LITR / CRCL 5734:
Colonial & Postcolonial Literature
Student Text-Dialogue Presentation 2008
Thursday, 17 April: Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy (1-83; up to chapter titled "Cold Hearts")
· Dialogue between Robinson Crusoe & Lucy:
leader: Jim Steinhilber
Interpreting both Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy in dialogue with each other calls attention to undercurrents each possess that are largely undetected with solo reading. This is a fancy way of saying one is colonial in nature and one is post-colonial in nature, and a person only notices this through contrasting and ‘dialoguing’ the stories. Robinson Crusoe falls within the ‘colonial’ nature of text and Lucy portrays a more ‘post-colonial’ bend.
Remember both these works are ‘fiction’ and therefore reflect the attitudes of the time more so than historical (actual) facts. This means a work of fiction is freed from reality and thus being not confined is a more accurate reflection of true inner feelings.
Do you agree?
Instructor's note > Watt article, p. 66: Defoe's novels reflect not theory but practice . . .
Some points to consider:
1.) Robinson Crusoe goes from a crowded society to a non-crowded one. Lucy goes from what she perceives as a non-crowded society (non-important) to a crowded society. The concept of perception here is important. For colonialists the perception is traditionally one of bringing or imposing. ‘I have civilization and am bringing it to you, you who have none’. Of course the colonized and indigenous might have a civilization established but such is either discounted by the colonizer or overlooked. Post-colonial attitude often is that from the perspective of the colonized, not the colonizer. Lucy is well aware of her girl-hood society and even though rejecting it she knows it exists.
We contemplate these mind sets through a comparison of them. And why do we think to compare? Because we are confronted with two examples, one colonial and the other post-colonial. Together we notice them. Separately they are ‘in the noise’.
2.) In both books the main characters leave home to measure their wings (stretch them). In both books they encounter parental resistance. But in the colonial book this resistance may spring from fear of a non-society awaiting the offspring where the post-colonial parent fears the established society the offspring is going to encounter.
3.) With consideration of ‘slavery’: It is written (assumed) by Defoe that Friday wants to be a slave. Maybe out of gratitude, envy or cultural starvation. Friday seems to welcome Crusoe’s tutoring. He even accepts a new name. Lucy, on the other hand, seems to play servant for her own purposes. She plays what she needs to be.
This again is a result of ‘colonial evolution’ and we sense through a comparison of the two books.
Additional question: A fictional matter of backdrop. Could Robinson Crusoe have worked in a crowded city? What about Lucy? Could Lucy have worked on an island?
I feel the answer is no. Crusoe would have either been ignored or committed. Lucy would not have developed emotionally.
And of course neither book would have been a story.
Additional Question: Are the colonized too innocent? (Perceived as innocent)?
Do we fight innocence? Or is a better word ‘ignorance’?
dialectic: cf. dialogue, but more discursive or abstract entities or processes
