Karen Daniel

Exile and Gender Oppression in Lucy

Sometimes when I read a novel I thoroughly enjoy it, yet don’t see the true literary value of the work.  I read Lucy a while back for another class, and while I really liked it, it wasn’t until I read it in conjunction with other colonial and post-colonial literature that I realized how profound the subject matter is; however, I found myself still questioning many of the decisions and feelings of the main character Lucy.  Her anger at her mother made no sense.  I decided to research various ways in which critics have interpreted her actions, and their interpretations of Kincaid’s message and purpose.   

As I began doing research, I found that the most compelling research leaned more towards what her anger meant in terms of the oppression she faced in the West Indies, and the ways in which her mother represented that society. Her mother is deeply enmeshed in the patriarchal society of the West Indies, succumbing to the wishes and desires of her husband, and losing herself in the process.  Most of the critics I read believe that Lucy resents this social order and feels the only way to fully reject it is to leave—in effect to put herself in voluntary exile. Mahlis in particular argues that Lucy only has one thing in mind when she leaves home--to escape from the stifling restrictions of her island home.  Since she sees her mother as representative of her homeland, Lucy turns her desire to leave the Islands into a desire to leave her mother. Even more than being angry at her mother for “selling out,” Lucy is deeply afraid that her mother is trying to force her to buy into the same oppression.

If Lucy is angry when she gets to the US, her anger is compounded by her discovery that women in the States are not much better off than women in the West Indies.  She has voluntarily separated herself from her family and her homeland in the hopes of finding a different social structure, yet all she finds is more of the same oppressive, male-dominated culture. Mahlis goes on to argue that the women in such positions are trapped in situations of being captives and in exile, both in their homelands, and in whatever places they escape to, and that this is primarily due to the continuing suppression by men in all of these environments.

Another critic, Oczkowicz, asserts that Lucy is affected by the post-colonial atmosphere in which she grows up, and that much of her story centers on the quest to transcend “her post-colonial predicament.” He goes onto argue that as she tries to reinvent herself she finds that she is severely marginalized in the United States due to such unchangeable issues such as race, gender, and class.  Far from feeling free and independent, Lucy feels that she has left one suppressive and constricting environment only to land in another one.  Just as Lucy’s mother represents the oppressive society in the West Indies, Mariah becomes both a surrogate mother and a parallel representation of oppression in the US—like Mariah compared to Lucy’s mother, the US is fraught with the same oppressions as the Caribbean, yet lacks the depth and strength of the Islands.   

In a sense, I was asking the wrong question from the beginning.  Trying to understand the reasons behind Lucy’s maternal anger was not as important as trying to find out what this anger represents.  Lucy is not really angry at her mother; rather she is angry at being raised and situated in such an oppressive and patriarchic society.  Since she sees her mother as representative of West Indian society, Lucy can direct her anger in her mother’s direction.  In this way she has a tangible entity to be angry at, rather than just a constructed culture. Read this way, it is imperative that Lucy get over both her anger at her mother and her anger at her homeland if she is to overcome the oppression she feels trapped by.

Bibliography

Kakutani, Michiko. “Family Secrets, Feuding Women.” The New York Times. October 31, 2003, Section E: 37. (October 11, 2007). EBSCO. UHCL, Houston, TX 12 April 2008.

Kincaid, Jamaica. Lucy. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1990.

Mahlis, Kristen. ”Gender and Exile: Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy.” Modern Fiction Studies. 44.1 (1998): 164-183. EBSCO. UHCL, Houston, TX 21 April 2008.

Oczkowicz, Edyta. “Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy: Cultural ‘Translation’ As a Case of Creative Exploration of the Past.” Melus. 21.3 (Fall 1996): 143-157. EBSCO. UHCL, Houston, TX 11 April 2008.