LITR 5734: Colonial & Postcolonial Literature

Sample Student Final Exam 2005

Anuruddha Ellakkala

Fall 2005 Final Exam

Colonial & Postcolonial Texts: Women’s Sexuality

      As I was reading Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, one of the last Colonial and Postcolonial Literature texts, I was immediately attracted to the creativeness of Kincaid’s language.  For example, the way she compares to Lewis’s family photographs to a flower bouquet is so beautiful as she says, “Their six yellow-haired heads of various sizes were a bouquet of flowers tied together by an unseen string” (12).  On another occasion, she gives a lovely image of the sunset from the snowy earth—and says it is like “a half-cooked egg” (23).  

Moreover, she thinks that the vanishing snow under the heat of thensun is “as if some hungry being were invisibly swallowing it up” (23).  Again, Kincaid depicts yet another metaphorical picture of a woman who had a scar on her cheek as she says, “It was as if her cheek were a half-ripe fruit and someone had bitten into it, meaning to eat it, but then realized it wasn’t ripe enough” (24).  Further, the writer imagines the sound of the train wheels on the rail tracks and describes it as, “thousands of people on horseback were following (her), (and) chasing (her)” (32). 

However, the more and more was reading Lucy it occurred to me that Kincaid’s language had become as naked as a woman taking off her clothes one by one.  Compared to the other Colonial and Postcolonial writers and their texts such as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,  Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan, Derek Walcott’s Collected Poems, and Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine, Kincaid is horribly straightforward.  Lucy, who is nineteen years old and Kincaid’s heroine of the novel, gives revealing details about her incredible sexual activities unlike the other women characters of the other selected Colonial and Postcolonial texts of Fall, 2005.    

Lucy explains her bisexual experiences at the beginning of chapter three until the end of chapter four—she says, “At fourteen, I had discovered that a tongue had no taste. I was sucking the tongue of a boy named Tanner, and I was sucking his tongue because I had liked the way his fingers looked on the keys of the piano as he played it” (43).  Again, she rethinks about her physical sensation with Tanner—and she reveals, “I noticed that his hands on my breasts, first rubbing delicately and then very hard, produced an exciting feeling” (49).  Once Lucy shamelessly reveals:

I was only nineteen, so it was not a long list yet. There was Tanner, and he was the first boy with whom I did everything possible you can do with a boy.  The very first time we did everything we wanted to do, he spread a towel on the floor of his room for me to lie down on, because the old springs in his bed made too much noise; it was a white towel, and when I got up it was stained with blood. When he saw it, he first froze with fear and then smiled and said, “Oh,” a note too triumphant in his voice, and I don’t know how but I found the presence of mind to say, “It’s just my period coming on.” I did not care about being a virgin. (82)

Moreover, Lucy depicts the breadth of her sexual capacity, tells us, “Then I began to think not just of Tanner’ mouth on my breasts but other boys’ also” (50).  She thinks about another boy—named Hugh.  When she meets him, she explains how she liked his mouth and imagined it kissing her “everywhere” (65).  After that, Lucy explains her sexual union with Hugh, and she remembers that after having sex how they were still lying on the grass and “had no clothes on” (67).  Further, when Lucy met Paul, who was a sexually violent man, she says, “I wanted to be naked in a bed with him” (97).

Furthermore, Lucy does not forget to relate to her memories of other people’s sexual activities that she used to know.  For example, Lucy thinks about the way Thomas and Myrna, one of the fishermen and a young girl in her village, interacted “under the shade of the breadfruit tree.”  She says, “(Myrna) had made no mention of kiss on the hair, fierce tongue in her ear or mouth, kisses on the neck, hands caressing breasts” further she explains, “Just his hands between her legs, with one finger going up inside her” (108-9).

In the meantime, when Lucy tells Mariah who is the owner of the house, and the wife of Lewis as well as the mother of four girls, about her violent sexual activities with Paul,  Mariah has similar experience to share with Lucy.  Mariah tells her of a sexual relationship with an old man when she was young.  Now, Mariah says, “His erection would grow limp whenever he tried to enter me” (114).

In addition to being a heterosexual, Lucy is also a lesbian. Peggy is one of her good friend.  For instance, while they were having sex with boys, often they would practice homosexuality.  Especially, when they could not find men with big “penises.” She says that they once they walked in the park and looked around (to) pick men whome they imagined they would like to sleep with,” but they failed.  Yet she says, “We went back to my room and smoked marijuana and kissed each other until we were exhausted and fell asleep,” and she noticed that Peegy’s tongue was “narrow and pointed and soft” (83).  Moreover, Peggy has a good method to judge a “penis.”  Peggy claims, “If a man had small hands, it meant he had a small penis to match” (89).

 However,in comparison to my short experience with the most spiritual, intellectual and realistic writings of Jane Austen, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf.  I think that Kincaid’s Lucy is terrifyingly straightforward in her expressions.  In our class discussion, Beth Cordell, M. A. candidate and a Colonial and Postcolonial student of UHCL 2005 said that Lucy is extremely for graduate students and not just for any college level students. In addition, I still remember Professor Gretchen Mieszkowski, in her lecture, quoted Virginia Woolf’s statement about Middlemarch. Woolf says that George Eliot’s Middlemarch is “one of the few English novels has written for grown-up people” because of its richness (a note from Professor Mieszkowski’s lecture 2005).  With that thought in mind, after I finished my reading with Lucy, I thought that if Woolf was alive, undoubtedly, her statement for Lucy would be that “Lucy is extremely for adults.”  Further, I thought if someone were to produce a movie from Lucy, I would assume that it would absolutely only be for adults.   Moreover, after reading Lucy, without a doubt most men might be cautious about their hands in the presence of women because women can judge them. However, Mukherjee’s heroine, Jasmine’s sexual experiences are totally different to experiences of Lucy.

Jasmine is not a sexually indulgent person unlike Lucy.  Both Lucy and Jasmine get freedom from the colonial “yoke.” As Rosalyn Mack says, they “must pay the price for freedom from the colonial yoke” (2003 Colonial and Postcolonial student). Jasmine is a sexually attractive but conventional young widow. Similar to Lucy, she exiled herself from the traditional world to the modern world. Apparently, in the beginning of the novel, jasmine used her sexuality for her survival.  After she arrived in America as an illegal immigrant, she allowed Half-Face, who was an evil person of the underworld, to use her body as a tool for his own pleasure.  When Jasmine was helpless, Half-Face asks her. “‘what do I get?’ I extended my hand and he nearly ripped it off, pulling me into the room” (Jasmine 111).  She might have thought that he would treat her like a father or as a perfect gentleman. However, he turns out to a evil father as Jasmine says:

Half-Face stood, totally naked. He was monstrously erect. . . . He stared. His hands were trembling and then he whooped, “Oh, God!” and tried to kiss me, but he was all hands and face in motion. I twisted, only delaying the inevitable, making it worse perhaps, more forced, more violent. I tried to keep my eyes on Ganpati and prayed for the strength to survive, long enough to kill myself. (Jasmine 115-6)

Half-Faced, the monster had raped her. Jasmine killed this evil monster before he proved his words.  “Second time’s the sweetest” (Jasmine 117).  If Kincaid’s Lucy got this sexual experience from Half-Faced, however, Lucy would say a third or fourth time’s the sweetest.  However, Nooran, Juggut’s girlfriend in Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan, is a traditional Muslim girl who has similar to the characteristics to that of jasmine. Nooran has similar experience with Juggut when she met him at the suburb forest in midnight. 

            Even though Nooran earns sexual satisfaction from Juggut, she might conceive him as a rapist.  Juggut’s sexual engagement with Nooran is somewhat similar to the act of Half-Faced. It is clear that she did not expect such an experience from her lover on that night.  It might have been social pressure which was mixed with their traditional and religious values that forced her to keep from having premarital sex.  For instance, when Juggut attempted provoke her desire, Nooran screams “You put your hands on the person of a strange woman. Have you no mother or sister in your home?  Have you no shame?” (Train to Pakistan 12) Yet she cannot stop this Okonkwo like giant, and Half-faced like sexually violent person. Skillfully, Khushwant Singh tries to depict Juggut’s erotic picture:

Juggut Singh slipped his hand inside her shirt and felt the contours of her unguarded breasts. They became taut. The nipples became hard and leathery. His rough hands gently moved up and down from her breasts to her navel. The skin on her belly came up in goose flesh. . . . She could not struggle against Juggut Singh’s brute force. She did not particularly want to. Her world was narrowed to the rhythmic sound of breathing and the warm smell of dusky skins raised to fever heat. His lips slubbered over her eyes and cheeks. His tongue sought the inside of her ears. In a state of frenzy she dug her nails into his thinly bearded cheeks and bit his nose. The stars above her went into a made whirl and then came back their places like a merry-go-round slowly coming to a stop. (Train to Pakistan 13-4)

Even though she continues to wriggle and protest, she fails to stop Juggut. Instead, she surrenders to his power like Jasmine had done with Half-Faced.  She gradually blends in his pleasure and pain. However, it is not the same wild pleasure that Lucy had felt through her sexual activities, nor is it the pain that Jasmine had gotten from Half-Faced.  However, her pleasure could be equivalent to the sexual satisfaction of Ekwefi, Okonkwo’s second wife. Achebe states:

Two years after her marriage to Anene she could bear it no longer and she ran away to Okonkwo. It had been early in the morning. The moon was shining. She was going to the stream to fetch water. Okonkwo’s house was on the way to the stream.  She went in and knocked at his door and he came out. Even in those days he was not a man of many words. He just carried her into his bed and in the darkness began to feel around her waist for the loose end of her cloth. (Things Fall Apart 109)

I have learned that women, when they are little girl,s they like little dolls, however, as  they  grow-up they begin to like giants.  Okonkwo is a giant among the Umuofian as well as a war hero. In the meantime, Ekwefi was the most beautiful woman in Umuofia. How could poor Anene keep her as his wife? Ekwefi’s attachment to Okonkwo is inevitable.  Definitly, she may gain more mental and physical satisfaction from Okonkwo.

          Compare these texts, Conrad’’sHeart of Darkness, E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, Walcott’s Collected Poems where the women have a very small role to play. Because of that it is very hard read their mental and physical need. However, Walcott’s “A Far Cry from Africa indicates some facts about Colonized African women. Likewise 2003 Colonial and Postcolonial students Rebecca Stasney, Lisa James and Susie Gibson think “the speaker is literally crying out with pain” (2003 Poetry presentation). In Walcott’s “A Far Cry from Africa,” the author shows his social instability to function as an African “poisoned” with British blood.  Meantime he argues how he can be British having “poisoned,” his “vein” “with the blood of both.” “I who am poisoned with the blood of both, / Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? / […] how choose / Between this Africa and the English tongue I love? / Betray them both, or give back what they give?” (Walcott 18).  As a hybrid, Walcott feels he is an illegitimate child in his mother country, a bastard in the British culture.  His hybridism makes him foreign in both cultures. Further, it is a question who he thinks poisoned his blood? It could be his mother side as he love his “English tongue.” For example, in Another Life “he . . . prayed . . . for his flesh to change” (Walcott 148-9). Then, does the poet regard his native women as whores including his mother; only “the drunken officer of British” sleeps with them.

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End 10am