kincaid uses this lack of emotional attachment on Lucy’s part, to portray her independence, where she does not place men at the centre. While kissing her best friend Peggy she experiences the same pleasure, which denotes that no man can give anything special. By choosing sex and pleasure, Lucy ensures that she does not lose her personal freedom. Lucy also defies her mother’s warning not to become a slut and retaliates by saying, “life as a slut was quite enjoyable, thank you very much” (Kincaid, p. 128). This chapter also speaks of the fast eroding marriage of Lewis and Mariah. At first, Mariah remains unaware of it, but Lucy does not fail to notice Lewis’s fallibility and does not understand the logic behind Mariah’s apathy towards more pressing and important matters, like Lewis’s infidelity, while having a great passion for small and minor things. In this chapter, Kincaid points out the various disparities and idiosyncrasies in an American life. Analysis of the chapter “Cold Heart”: The chapter talks of a failing relationship between Lucy and her best friend Peggy and her starting of a new relationship with Paul that is void of any emotional tags. She realizes her mental differences with Peggy, once her best friend, and ponders over it “the small differences between us were beginning to loom, sometimes becoming the only thing that mattered--like a grain of sand in the eye" (Kincaid, p. 94). Here Lucy decides not to continue with her nursing studies as her mother wanted her to, instead decides to learn photography. As Mariah and Lewis’s separation becomes inevitable, Lucy decides to move out with Peggy. During this time, Lucy receives a letter from her mother giving the news of her father’s death. Though Lucy breaks down at this point and sends all her savings home, she also writes a cold letter to her mother blaming her for marrying a man who would leave her penniless, and hence the name “the cold heart”. As Mariah tries to console, Lucy realizes their differences. Here again in this chapter we find Lucy struggling to hold up her own against being forcibly converted to the American doctrines. Here Kincaid brings out the full picture of the worsening relationship between Lucy and her mother and makes the reader realize how deep the wound is and how large the influence of the mother looms over Lucy, for her to completely forsake it. Analysis of the chapter “Lucy”: The chapter is a reflection on Lucy’s last one year in America. Here, after one year, we find everything coming in a full circle with Lucy leaving Mariah’s home, and again setting off for a journey in her quest for freedom. Physically the same, except for closely cropped hair, Lucy has actually undergone a sea change as a person. Here again we see Lucy’s hate for any kind of imperialism and also her comprehension that guilt has always been her primary emotion, without her ever realizing it. As she leaves Mariah, she tries to make her see the practical side of life by saying “Your situation is an everyday thing. Men behave this way all the time" (Kincaid, p. 141). Here Lucy tries to tell Mariah that guilt lies in men like Lewis and not with Mariah or Lucy or any other woman. Once again, when she catches Peggy and Paul having an affair she expresses the same sentiments about men, "Everybody knew that men have no morals, that they do not know how to behave, that they do not know how to treat other people" (Kincaid, p. 142). Lucy finally dismisses all these people from her life and learns to think and worry only about herself. Kincaid in her unique style of narration and beautiful prose formation creates an appealing picture of a young girl, alone in a new place, with her apparent contradictions and confusions, while adjusting to everything that is new, and ultimately her transformation into a more mature woman of the world. It is very beautifully portrayed as to how Lucy transcends all boundaries of racism and class distinctions to evolve into something that is more strong and independent. Right from the beginning, we find confliction emotions and ambivalent reactions in Lucy’s mind. This ambivalence is seen in both the novels of Kincaid, “Annie John” and “Lucy.” In America, though Lucy sees the beauty of snow and daffodils, she refuses to acknowledge them, as they are something foreign to her Caribbean homeland. As Lang Peralta comments, “she both loves and fears the beauty surrounding her because of her vulnerable emotional state caused by her relationship with her mother” (Lang Peralta. p.35). Describing the relationship between Lucy and her mother, Kincaid draws a similarity between the mother and an oppressor, while Lucy is the oppressed. With the arrival of her three brothers, both her parents had started ignoring her and this led to Lucy feeling betrayed which is seen when she refers to her mother as ‘Mrs. Judas’(Kincaid, p. 130). This emotion of loss and a feeling of betrayal form a basis of this whole book. Another emotion that Lucy later laments about is a lack of love in her life. Though Lucy herself refuses to be entangled in any sort of emotional attachment, at the end is she who again comments, “I wish I could love someone so much that I would die from it” (Kincaid, p. 164). Here Kincaid gives a feel of split personality about Lucy. The only person she has ever loved was her mother who had betrayed her, and also her motherland who had failed her and turned her into a ‘minion’ in the eyes of the society. Thus, Kincaid here weaves together all mother figures as oppressors and justifies Lucy’s ambivalence towards them. Kincaid also uses the picture of daffodils to symbolize English colonial oppression in the West Indies. Lucy we find is determined to the level of obsession to create an independent self who will not ‘mimic’ anybody, refuses to accept anything even Freudian interpretations of her dreams, which she sees to be a part of the plan to Americanize her ways. Kincaid in this book weaves through various complex interpretations through her sheer power of narration and talks of conflicting human emotions and often creates a situation where a gesture may mean anything, to a reader. When Mariah shows Lucy her beautiful farm, the later instantly identifies herself with the laborers and remarks “Well, thank God I didn’t have to do that” leaving the reader and Mariah to infer their own meaning. As in all her books, this novel also interweaves all relationships with the past and history of the West Indies. Every relationship involves two people, in which there is one who dominates and demands completely devotion, and another who is dominated but resists to the last and refuses to mimic the oppressor. The identity of the chief protagonist, Lucy in this case, is an extremely complex one as it is colored by Afro-European and Caribbean aspects. Even her relationship with her lover Paul is colored with this colonizer and colonized aspect, which finally leads to their break up. At the end, Lucy finally attains her true freedom, which makes this novel a success story, where a person of indigenous and colonial origins finally finds her true identity in a new city. Lucy, we find, does not label herself as a Caribbean person or an American person, but effortlessly flits between the two and herein lays the success of the story, and also the success of Kincaid in being able to create something that transcends all boundaries to become free. Works cited Kincaid, J. Lucy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2002. Print. Lang-Peralta, L. Jamaica Kincaid and Caribbean double crossings. N.J.: University of Delaware. 2006. Print. Oczkowicz, E. Jamaica Kincaids Lucy: Cultural "Translation" as a Case of Creative Exploration of the Past. MELUS, Vol. 21, No. 3, Other Americas (Autumn, 1996), pp. 143-157. Web. Pub: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)  http://www.jstor.org/pss/467979 Read More